r 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 OF" 
 
 WU 
 
 Class 
 
, 
 
 PAPERS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 ON 
 
 Phases of the Labor 
 Problem 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMAN JUSTI 
 
 Commissioner of the Illinois Coal Operators' 
 Association 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, ILL. 
 
 1905 
 
Papers and Addresses 
 
 ON 
 
 Phases of the Labor 
 Problem 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMAN JUSTI 
 
 I* 
 
 Commissioner of the Illinois Coal 
 Operators' Association 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, ILL. 
 
 1905 
 
BY WAY OF PREFACE 
 
 The papers presented in this booklet are here reprinted 
 to supply a demand for them in this form that has come up 
 since their original appearance in the various publications 
 to which they are credited. In a number of cases, where 
 no credit it given, the pamphlet in which the matter original- 
 ly appeared was printed for the information of students of 
 the labor problem who were making inquiry into certain of 
 its phases. The original supply having become exhausted, 
 and the demand continuing, a number of the pamphlets for- 
 merly issued are herewith reprinted. 
 
 There are two papers herein contained which are given 
 by permission of the publishers of Bob Taylor's Magazine, 
 of Nashville, Tenn., a new and live candidate for public 
 favor, and one paper from The Century Magazine, repro- 
 duced by permission of the Century Company. 
 
 The subjects here treated are among those engaging the 
 attention of thoughtful, practical and patriotic men and 
 women everywhere. The sole wish of the author is to con- 
 tribute, in ever so slight a manner, to the solution of the 
 problems studied. 
 
 In addition to the papers and addresses contained in the 
 present volume the author has the following, and can still 
 supply on request a few copies of those marked with an 
 asterisk : 
 
 *Plans of Conciliation and Arbitration, Together with a 
 Plea for the Organization of the Employer Class as a Pre- 
 requisite. Read at the Conference on Industrial Arbitra- 
 tion, held under the auspices of the National Civic Federa- 
 tion, at Steinway Hall, Chicago, 111., December 17 and 18, 
 1900. 
 
 *Conciliation and Arbitration in the Coal Mining Indus- 
 try. Paper read before American Economic Association, 
 Washington, D. C, December 28, 1901. 
 
 Testimony before the National Industrial Commission, 
 Washington, D. C, May 13, 1901, on the Conditions of La- 
 bor in the Coal Mining Industry of Illinois. 
 
 3 
 
 14 
 
4 Papers and Addresses 
 
 The Illinois Coal Operators' Plan for Preventing Strikes. 
 
 Common Sense and the Labor Problem. An experiment 
 by the coal miners and coal mine owners of Illinois. 
 
 Suggestions for a National Board of Arbitration. 
 
 *Arbitration ; Its Uses and Abuses. Address delivered 
 at the National Convention of Employer and Employe, Min- 
 neapolis, Minn., September 23, 1902. 
 
 *The Organization of Capital. Lecture delivered under 
 the auspices of the Twentieth Century Club, at Faneuil 
 Hall, Boston, Mass., November 20, 1902. 
 
 Trade Agreements a Bar to Sympathetic Strikes. 
 
 *The Coal Mine Operator versus The Public. An ad- 
 dress delivered on "Coal Men's Day" at the Louisiana Pur- 
 chase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., July 20, 1904. 
 
 *Organization and Public Opinion. An address deliv- 
 ered at the Convention of the Inter-State Retail Coal Deal- 
 ers' Association, Masonic Temple, Chicago, June 23, 1903. 
 
 *Businesslike Methods Applied to Labor Disputes. An 
 address delivered before the Chicago Press Club, Wednes- 
 day, October 5, 1904. 
 
 *The Humors of Coal Mining. 
 
 Springfield, 111., Oct. 2d, 1905. 
 
INDEX 
 
 By Way of Preface 5 
 
 System of Joint Trade Agreements 7 
 
 (Address at Joliet, 111., Labor Day, Sept 4, 1905.) 
 
 Correspondence with President Eliot 17 
 
 (Reprinted from FUEL, Feb.-Mar., 1904.) 
 
 The Basis of Agreement 24 
 
 (Minutes of Joint Interstate Conference, Indianapolis, 
 1902.) 
 
 The Open Shop Versus the Closed Shop .... 26 
 (Address at Streator, 111., Chautauqua, July 8, 1905.) 
 
 The Organization of Capital 45 
 
 (The Century Magazine, February, 1903.) 
 
 Labor Problem in the South 50 
 
 (Bob Taylor's Magazine, April, 1905.) 
 
 The South's Sure Way to Industrial Peace. . 61 
 (Bob Taylor's Magazine, October, 1905.) 
 
 Relations of Capital and Lqbor 75 
 
 (Address at Springfield, 111., Labor Day, Sept. 3, 1900.) 
 
THE SYSTEM OF JOINT 
 
 TRADE AGREEMENTS 
 
 The system of joint trade agreements, while never gen- 
 erally adopted by the managers and laborers of the great 
 industries of the world, is not a new system, it having been 
 used for many years here and there, at home and abroad, 
 with varying degrees of success. When, however, the sys- 
 tem has been a success, this success was due to the strict 
 observance of business honor and of correct business meth- 
 ods by both the laborer and the manager, and if the system 
 is ever to be universally observed by capital and labor, it will 
 be when the parties in interest strictly observe these 
 fundamental business principles. The system in the future, 
 therefore, will be anything from a gratifying success to a 
 mere make-shift, and from a mere make-shift to a failure, 
 in the exact degree in which we adhere to or in which we 
 depart from essential fundamental virtues. 
 
 The advocate of almost any system usually, quack-like, 
 bestows upon it his unqualified praise, and claims that it is 
 perfect in both theory and practice. This is extremely 
 unfortunate, for the reason that any system, however 
 meritorious, or however correct in theory, must fail to ful- 
 fill such unreasonable expectations. It is unfortunate that 
 those whom such an advocate seeks to convince, having 
 knowledge of whole or partial failures in the past, naturally 
 conclude that the whole system is wrong, and merely be- 
 cause the advocate, either in his too great zeal or in his too 
 great recklessness of statement, does not tell the whole 
 truth. Nothing helps a good cause so much as candor, and 
 nothing hurts it more than extravagant claim or intentional 
 deception. 
 
 In my advocacy of the system of joint trade agreements, 
 I want to make it perfectly clear that while I have found, 
 as has been often charged, that the system was at times 
 one thing in theory and another thing in practice, this un- 
 fortunate result was due not to any fault of the system itself, 
 
 *An address delivered at Joliet, 111., on Labor Day, Sept. 4, 1905. 
 
 7 
 
8 Papers and Addresses 
 
 but was due to the fact that the parties to these joint trade 
 agreements were themselves at fault. 
 
 Labor Not to Be Ignored in Business. 
 
 It has always been incomprehensible to me that we, busi- 
 ness men, should persist in treating the element of labor 
 as outside of or exempt from the ordinary rules of business. 
 We contract for our raw material after a friendly confer- 
 ence with those who have raw materials for sale, and, in 
 turn, we dispose of our products by friendly agreement with 
 the buyer. Why should be not treat labor, so far as the 
 wage question is concerned, as a commodity, and agree to 
 buy so much of it as we need at a reasonable price after a 
 friendly, business conference with those who have labor 
 for sale ? 
 
 Now, this idea underlies, as I comprehend it, the whole 
 system of joint trade agreements. This seems to me a 
 good foundation a solid basis for a wise, comprehensive 
 system, through the medium of which, employers and em- 
 ployes can best determine the value, according to commer- 
 cial or competitive conditions, of that commodity which the 
 one class desires to buy and the other class desires to sell. 
 
 I do not know who, in modern times, is entitled to the 
 credit or the honor of suggesting the system of joint trade 
 agreements, but the idea was no doubt borrowed and it is 
 just as good even though it was borrowed from an ancient 
 prophet. 
 
 More than 2700 years ago, the Prophet Isaiah said : 
 "Come now, let us reason together." 
 
 All of our misunderstandings, all of our wars between 
 nations, and our industrial wars, without exception, are, I 
 am confident, due to a failure to do what Isaiah pro- 
 posed, and no misunderstanding is ever settled, nor is any 
 war ever ended, until the disputants settle down to reason 
 with each other. Say what you will on the subject of labor 
 disputes, the fact remains that the great conflict between the 
 forces of capital and labor can be settled finally, only in one 
 way, and that way is by mutual agreement. You can settle 
 its conflicts temporarily by fighting by whipping somebody 
 but somehow they don't remain whipped, for no sooner 
 has that somebody been whipped than he comes again. 
 
 Right now the war between Russia and Japan cannot be 
 settled by fighting it will be settled according to the plan 
 of Isaiah, by "reasoning together." 
 
System of Joint Trade Agreements 9 
 
 This system of joint trade agreements is a common- 
 sense, practical and reasonable system, and for no other 
 people in the world is it so admirably designed as for the 
 citizens of a great democracy like our own. But the op- 
 ponents of this system are accustomed to offer many rea- 
 sons for refusing to recognize or adopt it. Indeed, some of 
 the friends of the system friends who have operated their 
 industries under it for years seem reluctant to continue it. 
 
 The Fault Not With the System. 
 
 Again, I insist that the fault is not with the system, but, as 
 I have already observed, with those doing business under 
 it, and yet I can readily understand the reluctance of the one 
 class to adopt it, and of the other class to continue it. 
 
 No one wishes to do business with an individual, firm, 
 company, organization or community that does not look 
 upon a contract as a sacred obligation. No liberty-loving 
 being wants to, or will, do business with anyone that seeks 
 to obtain business recognition by mere force. Nor does 
 any reputable person want to surround himself with a band 
 of irresponsible, dictatorial, vulgar, incompetent, so-called 
 workers. It is justly claimed that some labor organizations 
 are of the class that will not keep their word, and that will 
 resort to brutal violence. 
 
 It cannot be justly charged, I feel certain, that all, or a 
 majority, or any very considerable number of men in any 
 labor organization really belong to the class I have just de- 
 scribed. But appearances are too often against them, and it 
 is too often the case that the prominence, or dominating 
 influence, of a mischief-making few gives color to the 
 charge that certain labor organizations are irresponsible, and 
 that they do not mean to be fair and upright. 
 
 But as representatives of organized labor, you will say, 
 why should the many be judged by the acts of the few, or 
 why should they suffer because of the acts of the few? 
 Why? 
 
 I speak from an experience of many years, and from 
 a very close personal knowledge of my subject, and I also 
 speak from a most sincere desire to be helpful to the 
 cause of organized labor. Answering your query, I say that 
 it is because you too readily find reasons for excusing wrong 
 action, and you defend the wrong-doer, be his ofTense ever 
 so gross or glaring. 
 
 I would be a mean, false friend to the cause of 
 
io Papers and Addresses 
 
 organized labor if I told you only pleasant things to flatter 
 your vanity, or if I should withhold the truth for fear of 
 losing your good will. By such a course, both employer 
 and employe as classes would suffer. 
 
 I confidently believe in the system of joint trade agree- 
 ments. I believe with all the intensity of my nature that 
 that system may become most effective for good, and will 
 the sooner be the universal system, when we, employers and 
 employes, have decided to be honest with each other and 
 honest with ourselves, when we are prepared to tell each 
 other the plain truth, with calm, respectful, reasonable 
 candor, and when, also, so far as organization is concerned, 
 the capital and labor classes are equally well matched, so 
 that the one is a check upon the grasping tendency of the 
 other. 
 
 Each Has Rights and a Reciprocal Interest. 
 
 We all have certain rights which each in turn has 
 ignored or outraged, simply because we have closed our 
 eyes to reason and the truth. We have a reciprocal if not 
 a common interest, and yet we pull apart instead of pull- 
 ing together. We eagerly seek for differences that estrange 
 us instead of looking for points of agreement that should 
 unite us. That we are kept apart is due in a greater or less 
 degree to our unwillingness to be open-eyed, fair-minded, 
 reasonable. Let us realize this fact in time, for is it not 
 true that "every, great tragedy in the world's history was 
 due to unreason?" The first gun of the late Civil War 
 made every adult mind of more than average intelligence, 
 in both the North and the South, realize that unreason was 
 rending in twain the fairest and freest land under the sun, 
 but no one would admit it until its soil had drunk the blood 
 of hundreds of thousands of brave men and one-half of our 
 land was made desolate. 
 
 As a representative of capital, though I am only an em- 
 ploye not a capitalist I want to present to the capital 
 class my reasons for believing that the surest way out of all 
 of our industrial complications lies along the line of the joint 
 trade agreement system. That is, provided the employer 
 class will consent to organize thoroughly itself for the pur- 
 pose of doing business with labor, organized or unorganized, 
 in order that it may the more easily concede to labor its just 
 rights and exact from labor what is due it. 
 
 But before attempting this, I have decided that you 
 
System of Joint Trade Agreements n 
 
 would not be offended if I presented to the representatives 
 of organized labor on this day, Labor's 4th of July a few 
 important, homely truths. Indeed, it is essential that these 
 truths should be presented and also accepted before we can 
 hope to see a more earnest and general not to say a uni- 
 versal recognition and adoption of the system of joint 
 trade agreements, and this should be apparent to all, since 
 any system, however admirable, however perfect, must 
 fail unless it has the honest, intelligent, practical support of 
 the individual adherents or advocates of that system, both 
 on the side of labor and on the side of capital. I mean 
 no offense when I say, in fact, I say it because I 
 desire to be useful and helpful, that no matter how strong 
 labor organizations may become, unless they are supported, 
 encouraged and directed by high character and sound intel- 
 ligence, they cannot survive. It is easy enough for labor 
 organizations to get along when prosperity is at high tide, 
 and when business men find trade so brisk and profits 
 so large as to justify, it would seem, any conces- 
 sion in wages or principle rather than submit to a suspen- 
 sion of such operations and by such suspension lose a few 
 dollars. 
 
 Labor Organizations Will Survive. 
 
 The question is: "Can labor organizations survive the 
 reverses which come to us in cycles, as spring, summer, 
 autumn and winter follow each other in their turn, and can 
 they be relied upon to act wisely under great disappoint- 
 ments ? The enemies of organized labor, the friendly critics 
 of organized labor, many leaders of organized labor even, 
 have often asked this question and usually have answered it 
 in the negative. The labor organizations will survive, I 
 believe, because American laborers will see the necessity of 
 wise, conservative, concerted action before it is too late, and 
 because wise, honest labor men will insist on pulling away 
 from those who are just the reverse, and will refuse to 
 endorse self-confessed grafters and red-handed murderers. 
 
 I confidently believe that the representatives of organized 
 labor will ponder well the reasons that exist for heeding the 
 advice of those whose training and patriotism enable them 
 to speak from a wide and convincing experience, and from 
 a desire to serve their country. 
 
 Before presenting my reasons for advocating the system 
 of joint trade agreements in the United States, I wish to 
 
12 Papers and Addresses 
 
 say at this time, and on this auspicious occasion, that there 
 are some plain, homely truths, of paramount importance, 
 that must be presented and that you must accept, if the 
 great movement in which you are engaged, and the mod- 
 erate success which you are to-day celebrating with so much 
 commendable enthusiasm, is to be an unqualified success 
 and a permanent benefit to its adherents and to the country 
 at large. 
 
 First of all, let me emphasize the fact that the masses in 
 America must learn that we can no more equalize fortunes 
 and conditions than we can equalize brain or brawn. Some 
 misguided leaders are trying to convince wage earners 
 that this can be done. The power to do this, let me declare, 
 does not rest in man ; it rests alone in the Almighty. 
 
 Wages Cannot Always Advance, 
 
 They must also learn that wages cannot always advance, 
 and if it is a principle of organized labor, as some labor 
 leaders insist, never to surrender any advance in wages, nor 
 any advantage once obtained, then the system of joint trade 
 agreements must be given up. If the system of joint trade 
 agreements is not elastic enough to sympathetically respond 
 to pronounced changes in trade conditions, then it is not the 
 system for which the American people are in eager, earnest 
 and determined search. 
 
 Your organization may secure for you the highest scale 
 of wages, but your earnings must be made large by your 
 individual effort. Depend upon it, that only insofar as you 
 put heart and brain into your work, can a high scale of 
 wages, or any scale at all, be of benefit to you. Nor will 
 these higher wages be to your advantage unless out of your 
 greater earnings you save something for that rainy day 
 almost sure to come in the experience of all men; some- 
 thing that shall build a home in which honor, virtue and 
 faith are a supreme trinity to successfully contend with ig- 
 norance, want and doubt. 
 
 Whatever others may say to the contrary, I believe 
 that every intelligent employer of labor, who has taken 
 -the time to give the matter due consideration, is will- 
 ing to pay to labor every cent to which it is entitled, 
 providing the quality of the service rendered is the 
 best of which the employe is capable. I believe that under 
 the system of joint trade agreements organized capital will 
 enforce this rule where at present it does not exist. 
 
. T 
 
 System of Joint Trade Agreements 13 
 
 Must Be Faithful and Loyal. 
 
 If you are determined to preserve your union, you must 
 be faithful to your pledges and loyal to your leaders. You 
 must, as individuals, feel bound by and respect all contracts 
 made for you by your officials, and after a contract has 
 been made, you cannot afford to set its provisions aside 
 by legislative enactments. You may be able to convince 
 time serving politicians that this is right, but the public, 
 never. If you intend that the principles of trade unionism 
 shall prevail, if you want them recognized and yourselves 
 respected, you must make unionism a synonym for good 
 workmanship, for integrity, and for fidelity to country. The 
 mere loud, boastful claim of some of your leaders that 
 union labor is always the best doesn't make it so. You 
 must make it so, and you must convince those who buy it 
 that you know what you are talking about. 
 
 The eight-hour law, the enactment of which you annually 
 celebrate, is a good thing. I believe in it, but it will be help- 
 ful to the laboring man only in so far as he uses his leisure 
 for his own material or intellectual advancement, or for the 
 benefit of his wife and children. God bless these wives and 
 children, for I know from a close study of men, the heads 
 and the providers of families, that they too often are the 
 objects of our last instead of our first care. Make them uni- 
 versally our first thought and care, and this world of ours 
 will be a brighter and better world. If, by reason of the 
 shorter hours of labor, you improve yourselves, and confer 
 benefits upon those dependent upon you, you will have rea- 
 son to rejoice ; but if the hours of leisure which you have 
 obtained by reason of the shorter hours of labor shall be 
 used in dissipation or riotous living, then it were far better 
 to reduce again hours of leisure and to increase your hours 
 of work, for idleness is the prolific mother of the deadliest 
 sins. Would to heaven men could learn to discriminate by 
 practice of the former between upbuilding leisure and de- 
 structive idleness. 
 
 Best Representatives Must Control. 
 
 Labor organizations have grown strong, and they now 
 possess such power for good or for evil that the time has 
 arrived when the administration of their affairs must be con- 
 trolled, not by petty politicians, not by their weakest, but by 
 their strongest representatives. The day has gone, never to 
 return, when you can advance your cause by force and vio- 
 
14 Papers and Addresses 
 
 lence. Public opinion in the United States has decided this 
 once and for all. It has decided that we have ad- 
 vanced far enough along the highway of Christian civil- 
 ization to adjust our differences without resort to abuse or 
 violence. 
 
 In these observations made to-day, I have endeavored to 
 show that business methods, and the highest business char- 
 acter, are prerequisites to a general or universal recogni- 
 tion, by the employer class, of the system of joint trade 
 agreements, and I confidently believe that whenever you 
 are able to prove unquestioned ability to do business in a 
 businesslike manner, and to discard many of the worth- 
 less rules and shameful practices that have been a 
 blot upon your record and a check to your more rapid 
 growth, rules and practices that too often repel fair- 
 minded employers you will achieve a lasting triumph ; 
 not before, and not otherwise. For permanent success 
 is possible only where correct economic laws are ob- 
 served. To expect permanent success otherwise is as un- 
 reasonable and hopeless as to expect the earth to yield a 
 harvest where all the laws of nature are ignored, where 
 there is no sun to warm, no rain to moisten and no fertiliz- 
 ing elements to enrich the soil in which seed and plant have 
 been unscientifically deposited. The sooner we compre- 
 hend these prerequisites, the sooner shall we witness a 
 steady, if not a very rapid, increase in the recognition of 
 joint trade agreements by the great industries of our coun- 
 try, and the sooner the better. 
 
 But I am expected to give my reasons for advocating the 
 general adoption of the system of joint trade agreements. 
 Of one thing I can assure you, and that is that I favor the 
 system for no selfish or sentimental reason, but because it is 
 a business system pure and simple. 
 
 Reasons for Joint Trade Agreement. 
 
 I favor it, because I believe it tends to broaden and en- 
 lighten those who participate in it. I favor it because I 
 believe it will eliminate from the rank of employers the men 
 who are responsible for what is known as a "cut-throat" 
 policy in trade, a policy responsible always for low wages, 
 and further that it will ultimately drive from positions 
 of honor and trust in labor organizations a class of ruffians 
 who are its greatest disgrace and its chief menace ; a class 
 of men half fools, half rogues. 
 
System of Joint Trade Agreements 15 
 
 This system may not make us, perhaps, less eager to ob- 
 tain all our own rights, but it will tend to open our 
 eyes to the rights of others. It will help us to see that 
 the question of labor and its compensations is an economic 
 question and nothing else. I favor the system not only for 
 what it has already done, but for what I believe it will do 
 in the future. In the coal mining industry of the country, 
 for example, if it has done nothing else, it has at least 
 brought the coal mine operators closer together, and to the 
 end that they are less suspicious of each other, and, there- 
 fore, hold each other in higher respect. None of us are 
 either so good or so bad as we seem, and if our relations 
 become sufficiently intimate, so that we may be seen by 
 each other just as we are, the cause of truth and justice 
 will be advanced. 
 
 Can Evolve Perfect System. 
 
 I am for the present system of joint trade agreements, 
 not because that system has proven to be approximately per- 
 fect, but because I believe out of it can be evolved a system 
 that will be perfect. It surely does what nothing else so far 
 has been able to do for the employer class, and that is that 
 it has had the effect of opening their eyes to their actual 
 needs. Long ago, in attending joint conventions, I was im- 
 pressed with the fact that the workers were not properly 
 organized, and that the employers were very poorly, if at all, 
 organized. The fact is that neither side seemed to have a 
 fair, correct, common-sense idea as to the basis of organiza- 
 tion for the parties to a joint movement, where the ends to 
 be accomplished were simply the making of contracts. That 
 the individuals were not properly equipped was not due to 
 any mental deficiency, but rather to a lack of the right sort 
 of training so absolutely necessary where the employer and 
 the employe class are expected to cope with each other, and 
 where, jointly, they are expected to cope with the problems 
 that concern both. 
 
 I favor the system because I know it has brought together 
 kindred souls in different walks of life who otherwise might 
 have been drawn farther and farther apart, increasing the 
 bitterness felt by one for the other, of one class for the 
 other, and has thus made them at times influences in prc 
 serving peace where otherwise they could have been influ- 
 enced to make a long, bitter conflict inevitable. 
 
 It has cleared away doubt in many minds, and has often 
 
1 6 Papers and Addresses 
 
 made of unreasoning radicals, wise and helpful conserva- 
 tives. 
 
 The System Full of Promise. 
 
 It is too much to expect that this young system has 
 brought peace everywhere in the industrial world, and it 
 cannot bring universal peace until we are universally more 
 enlightened, of kindlier and fairer and less selfish disposi- 
 tions. It will be a long time before wars and rumors of 
 war between nations or classes shall cease and that time 
 may never come but if the joint trade agreement helps to 
 move us in the right direction ; if it is, as I contend, the 
 best system so far evolved; if it continues in the future to 
 steadily improve upon what it has done in the past, we 
 should welcome it as a bow of promise that spreads itself 
 across the industrial firmament and illumines it with hope. 
 
 Take home to-night this thought, and dwell on it, gentle- 
 men, that the precious assurances that however severely we 
 may condemn the materialistic age in which we live the so- 
 called dominant spirit of commercialism, the tendency in 
 the labor world at least is nevertheless away from the teach- 
 ings and practices of Nero and Caligula, of miser and ty- 
 rant, and in favor of what Christ said and of what Christ 
 did, and if we would make this more and more widely, 
 more emphatically and more noticeably true, let us the 
 oftener say to each other what the ancient prophet said : 
 
 "Come now, let us reason together." 
 
 ' 'Let us reason without greed, spite or bitterness ; let us 
 reason, if possible, without selfish and in a spirit of justice 
 and of mutual helpfulness. Thus a better chance for suc- 
 cess and for happiness will be guaranteed to us and entering 
 in this spirit upon our unavoidable business conflicts and 
 contentions, we may rest assured that victory will impartial- 
 ly perch upon your banner or upon ours, the determining 
 influence being not might, but right." 
 
DR. ELIOT'S MISCONCEPTION 
 
 OF TRADE AGREEMENT IDEA 
 
 The joint agreement system and its bearings on the 
 public formed the basis of an interesting rejoinder to an 
 address delivered by Dr. Eliot before the Boston Central 
 Labor Union, dealing with that subject. At the time the 
 address was delivered, in February, 1904, Dr. Eliot scored 
 the joint agreement system, pronouncing it monopolistic. 
 Mr. Justi replied in an article printed in FUEL, and Dr. 
 Eliot wrote him a letter in regard to the reply. The purpose 
 intended in reprinting the article is to show how the plan 
 is sometimes misunderstood even by so fair and eminent 
 authority as Dr. Eliot. 
 
 In his Boston speech the college president said, among 
 other things : 
 
 "The plain tendency of the joint agreement is to bring 
 about a junction of the forces of labor and capital in the 
 combined effort to raise prices and so increase both wages 
 and profits. The ultimate result has been reached in several 
 trades or industries in the United States within the last three 
 years." 
 
 Further along Dr. Eliot said : 
 
 "The present tendencies of labor unions and employers' 
 associations suggest strongly the expediency of establish- 
 ing over them governmental inspection and control, and this 
 for two reasons : 
 
 "First, that both kind of associations soon become 
 monopolistic, and, 
 
 "Second, that they are secret societies." 
 
 Mr. Justi, replying in FUEL, said he believed President 
 Eliot's information unreliable. He further said that since 
 the Pennsylvania-Ohio-Indiana-Illinois joint agreement was 
 created six years ago, no junction of the forces of capital 
 and labor ever had been formed or attempted, to raise prices 
 and so increase wages and profits. There never had been 
 any attempt, he said, through this joint agreement, to ad- 
 vance or reduce the price of coal or to regulate the output. 
 Every demand for an increase of wages had been honestly 
 
 17 
 
1 8 Papers and Addresses 
 
 resisted. Mr. Justi stated that the various associations were 
 not secret, and that the coal operators of the four states were 
 competitors. 
 
 "A monopoly in the bituminous coal-mining industry," 
 said Mr. Justi, "is well-nigh impossible. This might be ac- 
 complished in part by a consolidation of all the coal proper- 
 ties. This is all but impossible, and even if accomplished 
 new companies would quickly spring into life, coal lands 
 being plentiful and development neither very difficult nor 
 costly. Agreements as to selling prices are not effective, 
 as experience demonstrates." 
 
 In answer to this article, President Eliot wrote the fol- 
 lowing letter to Mr. Justi : 
 
 President Eliot's Letter. 
 
 Harvard University, 
 Cambridge, February 26, 1904. 
 Mr. Herman Justi : 
 
 Dear Sir: I have just read your article, entitled "The 
 Harvard President's Error," and am surprised at the strong 
 contrast between your infomation and mine. I have read 
 numerous joint agreements between labor unions and em- 
 ployers' associations, and I have yet to see one the natural 
 result of which was not a raising of prices to the public 
 during the prosperity of the industry involved. As a rule 
 they agree to higher wages, or shorter hours, or both. The 
 last one I read was a joint agreement between the Electrical 
 Workers of America and the Electrical Employers of Bos- 
 ton and the vicinity. It not only put up prices now, but it 
 agreed on a further advance of the workmen's wages by 
 twelve and a half per cent on the ist of January, 1905. 
 You are doubtless familiar with the situation in Chicago. 
 Do you not observe there many instances of the two parties 
 to what is called the "industrial strife" joining hands against 
 the public? 
 
 With regard to your statement concerning the employ- 
 ers' associations not being secret, I think we may seem to 
 differ, because we have a different conception of what a 
 secret society is. The unions seem to me to be all secret 
 societies in a proper sense. They debate their policies in 
 secret session, and determine on their acts in secret session. 
 Their acts, however, necessarily become public at a later 
 stage. Many of the employers' associations do the same 
 things. They concert their measures in secret, but their 
 
Correspondence with President Eliot 19 
 
 measures necessarily later become public. I am in posses- 
 sion of the constitution of one employers' association, the 
 membership of which is kept secret ; and, of course, all its 
 meetings are secret, and the public knows nothing about the 
 association, except through the public action of its author- 
 ized agent or agents. This secrecy is maintained under the 
 mistaken idea that the association will be more influential 
 if of unknown size. You seem to think that an association 
 whose doings are ultimately public is not a secret associa- 
 tion. That is not my use of the term. 
 
 As to the possibility and probability of "cornering" all 
 the labor of a large community, or, in other words, creating 
 a monopoly in labor, I venture to refer you to the experience 
 of San Francisco. 
 
 I do not admit that I am in error either in regard to the 
 monopolistic tendency of the joint agreement, or in regard 
 to the practical secrecy of all labor unions and most em- 
 ployers' associations. Very truly yours, 
 
 CHARLES W. ELIOT. 
 
 Mr. Justi's answer is given below : 
 
 Mr. Justi's Answer to This Letter. 
 
 March 28, 1904. 
 Dr. Charles W. Eliot, 
 
 Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 My Dear Sir : I thank you for your letter of February 
 26, received on my return to Chicago. 
 
 Permit me to assure you, my dear Doctor Eliot, that I do 
 not defend the system of joint agreements because I am op- 
 posed to the system of publicity which you advocate. I sim- 
 ply seek to make it clear that the system of joint agreements 
 does not tend to unite the forces of capital and labor in order 
 to advance wages, or to increase by artificial means the 
 profits of employers, at an unjust cost to the public. I am 
 sufficiently familiar with the practices pursued in the great 
 industries of the country in which the system of joint agree- 
 ments is recognized to feel warranted in saying that a system 
 of publicity to be conducted under some plan to be deter- 
 mined by our national government cannot do any harm 
 whatever to that system, or to the men working under it. 
 On the contrary, it would bring out clearly its advantages, 
 and make it more effective for good, where already adopted, 
 and would insure its introduction among employers, where 
 it is now ignored. 
 
2o Papers and Addresses 
 
 I do not believe that anything is proved by the mere 
 fact that the particular joint agreements which you have 
 read contain some intimation, or even some express under- 
 standing, on the subject of future advances conditioned 
 upon continued or increased prosperity. I do not believe 
 this fact proves that the forces of capital and labor are 
 uniting to advance wages in order to increase profits. The 
 idea that an increase in wages means at the same time an 
 increase in profits to the employer is, I think, an erroneous 
 one. An advance in wages naturally means a reduction in 
 the percentage of profits. This is always the case when the 
 markets are weak or normal, and only when the demand for 
 a commodity is brisk, or greater than the ability to supply 
 it quickly, is this rule reversed. Here the increase of prices 
 is due to the increased demand, and not to the increase of 
 wages. 
 
 There can be no objection to a proper increase in wages ; 
 in fact, no objection to the highest wages consistent with 
 actual trade conditions. In no other way is it possible to 
 distribute so equitably the wealth realized from the earnings 
 on the invested capital of the country. 
 
 You say that the joint agreements which you have read 
 are numerous and that you have yet to see one, the natural 
 result of which was not to raise the prices to the public 
 during the prosperity of the industry involved, and you 
 add: "As a rule they agree to higher wages, or shorter 
 hours, or both"? What is the force of your words, "the 
 natural result." Is this not a confession that the relation 
 of cause and effect between a joint agreement and the in- 
 crease of prices is your own assumption, rather than the 
 actual purpose of the joint agreement? Does the joint 
 agreement cause the prosperity of the industry, and thus 
 connive at an increase of prices? If not, what is there so 
 grievously wrong about this plan of raising wages or prices 
 during the prosperity of the industry involved? Certainly, 
 during a period of adversity, when times are hard and de- 
 pression is general, such a course would be ill-advised. I 
 can only conclude that if you oppose advances in wages, 
 improved conditions, and shorter hours, when conditions 
 of trade are favorable, then you must be opposed to these 
 things at all times. 
 
 You direct my attention to the joint agreement between 
 the Electrical Workers of America and the Electrical Em- 
 ployers of Boston and vicinity, to prove that wages not only 
 
Correspondence with President Eliot. 21 
 
 are put up at present, but that it is agreed that a further 
 advance shall be given to the workmen on Jan. i, 1905. My 
 knowledge of industrial conflicts or contentions in general 
 would lead me to surmise that a demand had been made by 
 the Electrical Workers for an advance of 25 per cent, to 
 continue for two years, and that the employers, while oppos- 
 ing so large an advance, finally agreed to I2.y 2 , per cent ad- 
 vance the first year and 12^ per cent the second year, as a 
 compromise. If this is true, then, under this system of 
 joint agreements, the employer, in not yielding to the de- 
 mand of the laborers, protected the public by saving it a 
 further advance of 12^2 per cent for that one year. 
 
 In answer to the question : "Do you not observe in Chi- 
 cago many instances of the two parties to what is called the 
 'industrial strife' joining hands against the public?" I beg 
 to say that I have known of two instances where this was 
 urged to be the case. 
 
 One instance grew out of the agreement between the 
 electrical contractors and workers, and that agreement 
 brought on a prosecution in the courts of Chicago, and, as 
 a result, a heavy fine was imposed upon the officers of the 
 Electrical Workers. 
 
 The other instance is where such a charge was brought 
 against the Sheet Metal Contractors of Chicago. A suit was 
 brought by a company of contractors in the same line of 
 business, and this case is now pending in the courts of Cook 
 County. There may be other cases, but I do not know of 
 them. 
 
 I do not say that it is impossible for the forces of capi- 
 tal and labor to unite and thereafter impose burdens upon 
 the public, but I do say it is difficult, because the public and 
 its lawyers are too wideawake to overlook so flagrant a vio- 
 lation of the law. Our state's attorneys are on the lookout 
 for just such cases. To discover and punish the offenders, 
 raises such officials in public favor, and to that extent in- 
 sures their re-election. 
 
 So far as the larger industries of the country are con- 
 cerned, it is utterly impossible to form such a combination 
 as you suggest. This would be true, for example, of the 
 coal-mining industry, in which 400,000 men are employed; 
 the maritime interests, employing as many, if not more, 
 men, and the railroad interests, employing vastly more. 
 Nor do I think a similar combination could be formed be- 
 tween the forces in the iron and steel industry, in the coal- 
 
22 Papers and Addresses 
 
 oil industry, or in the printing business. Here we have the 
 largest industries, employing the largest bodies of organ- 
 ized labor (the Standard Oil Company perhaps excepted), 
 and most of them making joint agreements to determine 
 the pay and the conditions of labor, and in not any of these 
 do the forces of capital and labor join hands against the 
 public. 
 
 As to the possibility of cornering all the labor in a large 
 community, you refer me to the experience of San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 Recently I have had a conversation with Mr. Ray Stan- 
 nard Baker, associate editor of McClure's Magazine, on this 
 subject. Mr. Baker published an article in McClure's for 
 February, which gives a very graphic description of the 
 situation in San Francisco. Mr. Baker concedes that the 
 corner in labor established in San Francisco did not origi- 
 nate in the existence of joint agreements. When the labor 
 organizations of San Francisco besought the employers 
 of labor to meet them in joint conference with a view of 
 making contracts, the employers refused, and to their re- 
 fusal added the announcement that they would resist or- 
 ganized labor to the bitter end and seek to crush it. A con- 
 flict was the result, and organized labor triumphed over the 
 so-called capital, or employer, class. Its defeat was so 
 thorough that the subsequent combinations between capital 
 and labor from which the public now suffers, should be 
 called "articles of surrender," instead of "joint agreements." 
 We have found reasons to expect that the San Francisco 
 conditions will neither be prolonged nor repeated elsewhere 
 in America. 
 
 As far as my personal knowledge goes, in those indus- 
 tries where the system of joint agreements has been in 
 force, the membership is publicly known and there is abso- 
 lutely no secrecy, save in so far as the business of any ex- 
 ecutive body is properly private, and about which the public 
 need not be informed. The senate of the United States, 
 for example, discusses some of its gravest matters in secret 
 session, but it is not, for that reason, a secret organization. 
 I take pleasure in sending you a list of our members, a copy 
 of our constitution, and the printed proceedings of our joint 
 conferences. 
 
 That the system of joint agreements is not intended 
 merely to advance wages to men belonging to labor organi- 
 zations, has to some extent been disproved in the recent 
 
Correspondence with President Eliot 23 
 
 action of the coal miners in the bituminous fields. By a 
 popular vote, they decided to accept a reduction. Their 
 leaders first set before them the fact that trade conditions re- 
 quired it. They voted to accept the reduction by a popular 
 majority of over 33,000 votes, in a total vote of 170,000. 
 
 It is true that any reduction in wages is distasteful to 
 labor and is resisted, just as it is true that employers do 
 not like to be importuned continuously to advance wages, 
 or great industries do not like to accept any reduction in 
 the price of the products of labor that would cause a re- 
 duction in their profits. 
 
 The system of joint agreements, I contend, not only has 
 been of great advantage to the employe class, but it has 
 been of great advantage to the employer class also, and it 
 has been of even still greater advantage to the public. Under 
 that system, ruinous strikes have been prevented and sta- 
 bility of values has been insured. This boon could not 
 have been obtained in any other way. It is, I maintain, a 
 system that has been of inestimable value to us all, but the 
 greatest benefit is yet to follow, when once the business idea 
 is correctly impressed upon the minds of the workers. As 
 soon as this is accomplished, just so soon will they under- 
 stand, not only their rights, but their duties and responsi- 
 bilities. 
 
 With great respect, I am, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 HERMAN' JUSTI. 
 
THE BASIS OF AGREEMENT 
 
 To make clear to the public the basis upon which joint 
 trade agreements rest in the bituminous coal mining indus- 
 try of the country, I prepared a series of resolutions which 
 were presented by me in behalf of the Illinois Coal Opera- 
 tors' Association at the joint interstate conference of coal 
 mine operator* and coal miners at Indianapolis, Indiana, 
 February 8, 1902, when they were unanimously adopted. 
 These resolutions follow : 
 
 Preamble and Resolution. 
 
 Whereas, The American people is deeply concerned and 
 profoundly interested in the wise and correct solution of the 
 labor problem, and is vitally interested in seeing a problem 
 materially affecting all classes in our country settled by 
 peaceable, reasonable and wise methods, and not by force or 
 threats of force, by imposing hardships or threatening to im- 
 pose hardships upon the masses of the people ; and 
 
 Whereas, Thoughtful and observing people everywhere 
 are watching with profound interest and deep solicitude the 
 joint movement of coal mine operators and coal miners 
 in the central coal mining states of the Union, and have 
 shown in many ways and on many occasions a desire for a 
 clear and explicit definition of the joint movement inaugu- 
 rated by the coal miners and coal mine operators, and now 
 in vogue in many of the coal producing states ; and 
 
 Whereas, Such a definition seems necessary to create a 
 fair and healthy public sentiment as a basis for a just pub- 
 lic opinion ; therefore, be it 
 
 Resolved, That the coal miners and the coal mine opera- 
 tors in joint convention assembled hereby declare: 
 
 1st. That this joint movement is founded, and that it is 
 to rest, upon correct business ideas, competitive equality, 
 and upon well recognized principles of justice. 
 
 2d. That, recognizing the contract relations existing 
 between employer and employe, we believe strikes and lock- 
 outs, disputes and friction, can be generally avoided by 
 meeting in joint convention and by entering into trade 
 agreements for specified periods of time. 
 
The Basis of Agreement 25 
 
 3d. That we recognize the sacredness and binding 
 nature of contracts and agreements thus entered into, and 
 are pledged in honor to keep inviolate such contracts and 
 agreements made by and between a voluntary organization, 
 having no standing in court, on the one hand, and a merely 
 collective body of business men doing business individually 
 or in corporate capacity on the other, each of the latter class 
 having visible and tangible assets subject to execution. 
 
 4. That we deprecate, discourage and condemn any 
 departure whatever from the letter or spirit of such trade 
 agreements or contracts, unless such departure be deemed 
 by all parties in interest for the welfare of the coal mining 
 industry and for the public good as well, and that such de- 
 parture is first definitely, specifically and mutually agreed 
 upon by all parties in interest. 
 
 5th. Such contracts or agreements having been entered 
 into, we consider ourselves severally and collectively bound 
 in honor to carry them out in good faith in letter and spirit, 
 and are so pledged to use our influence and authority to 
 enforce these contracts and agreements, the more so since 
 they rest in the main upon mutual confidence as their basis. 
 
 The resolutions as originally prepared by me contained a 
 sixth clause which was not adopted, but it is of interest as 
 showing one really great need in the operation of the pres- 
 ent system of joint trade agreements. This clause was as 
 follows : 
 
 Confidently believing the system of joint agreements 
 under a joint movement of employers and employes to 
 be a wise and safe system, if honestly and faithfully ad- 
 hered to, and to perpetuate and perfect that system, if pos- 
 sible, in the territory included in the interstate convention, 
 we, the coal miners and coal mine operators representing 
 the bituminous coal mining industry in this interstate con- 
 vention, declare ourselves ready to provide for the settle- 
 ment of disputes or differences arising under our interstate 
 agreements, by the formation of a board of referees to 
 which such differences may be carried, in an extremity, for 
 final adjustment. 
 
THE OPEN SHOP vs. 
 
 THE CLOSED SHOP 
 
 A feature of the Chautauqua at Streator, 111., Saturday, 
 July 8, 1905, was a discussion of the following question : 
 
 Resolved, That the "closed shop" is not for the best inter- 
 est of trade-unionism, and that it is un-American and sub- 
 versive of the principles of liberty on which this republic is 
 founded. 
 
 The affirmative of the proposition was taken by Herman 
 Justi, Commissioner of the Illinois Coal Operators' Asso- 
 ciation, and the negative by E. M. Davis, ex-president of 
 the Streator Trades Council. Mr. Justi's address was as 
 follows : 
 
 Mr. Justi's Address. 
 
 The leading members of labor organizations, are, as a 
 rule, the uncompromising champions of the "closed shop as 
 a principle of unionism," a principle which they insist shall 
 be recognized by employers of labor. There are, however, 
 a few labor leaders (shining exceptions) who will admit 
 that they see the folly of insisting upon the recognition of 
 the "closed shop" and the danger to the cause of organized 
 labor by persistently opposing the "open shop." There are 
 those among the employer class who favor what they call 
 the "open shop" because they are unalterably and uncom- 
 promisingly opposed to organized labor. These employers 
 want the "open shop" in order to make it a "closed shop" 
 against union labor. Here then we have two intensely hos- 
 tile forces. On the other hand there are those of the em- 
 ployer class who favor organized labor, but who, at the 
 same time, oppose the "closed shop as a principle of union- 
 ism," for the same reason that they oppose the "open shop" 
 as a means merely of destroying unionism. This class be- 
 lieves in ignoring both as "principles" and in adopting 
 whichever of them is found to be best in practice, or which- 
 ever promises the best practical results. Here then we have 
 
 *An address delivered at the Streator, 111., Chautauqua Saturday 
 afternoon, July 8, 1905. 
 
 26 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 27 
 
 a "third" or conservative, practical, business class. All of 
 these classes declare themselves to be the friends of labor; 
 and, in speaking of the "open" or "closed shop," profess to 
 speak as the laborer's unselfish friends. 
 
 The Laborer Who Will Succeed. 
 
 That the laborer is best off who does not wholly rely 
 upon either the employer or the labor leader, but depends in 
 the main upon his own strong arm, his superior skill, his 
 good common sense, and his unswerving determination to 
 succeed, is undeniable. Let the laborer have strong faith, 
 if he will, in the good intentions of the employer, and en- 
 tire confidence in the honesty and wisdom of the labor 
 leader if he must, but let him not rely too unreservedly 
 upon the disinterestedness of either. Employer and labor 
 leader, as a rule, as is perhaps natural, think of themselves 
 first. Only that laborer, therefore, will achieve real success 
 who relies chiefly upon his own skill and industry. Every- 
 thing else can be a helpful agency merely, but at the same 
 time an agency neither so trifling as to be ignored nor so 
 great as to be wholly depended upon. 
 
 I am beginning, in this way, my discussion of the un- 
 ion's "closed shop" because I wish to clear away at the start 
 some misconceptions or uncandid arguments. I want to 
 make my own position distinct. I want all who follow my 
 line of argument to scrutinize my position and weigh my 
 reasons and then reach their own conclusions, fairly decid- 
 ing whether my principles are unselfish and sound. It is 
 true that very many advocates of the "open shop" are 
 opposed to the "closed shop", not because they know or 
 desire what is best for all concerned, but only because they 
 think, or have been led to believe, that it will be best for 
 themselves. For precisely the same selfish reasons most 
 champions of the "closed shop" oppose the "open shop." 
 What is best for the common good of society is scarcely 
 ever considered by the noisy advocates of either party. 
 They view the whole matter from the standpoint of im- 
 mediate and personal gain. They rarely, if ever, view the 
 question from its economic side and yet only when it is 
 viewed from the economic side can we determine which is 
 for the general and permanent good; and only when the 
 community is duly considered need we expect the respect- 
 ive rights of the employer class and the employe class to 
 be accuratelv determined. 
 
28 Papers and Addresses 
 
 It must now be plain to my hearers that there are two 
 "closed shops" one that is "open" to union labor only, 
 and the other that is "open" to non-union labor only. 
 I am opposed to both; but, in the part assigned to me in 
 this discussion, I am expected to give my reasons for op- 
 posing the "union's closed shop." 
 
 The Union's Closed Shop. 
 
 This is easily done, but at the same time I wish to show 
 my hostility to the employer's "closed shop," as well as my 
 decided preference for the common sense, practical "open 
 shop" in which there is promise of a fair deal for every 
 man, woman and child regardless of whether rich or 
 poor, union or non-union, native or foreign-born, white 
 or black. Both "closed shop" systems as labor employing 
 agencies, are almost certain to favor monopoly and to prac- 
 tice discrimination and cruelty. And yet an emergency 
 may arise when the "employer's closed shop" is the only 
 alternative for the employer. Such an emergency arises 
 when the employer is rudely ordered to employ only union 
 men. On the other hand, it may also happen that the 
 "union's closed shop" has proved itself desirable for both 
 employer and laborer, such being the case when the em- 
 ployer is properly consulted, his rights respected and his 
 interests well subserved. 
 
 The terms "open shop" and "closed shop," as com- 
 monly employed, it will be seen are therefore confusing, 
 and this confusion arises, as I have endeavored to show, 
 out of a disposition or determination on the one side to 
 make the "closed shop" a "principle of unionism," and on 
 the other side to make the "open shop" a refuge and bul- 
 wark for non-unionism. Here is where that part of the 
 employer class which is favorable to organized labor parts 
 company with both, and declares itself in favor of the 
 common sense, fair for all, genuine "open shop" already 
 described. 
 
 No man with proper regard for the truth, will deny 
 that the employer class is often denied the rights guaran- 
 teed to it under the laws of the land by certain practices of 
 labor organizations. Though a patient and long suffering 
 people, Americans will ultimately turn upon and crush 
 their oppressors, no matter whether their oppressors hap- 
 pen to be labor tyrants or monopolistic monsters. Let us 
 admit all that is fair, in order that labor may organize not 
 
THE 
 
 I UNIVERSIT 
 
 : s> . . Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 29 
 
 only to prevent a reduction in wages to the starvation point, 
 but to advance them to the highest point that commercial 
 conditions will permit ; to secure reasonable hours of labor ; 
 to obtain the best possible conditions under which the 
 laborer is to work; and to have laws enacted to increase 
 the comforts and protect the life and health of the worker. 
 But this is as far as we should go, and we should prevent by 
 all honorable means every interference with individual rights 
 and liberties of the citizen; undue influence in securing 
 unfair legislation ; methods and systems that ignore econ- 
 omic laws; and the practice of intimidation and force. In 
 fact it should not be necessary for any one save the union 
 itself to prevent this, for to continue such practices con- 
 stitutes in itself the greatest danger to the perpetuation of 
 decent, respectable organized labor. 
 
 For despite the wish and the endeavor of the unions to 
 have it otherwise, at times, we must not overlook the in- 
 herent and natural right of individual liberty and the 
 right of freedom to contract, both on the part of the em- 
 ployer and the employe, whether that employe be union or 
 non-union. Wherever there is absolute freedom of con- 
 tract and healthy competition, there is greater progress 
 made in skill and in economy than where conditions of la- 
 bor and time of labor are always to be fixed by a union 
 that looks out mainly for the comfort of its own members 
 and that shares no part of the losses which may result to 
 the individual employer. Often it is the case that labor 
 leaders, not being well trained and far-seeing men, do not 
 give sufficient consideration to the danger that if they make 
 labor too expensive and too unprogressive, we shall fail 
 to keep up with freer labor in other countries. The loss to 
 our whole country on this account, while falling upon all 
 of us alike, may not be anticipated and thus may not be 
 provided against until too late. 
 
 The "closed shop" would not be an issue if the em- 
 plovers as a class and the laborers as a class were equally 
 well organized and when both the employer and employe 
 classes are equally well organized, the "closed shop" will 
 often be preferred. Until this is the case, however, the 
 "closed shop," if declared to be the only system under 
 which the employer class is to recognize the emplove class 
 will violate all economic laws and the interest of the gen- 
 eral public will not be subserved. And yet the "open shop" 
 of the employer will be successfully opposed by the unionist 
 
30 Papers and Addresses 
 
 just as long as the employer class is not organized, or so 
 long as it is only half organized. 
 
 In the class for which I speak, there is no great hos- 
 tility to the "closed shop" as such, and provided the condi- 
 tions are fair and just, but the proper conditions do not 
 now exist. The fact that they do not exist is made plain 
 by the demand of labor leaders that the "closed shop" be 
 recognized as a "principle of unionism." The proper con- 
 ditions, let me say, will never exist until the organization 
 of the two great interests to this contest are equal in 
 strength and thus able to command each other's fear and 
 respect. Then the terrors of the union's "closed shop" 
 and the employer's "closed shop" will melt away, because 
 then neither can unduly impose upon the other, 
 
 An Economic Question Purely. 
 
 The artificial but ever present barriers built up through 
 centuries of industrial injustice and conflict removed, the 
 question of an "open shop" or a "closed shop" should be a 
 simple one indeed and altogether easy enough to answer 
 just as simple, it would seem as any other plain business 
 proposition, for the question itself is a purely economic 
 one and affects alike every individual and class in the com- 
 munity. 
 
 Failing to deal with it as an economic question, we 
 oppose natural laws, and natural laws cannot be disregard- 
 ed even by labor unions or the citizens' alliances. As mem- 
 bers of the same heterogeneous society, we cannot injure 
 a part of it by a false economic step without injuriously 
 affecting the rest. Economic laws and natural laws must 
 be obeyed. 
 
 Any unnatural advantage obtained by capital at the ex- 
 pense of labor affects both of them, and it also affects the 
 community, since it is upon the earnings of labor that busi- 
 ness activity and general prosperity depend. Equally so 
 any unnatural advantage obtained by labor at the expense 
 of the employer will injuriously affect all of us. This 
 should be plain to see, for thus competitive or commercial 
 conditions are disturbed and business activity halts; be- 
 cause then we are no longer tempting the buyers of the 
 world with our superior goods and advantageous prices. 
 When we no longer tempt the watchful, wide-awake buyer, 
 we are certain to "clip the wings of commerce" and close 
 to ourselves the markets of the world. Then we are cer- 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 31 
 
 tain to have a "closed market" as the price of a "closed 
 shop." 
 
 Our Commercial Rivals. 
 
 The United States no longer stands alone as the one 
 wide-awake industrial nation. Its rivals in the past two 
 decades have multiplied. Germany by imitating American 
 methods and American wares has become a rival we must 
 dread. England, which was long the commercial mistress 
 of the world is being aroused by German advancement. 
 The Boer war in South Africa has opened to the world 
 the opportunities presented for the adventurous business 
 man. Japan's recent triumphs reveal to us the possibilities 
 of that wonderful people. Depend upon it, whatever war 
 indemnity Russia pays to Japan will be applied in a man- 
 ner that is most certain to insure Japan's industrial great- 
 ness. Russia's humiliation and defeat, and her loss in 
 position as one of the ranking powers of the world 
 will cause a complete revolution in the methods of that 
 great empire and the very necessities of the situation 
 will compel an enlightened and aggressive course. Thus 
 we shall soon find ourselves confronted with commercial 
 rivals that are not to be despised, and the high position we 
 now occupy can remain secure so long only as we observe 
 correct economic laws and conditions, and continue to 
 prove to the world the superiority of our labor both in point 
 of industry and skill. 
 
 There is, therefore, only one reasonable, logical posi- 
 tion that we can occupy; there is only one correct conclu- 
 sion that we can reach, and that is that the employer shall 
 choose his employes only on business grounds, employ only 
 union men, or only non-union men, or some of both, as the 
 needs and opportunities of his work may determine. 
 
 To determine whom he will employ he shall ask himself 
 and the only question a broad-minded, able business man 
 can fairly ask himself, is which will give the best work 
 and the maximum of work for the highest wages which 
 trade or competitive conditions will permit him to pay? 
 That seems to me rational it is certainly common sense 
 it is justice to all concerned. It does seem the practical 
 view because the buyer does not care whether the goods 
 he buys are union or non-union made; or whether they 
 are made in an "open" or a "closed shop." 
 
32 Papers and Addresses 
 
 What the Public Demands. 
 
 What the public wants and what the public is ultimately 
 going to have is the best quality of goods at the lowest 
 prices. It does not even stop to ask if the goods it buys 
 yield a profit to the employer or fair wages to the worker. 
 It does not care much and its indifference is not surpris- 
 ing, for its opinion is never consulted. 
 
 The public, unfortunately, is only considered when its 
 sympathy and influences seem necessary to the cause of 
 one side or the other of some bitter industrial conflict. 
 If there were due consideration for the rights of the pub- 
 lic and in the term public there is embraced, of course, 
 the individual members of the employer and employe 
 classes less would be heard of wars and rumors of wars 
 in the industrial world. 
 
 It should be a very simple matter, as already observed, 
 to decide at the proper time, whether it shall be an "open" 
 or a "closed shop," for it can very easily be either, under 
 proper conditions, since the public is ready to give its ad- 
 herence to whichever produces the best goods on the most 
 equitable terms. 
 
 It does not, as I have said, make the slightest difference 
 to the public whether it is buying union or non-union 
 goods goods made in an "open" or a "closed shop" so 
 long as the public is getting the best goods for the least 
 money; and this is not possible under a false economic 
 system. The public hates monopoly however obtained 
 whether by a corner on labor or on the products of labor 
 unless it has a share in it. 
 
 This fair demand of the public should entail no hard- 
 ship upon the union if the many claims of the union can be 
 supported by the facts and fair argument. 
 
 The Closed Shop Argument. 
 
 The advocates of the "union's closed shop" for ex- 
 ample, present among other reasons for its adoption as a 
 system of employment and its recognition as a "principle 
 of unionism," the claim that the union embraces the most 
 skilled workmen. 
 
 These advocates also insist that they want the "union's 
 closed shop" because they can carry out their agreements. 
 
 "Recognize," they say, "as a system of employment and 
 as a principle of unionism the 'closed shop,' and conditions 
 will be ideal." 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 33 
 
 If these contentions are true to whom would the benefits 
 most certainly and readily inure? 
 
 That man is either too stupid to be taken seriously, or 
 too untruthful to be respected who would undertake to 
 say that the employer is not the first to be pleased and 
 benefited by a system that will certainly give him the most 
 skilled labor the thoroughly honest laborer who respects 
 his contractual relations, and who ever assures him of ideal 
 conditions. 
 
 We are told that the employer is supremely selfish, that 
 he wants everything and the best of everything he can get ; 
 that he thinks of himself first, last and all the time. Ad- 
 mitting this to be so, if the claim for unionism is true, 
 would he not get everything he could desire? It is the 
 limit of absurdity to make such a claim for unionism, and 
 it is the greatest injury to the cause of organized labor it- 
 self to thus offend a great people's fair intelligence. Such 
 a course not only keeps the opponents of unionism from 
 recognizing it; it discourages and disgusts its best friends 
 among the employer class and in the community at large. 
 
 Has Labor a Fair Chance? 
 
 Laborers are often heard to say that they do not have 
 a fair chance. Individual laborers in great aggregations 
 do not have a fair chance, we must admit, but it cannot be 
 truthfully said that laborers belonging to a powerful union 
 have not an equal chance with non-union laborers and they 
 have a better chance than the employer class to get an im- 
 partial hearing to win the public to its side. There was a 
 time when great prejudice existed against the unions, and 
 there is still in some quarters great prejudice against them, 
 but generally speaking prejudice against the unions exist 
 only where it is based upon knowledge possessed of certain 
 methods and practices countenanced by labor organiza- 
 tions, but by nobody else. 
 
 There was a time when organized labor had no alterna- 
 tive, possibly, and it was therefore compelled to resort to 
 drastic measures to achieve success. It was then some- 
 thing strange and to be feared. It had few friends among 
 the wealthy or among the influential of our land and there- 
 fore it had to fight its way to recognition ; it had to fight 
 not only for success, but for its life; and just what methods 
 it employed need not be told. 
 
 In recent years, though, it has had its friends, some of 
 
34 Papers and Addresses 
 
 them friends from conviction and others from interest; 
 and while we can in a measure forgive the means by which 
 organized labor at first won recognition, we cannot con- 
 tinue to condone such a course when such a course is no 
 longer necessary. * It is not only not necessary, but such a 
 system can no longer win, because force has invited resist- 
 ance resistance bitter and determined from a foe that is 
 rapidly becoming formidable, almost irresistible. 
 
 The American people, it may be depended upon, will 
 not long submit to a system of force. They will recognize 
 every reasonable right of every class in the community and 
 of every individual ; they may even go too far in their de- 
 sire to be generous, but they will be found as fierce in 
 their enmity as they were previously helpful and forgiving 
 in their friendship, if too deeply offended and too grossly 
 outraged. 
 
 Now organized labor need ask favors from no one, for 
 the reason that it is already recognized by the wealthy 
 class and by the influential men and women of the land. It 
 can win the respect of all Americans ; but it can lose every- 
 thing by resorting to barbaric warfare. Its leaders, as we 
 well know, can sit down at table with the President of the 
 United States or they can appear upon the same platform 
 or at the same banquet board with senators and railway 
 presidents, with merchant princes and captains of industry, 
 with noted preachers and distinguished prelates ; not to be 
 embarrassed by any criticism of their methods, but on the 
 contrary to hear their praises sounded and their organ- 
 ization commended. Once they were not heard, now we 
 gladly listen; for the organization of labor to-day is very 
 strong and it has well performed great things. If, there- 
 fore, it cannot win in a fair field where it has every ad- 
 vantage without resorting to trickery or brutality, it has 
 no right to win at all and the American people, jealous of 
 their good name, will see to it that it does not win. 
 
 It is because of the great good it has done to the labor- 
 ing class and because of the really great benefit it has con- 
 ferred upon the employer class, though the latter may be 
 unwilling to admit it that it has the right to a fair chance. 
 Indeed it has a fair chance, and in many respects it has a 
 better chance to secure the good opinion and the good will 
 and support of the public than has the employer class. It 
 cannot be denied that the employers of labor, be they ever 
 so honest, ever so devoted to the interests of their employes, 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 35 
 
 ever so public spirited, ever so ready to make personal sac- 
 rifices, ever so faithful and devoted and useful to their 
 country, are nevertheless, because of their numerical in- 
 feriority, too often slighted or ignored, while the labor 
 leaders representing great masses of men are publicly 
 courted and extravagantly praised by men and women 
 powerful in making public sentiment and influencing legis- 
 lation in favor of labor. 
 
 Mr. Moffat's Position. 
 
 But upon what grounds does organized labor base its 
 claim to a "closed shop?" Let us consider an argument in 
 favor of the union's "closed shop" by a well known labor 
 leader. In an address delivered at the National Civic Fed- 
 eration Conference, October 19, 1903, Mr. Edward A. 
 Moffat, Editor of the Bricklayers' and Masons' Journal, 
 said: "I would remind you that in the 'union shop' the 
 employer's selection o men is practically unlimited. He 
 may choose from the hundreds of thousands of men in the 
 particular trade union, and, moreover, he has always the 
 right to hire and discharge. Any attempt to interfere with 
 this right of the employer is contrary to the policy of trade 
 unionism." 
 
 This may be the policy of trade unionism but it is surely 
 not the practice. Contracts entered into between labor or- 
 ganizations and certain industries may specify that the 
 right to hire and discharge is in no sense to be restricted, 
 but it is the almost common practice of trade unions to re- 
 strict this right. 
 
 A contract, for example, entered into between the Unit- 
 ed Mine Workers of Illinois, and the Illinois Coal Opera- 
 tors' Association, gives to the operator the unrestricted 
 right to hire and discharge, but what are the facts? If dis- 
 charged, the agreement gives the discharged man the right 
 to file a grievance ; and, more than once, mines have been 
 thrown into idleness in violation of the agreement and they 
 were kept closed until the discharged man was reinstated. 
 
 There is a further restriction upon the employer's right 
 to hire and discharge. If the employer, for example, has 
 not in his employ as many workers as he desires or needs f 
 he makes the fact known. Workers arrive and they are 
 ready to join the union, even if not already members, and 
 are anxious to comply with the laws of the union as to pay- 
 
36 Papers and Addresses 
 
 ment of initiation fee and dues. The local union, however, 
 may decide to reject them and to take the position that the 
 employer has not the right to compel them to admit men 
 to their local organization. And, what is still more remark- 
 able, the local union may declare that neither the State 
 organization nor the National organization has that right. 
 It is even more remarkable that the State and National 
 organizations may acknowledge themselves powerless. 
 Need it be told how such a condition affects the industries 
 of the country? The number of the workers may thus be 
 reduced so that the employer has not even a choice among 
 union men, and with the result that the union through its 
 local organizations has it in its power, which it exercises, 
 to limit the employer's right to hire and thus it creates a 
 monopoly in the labor market. 
 
 Mr. Moffat also undertakes to combat the statement 
 made by employers, that all employes are brought prac- 
 tically to the same level, and he meets that statement of the 
 employers with this declaration: "The employer is free 
 in the premises to do justice to the superior workman." 
 
 Theory Not Always Practice. 
 
 This is an assumption merely. The employer is not 
 permitted to pay a union man according to his merits even, 
 for in the event he chooses a really superior workman and 
 gives him a maximum wage a wage to which he believes 
 this workman entitled because he performs more work and 
 better work, the union, so soon as it makes the discovery, 
 claims that all men shall have an equal wage. If here and 
 there the employer, anxious to get the maximum of work, 
 undertakes to pay a higher wage than the general run of 
 laborers receive, thereupon a demand is made that the 
 wages of all workers must be raised to the maximum 
 which had been paid to the superior workman, and if, per- 
 chance, their wages are not promptly raised to the maxi- 
 mum, trouble is almost certain to ensue. Not infrequently 
 the local committee serves notice on the superior workman 
 that he cannot earn higher wages unless his brother work- 
 men earn the higher wages also, and he is told that he is 
 standing in the light of his brother workmen if he per- 
 forms more work than they perform. It may be a principle 
 of unionism to encourage good workmen, but the practice 
 of the union too often discourages them. 
 
 Mr. Moffat says also that "there is no ground for the 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 37 
 
 charge that the trade unions want not only wages but 
 profits as well." 
 
 As to which is the better and truer exponent of union 
 doctrine I do not propose to say, but this statement of Mr. 
 Moffat is flatly contradicted by Mr. John Mitchell, Presi- 
 dent of the United Mine Workers of America. 
 
 Both in the Joint Interstate and in the Illinois Joint State 
 Conventions of Mine Workers and coal mine operators, Mr. 
 Mitchell has made the statement substantially as follows : 
 
 "We are willing to admit that the wages in a certain 
 mining district are good are satisfactory as wages we 
 are willing to admit that they are much higher than they 
 are in other districts, but it is not a question of wages. It 
 is a question of getting a larger share of the profits which 
 coal operators are earning." 
 
 Ground for Opposing the Closed Shop. 
 
 Now I am opposed to the "closed shop" principle. I 
 believe now, as I have always believed, in the organization 
 of labor particularly in the organization of common labor. 
 Common labor, in my opinion, can get its approximate 
 rights in no other way, and I therefore, as a rule, have lit- 
 tle sympathy for the ordinary laborer who refuses to join 
 the union. 
 
 At the same time it is his right to remain out of the 
 union if he desires to do so, and he may have, so far as we 
 know, some good and sufficient reason to justify his course. 
 Generally, though, the man who remains out of the union 
 does not remain out merely because he is the better man or 
 better workman. If he is, such a workman ought to join 
 the union in order to bring the average workman up to a 
 higher standard. That is a duty every laborer owes to 
 himself and to his fellow workmen. 
 
 I make this statement in favor of labor thus emphatic, 
 and yet I well know that there are thousands and tens of 
 thousands of workmen in the union who would be glad to 
 get out of it if they could, not because they are opposed 
 to healthy union principles, but because they are opposed to 
 union practices. For this same reason primarily some la- 
 borers, no doubt, refuse to enter the union. 
 
 Though the abstract principles of the union are gener- 
 ally good, yet the principles of the union are one thing, and 
 the practices of the union are quite another thing. 
 
 To see disorganized and demoralized common labor 
 
38 Papers and Addresses 
 
 made a homogeneous whole in which every man really sup- 
 ports what it is easy to see should be the true principles of 
 united labor, ever ready to help punish lawlessness and to 
 reward virtue and excellence is "a consummation devoutly 
 to be wished." Such a union will be a blessing, indeed, 
 and not until the labor union relies only upon the virtue 
 and skill of the individuals composing the union, need a 
 recognition of the "closed shop" as a principle of unionism 
 be expected. When worth shall be the test, then the ques- 
 tion of an "open" or a "closed shop" will cease to be a 
 question over which there need be any serious controversy. 
 
 I oppose the "union's closed shop" because of the claim 
 made that the "closed shop" shall be recognized as a "prin- 
 ciple" for which labor organizations contend. While I 
 oppose the "closed shop" as a principle, I freely admit that 
 in practice the "closed shop" may prove wise and beneficent 
 and as a system may prove to be one good enough to be 
 adopted where the parties to the contract freely agree to it 
 after it is shown to be beneficent. 
 
 The experience of the past five years has clearly demon- 
 strated to organized labor's best friends that organized 
 labor has not earned the right to dictate terms for the em- 
 ployment of labor ; nor has it shown itself a safe agent into 
 whose hands can be entrusted the employment or control of 
 labor. 
 
 Has it not used its tremendous power to compel instead 
 of to convince? Has it not generally opposed everybody 
 and everything that has refused to grant its every wish? 
 
 Has it not been particularly hostile and bitterly so 
 to our federal courts and to the regular army, and have 
 not many of its radical members openly condemned its 
 members who joined the State Guard? 
 
 In the estimation of the average American nothing else 
 has injured organized labor so much as this bitter hostility 
 to our highest courts and our trusted army. Innocent of 
 wrong, why do labor leaders fear these agencies establish- 
 ed for our safety? 
 
 The American people believe that if innocent, neither 
 the federal courts, nor the federal army need be feared. 
 
 Labor organizations if in the right will find American 
 institutions the guardians of their safety and the promoters 
 of their cause. But some one has well said that, "It is 
 fundamental that those seeking redress in law must come 
 with clean hands." Labor organizations, it cannot be de- 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 39 
 
 nied, have too often come into court with unclean hands. 
 
 The same writer has said, and in saying it he has echoed 
 the sentiment of the conservative element of American citi- 
 zens "that the country is rightly of the opinion that the 
 aggressions of capital can far better be tolerated than the 
 barbaric criminality of which labor organizations have 
 been guilty." 
 
 It should be easy to see why this is so, for the aggres- 
 sions of capital are committed by the few, and their inter- 
 ests often conflict, while the barbaric criminality of labor 
 organizations is traceable to the acts of the many. In a 
 free government, like ours, when the people have once been 
 awakened to their danger, it is comparatively easy to 
 thwart the criminality or tyranny of the rich, their numbers 
 being small and their interests conflicting. But the same is 
 not true of the labor organizations, since labor has a com- 
 mon interest. Then too public sympathy is generally on 
 the side of the laboring classes. 
 
 The Advantages of Organized Labor. 
 
 If it is the purpose and determination of organized 
 labor to prove itself a wise trading body asking justice 
 only at the hands "of the employer class, it need not insist 
 upon a "closed shop." A tremendous advantage over its 
 hated foe unorganized labor, it already enjoys, and it will 
 continue to enjoy this advantage provided its organization 
 is worth anything at all. If it is not worth anything, shall 
 it obtain something to which it is not entitled, by force? 
 If it cannot convince selfish employers of the superiority 
 of its members as workmen, when such employers are 
 eagerly seeking such workmen, why consider its claims to 
 a monopoly of labor? It is certain that the "closed shop" 
 will give the unions such a monopoly. 
 
 Once the union has secured its peculiar form of "closed 
 shop" a "closed shop" obtained by force, it will be only 
 a question of time when, by intimidation, the union will 
 decree that its members shall belong to the same lodge, 
 practice the same form of religion, and join the same 
 school of politics. That is not what the average American 
 working man wants, but that is what he will get when the 
 union's "closed shop" achieves its universal triumph. It 
 will make labor scarce wherever it can, it will make the 
 conditions of the employer well nigh intolerable; and it 
 will make the wages of labor so high and the hours of labor 
 
4O Papers and Addresses 
 
 so short that the American producer will no longer be able 
 to successfully compete for trade in the markets of the 
 world. 
 
 The "closed shop" in the sense that it is demanded as a 
 right of organized labor and to be recognized as a principle 
 of unionism, must be brought face to face with the decision 
 of the courts, with the practice of our national government, 
 with the opinion of the President of the United States, with 
 the decision of the Anthracite Strike Commission, and with 
 the views expressed by leading labor leaders. Here is the 
 verdict : 
 
 Verdict of Court and Government. 
 
 The Supreme Courts of New York and of Pennsylvania 
 have declared the "closed shop" to be illegal. 
 
 The Appellate Court of Illinois has held it to be a crim- 
 inal conspiracy. 
 
 The government of the United States has sometimes 
 recognized the "closed shop" in practice but has repudiated 
 it in principle. In fact the government of the United States 
 takes practically the fair, common sense position of the fair 
 and high-minded class of employers. In other words, the 
 government of the -United States has never required its 
 employes to be either union or non-union men, leaving that 
 question to them individually. The only legal test it could 
 apply to applicants for positions would be the civil service 
 examination. The government has never undertaken to 
 discharge a man because he was a non-union man or be- 
 cause he had violated some union rule. The government 
 has always taken the position that the only right it had 
 to discharge him under the law was because his work was 
 unsatisfactory, or because he had violated some govern- 
 ment rule. 
 
 The President of the United States, in the celebrated 
 Miller case, not only stated the government's view on the 
 subject of the "closed shop" and his own view, but he pre- 
 sented the view of ninety-five per cent of the thoughtful, 
 intelligent, patriotic, fair-minded American citizens. He 
 denied to no man the right to work and earn his living 
 whether he was union or non-union, Protestant or Cath- 
 olic, Jew or Gentile, black or white. 
 
 The Anthracite Strike Commission which was appoint- 
 ed as a result of the urgent request of organized labor, and 
 whose decision was generally commended by labor leaders, 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 41 
 
 has well said that ' 'common sense and common law alike 
 denounce the conduct of those who interfere with this 
 fundamental right of the citizen." "The assertion of the 
 right seems trite and commonplace, but that land is blessed 
 where the maxims of liberty are commonplaces." 
 
 This same decision says: "that the right to remain at 
 work where others have ceased to work, or engage anew 
 in work which others have abandoned, is part of the per- 
 sonal liberty of a citizen that can never be surrendered, and 
 every infringement thereof merits and should receive the 
 stern denouncement of the law. * * * Our language 
 is the language of a free people, and fails to furnish any 
 form of speech by which the right of a citizen to work 
 when he pleases, for whom he pleases, and on what terms 
 he pleases, can be successfully denied." 
 
 What W. D. Mahon Says. 
 
 Let me direct attention briefly to what Mr. W. D. Ma- 
 hon, President of the Railway Employes' Amalgamated 
 Association of America, has said on the subject : 
 
 "The 'open shop' is absolutely the worst issue that a 
 union can take up if it wants to make a successful fight. 
 The sympathy of the public will always be with the other 
 fellow on that issue. * * * Within the past three 
 months we have made arrangements with nine street rail- 
 way companies in various cities. I told the employers we 
 would not go into that matter, as we recognized their right 
 to employ any one they saw fit, regardless of whether they 
 were members of our organization or not." 
 
 Here is what resulted from this same, practical, hon- 
 orable course. 
 
 "At the same time, out of nine agreements five are 
 strictly 'closed shop' contracts. The other four practically 
 amount to the same thing, as all the men are in our union 
 anyway. We could have had a fight in every one of the 
 nine cities over the issue if we had wanted to take it up." 
 
 There is much more that Mr. Mahon has said on the 
 subject but what I have quoted should suffice. 
 
 If the parties to an agreement desire the "closed shop" 
 or the "open shop," and the public interest is subserved bv 
 the adoption of one or the other, it should be a matter of 
 mutual agreement only and never a matter of force. 
 
 In view of these clear and definite expressions of opin- 
 ion, let me ask, can the cause of genuine trade unionism be 
 
42 Papers and Addresses 
 
 advanced by insisting upon the recognition of the "closed 
 shop" as a "principle of unionism?" Can organized labor 
 obtain the recognition of the ''closed shop" as a "principle 
 of unionism" save by force, and, if obtained by force, in 
 defiance of the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the 
 American people, will it not involve us in a conflict that 
 cannot end until unionism has been destroyed ? 
 
 The Object of the Leaders. 
 
 The object of those labor leaders who insist upon the 
 recognition of the "closed shop" as a "principle of union- 
 ism" is not, I regret to say, to secure justice for labor or to 
 do justice to the employer class. It is rather to obtain 
 a power that will enable the union to obtain not only that to 
 which in fairness it is entitled, but to obtain just what it 
 wants, whether it is its right or not. 
 
 I know it will be said by the advocates of the "closed 
 shop" "Well, capital did this, and capital did that, and 
 why should not we have our turn?" 
 
 Two wrongs will never make a right, and, besides, I 
 am not speaking for capital, but for myself as an American 
 citizen. I am also speaking for that large army of Ameri- 
 can citizens generally known as the middle class a class 
 that must work from day to day, that must employ mind or 
 muscle, or both, to live a class that has no other source of 
 income, that has not the dividends paid upon capital or the 
 strike benefits paid to discontented and striking workers, 
 and that must therefore work continuously. 
 
 I belong to that large part of the community that pays 
 the taxes, that pays interest to the capital class, that gives 
 to the poor what the poor imagine they are getting from 
 the rich ; that large class that gives out of all proportion to 
 what the rich give and upon whom the community makes 
 great demands and who out of love for their country pay 
 its debts and fights its battles! 
 
 The narrow and radical unionists whom I have been 
 describing are purely selfish, and at times illogical, because 
 they ask a "closed shop" and yet they "open" their union 
 to men who work for firms and companies that remain out 
 of all associations that recognize and deal with organized 
 labor deliberately and out of self-interest placing a club 
 of destruction in their hands to destroy the only practical, 
 helpful friends of organized labor. 
 
 Organized labor must declare itself and it must show 
 
Open Shop vs. Closed Shop 43 
 
 just exactly where it stands before it has a right even to 
 ask the recognition of the "closed shop" as a "principle of 
 unionism." 
 
 It must say whether it is striving only for fair wages, 
 for sane and healthy conditions of labor, and for kind and 
 humane treatment at the hands of the employer, all these 
 to be provided for under a system of trade agreements, or 
 whether it means to claim, as many unionists have claimed, 
 that it is entitled to a share of the profits, the right to strike 
 in sympathy with other labor organizations, the right of 
 interference in the management of industrial plants, the 
 right not only to agitate in the very shadow of the industry 
 where men work, but to dictate the terms upon which men 
 shall work in and about the industrial plants where they 
 are employed, and generally and at all times to act as un- 
 compromising enemies of the employer class. 
 
 What Is the Union's Aim? 
 
 In other words: Does the union intend to encourage 
 and preserve the long-established relations between master 
 and man, to recognize the right to hire and discharge 
 freely, to recognize the right of the employer to conduct his 
 ousiness as seems best for all concerned? 
 
 Or does it intend to organize a political party having 
 for its real object the destruction of existing conditions and 
 systems ? 
 
 It should be definitely understood that trade unionists 
 are not all of one mind and are not all inspired by equally 
 high motives. It numbers in its ranks many who are not 
 satisfied with high wages and the best conditions possible, 
 but a class that wants a share of the profits and its own 
 way of determining what these profits are and that without 
 giving any guaranty whatever of its ability or desire to pay 
 a share of the losses when losses are sustained. This class 
 wants a system of shorter hours and higher wages ; it wants 
 increased authority and diminished responsibility; it wants 
 to dictate the terms and conditions to the employers and to 
 insist upon issuing orders, edicts and ultimatums to its 
 heart's content. 
 
 The American people, regardless of all classes are just 
 as much interested in a candid answer and in a frank dec- 
 laration from the accredited leaders of organized labor as 
 the employer class is interested in such an answer. For, 
 after all, American society is made up of employers and 
 
44 Papers and Addresses 
 
 employes, and when the term the public is used it refers to 
 all our citizens, and when the term public opinion is used we 
 mean the fixed views of the overwhelming majority of the 
 citizens' of the land. 
 
 In brief, the American people have a common interest 
 in preserving their high place among the nations of the 
 earth, and this high place can be successfully held in the 
 face of the vigorous and intelligent rivalry of other nations 
 in no other way than by a wise and patriotic observance of 
 all laws economic, natural and political, and by all classes 
 of people in the community determinedly working in har- 
 many for the prosperity, honor and glory of the American 
 commonwealth. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF CAPITAL 
 
 The public mind seems confused as to the proper dis- 
 tinction to be drawn between what is called "consolidated 
 capital" and what is termed "organized capital." In fact, 
 that there is any difference is generally denied. This is not 
 strange. And yet, while capital is consolidated for every 
 other purpose than to deal with the problem of labor, it 
 ought to be organized with the purpose that the problem of 
 labor may become its main, if not its sole, concern. This 
 statement is made in the face of the charge that capital has 
 consolidated with the end in view of overawing labor in 
 order to make it accept terms which capital believes to be 
 fair, and also of the graver charge that consolidated capital 
 designs to make itself so powerful that it can oppress labor, 
 and so force it to accept terms that are manifestly unfair. If 
 it were true that capital really had such a motive in con- 
 solidating, which few thoughtful men seriously believe, the 
 futility of such a plan has certainly been demonstrated each 
 time that consolidated capital and organized labor have 
 come in conflict. What the country wants, what it demands, 
 what it must have, is immunity from the frequent strikes 
 and lockouts that disturb, at short intervals and for long 
 periods of time, our national serenity. Whatever can miti- 
 gate this evil will be gratefully accepted by a long-suffering 
 people ; and that an eminently practical people like ours has 
 provided all kinds of safeguards against loss from fire and 
 not from strikes is beyond comprehension. 
 
 Organized Labor Assumes the Responsibility. 
 
 Organized labor assumes the responsibility for bringing 
 on a conflict with capital. It makes demands which capital 
 refuses. Idleness follows, then follow concessions, after 
 which a truce is signed and work resumed; and such con- 
 cessions are usually made, not because they are just either 
 to capital or to labor, but simply to enable capital to resume 
 work. It is a truce only, not a treaty of peace ; and after a 
 short interval hostilities are again resumed. All this is natu- 
 
 *Reprinted by permission of the Century Company, New York, 
 from the Century Magazine of February, 1903. 
 
 45 
 
46 Papers and Addresses 
 
 ral, and hence strikes and lockouts will continue to occur 
 until organized labor is confronted by organized capital 
 not with hostile intent, but to treat on the subject of the 
 wages and the conditions of labor in a friendly spirit and on 
 an equitable business basis. This stage in industrial evolu- 
 tion once reached, the masses will soon have been educated 
 properly to discriminate between consolidated capital and 
 organized capital, and then, too, the public will have lost its 
 dread of consolidated capital, because, having become or- 
 ganized, it will have become educated to practical, wise and 
 humane methods, and quite able to deal with labor, whether 
 organized or not. 
 
 The very same process that has transformed consolidated 
 capital will eliminate what is obnoxious to the country and 
 hurtful to our commerce in trade unionism, and so make it 
 in practice what it is now largely only in theory. Human 
 nature has not changed since capital could command labor 
 at its will because labor was then not organized. At pres- 
 ent organized labor, which is less than ten per cent of all 
 the labor of the country, has reversed the situation ; and it 
 now not only to a degree dictates terms to capital, and sets 
 at defiance the ninety per cent of labor not organized, but it 
 has the great political parties bidding for its favor, and of 
 late the churches, through sympathy, and with perhaps only 
 a superficial knowledge of the points at issue, have generally 
 taken its side. The organization of capital in every great 
 industry for the purpose of dealing exclusively with ques- 
 tions of labor becomes, therefore, a necessity, because noth- 
 ing else, not even the most stringent laws, can so materially 
 help to raise labor unions to a higher and a more efficient 
 level, and no other known force is strong enough to com- 
 pel the masses to take a rational, businesslike view of the 
 relations of labor to capital. Not even the wisest or the 
 most powerful labor leaders can so well restrain the in- 
 satiable hunger of victorious labor as this businesslike, 
 peace-conserving force. 
 
 Successive Conflicts Should Emphasize the Difference. 
 
 Each successive conflict between capital and labor should 
 make ever plainer to all observing persons this wide differ- 
 ence between consolidated and organized capital, illustrat- 
 ing, at the same time, the tremendous advantage enjoyed 
 by those who engage in organized attack over those who 
 are summoned to participate in unorganized resistance. The 
 
The Organisation of Capital 47 
 
 thousands of millions of wealth controlled by the capital 
 class has generally been considered in itself a bulwark 
 against any encroachments upon its domain, but the influ- 
 ence and power of organized labor have clearly demon- 
 strated the fallacy of such a claim. 
 
 The reason that these vast millions belonging to the 
 capital class are of no particular value in industrial warfare 
 is that they are not available, and that therefore they might 
 as well be units as millions. Not so with the merely paltry 
 thousands or tens of thousands of dollars belonging to 
 organized labor, every dollar of which is available at any 
 time and for any cause deemed sufficient by its leaders, 
 every dollar of which is willingly sacrificed to a cause which 
 the laborer has at heart. 
 
 It is this which gives to organized labor, with an insig- 
 nificant bank balance to its credit, so tremendous an advan- 
 tage over unorganized capital with its countless millions, 
 to every dollar of which there is a string attached. 
 
 But the unavailability of this wealth is, after all, not 
 the only or the weakest point in capital's armor. The true 
 reason for the failure of capital in its conflicts with labor 
 is that capital has always refused, in such an emergency, to 
 act as a unit, and hence it has paid the awful penalty. 
 
 After all, capital and labor, if properly organized, will 
 be virtually equal in influence and power, and all the money 
 necessary for either is just so much as is found adequate 
 to provide effective organization for both. 
 
 How Issues Are to Be Determined. 
 
 The issues between capital and labor are to be deter- 
 mined, not by the force of numbers on the side of labor, or 
 by the weight of gold upon the side of capital, but by the 
 natural laws which control in the industrial world. In the 
 very nature of things they move in parallel lines, and when 
 they cross each other it is because they are opposing natu- 
 ral laws. The chief need the only need, in fact is to hold 
 both capital and labor where they must conform to the natu- 
 ral laws of trade. 
 
 The marked difference between what is called organ- 
 ized capital and consolidated capital has been shown in every 
 industrial conflict in recent years, and the distinction to be 
 drawn between them is this : Capital generally appears to the 
 superficial observer to be, not a divided force, but a united 
 and irresistible force, while the conflicts in labor organiza- 
 
48 Papers and Addresses 
 
 tions give color to the belief that they are often rent into 
 numberless warring factions. Still, when a conflict be- 
 tween unorganized capital and organized labor is precipi- 
 tated, we soon discover that organized labor is virtually a 
 unit, and that it speaks through one man a leader. Unor- 
 ganized capital, on the other hand, although it has just en- 
 tered upon a conflict with organized labor, soon discloses, 
 as if by design, its internal differences, and, as a result, 
 nearly every representative of the capital class speaks for his 
 own individual interests, regardless of what may be the in- 
 terests of the employer class in general. The outcome of 
 such a conflict can be easily foretold. 
 
 Consolidation Is Not Organization. 
 
 That capital is not organized, and that consolidated capi- 
 tal is not only not organized capital, but its owners are at 
 war with one another, have been glaringly illustrated in the 
 recent anthracite strike. Even in the deliberations incident 
 to a settlement of the questions in dispute, after the strike 
 had been called off and work had been resumed at the mines 
 in the anthracite region, the need of organization was, as 
 never before, clearly shown. Here the organized labor of 
 one industry nearly half a million strong spoke through one 
 man whose word was law. No other figure was seen, no 
 other voice heard. The representatives of unorganized cap- 
 ital, on the other hand, could not even agree with them- 
 selves, much less reach an agreement with labor. As a re- 
 sult, the intelligence, if not the honesty and sincerity, of the 
 employer class generally was seriously questioned, and a 
 prejudice already great, unjust, and harmful was increased. 
 It would be useless, if not unfair, to criticize the anthracite 
 operators. The fault, after all, is not with the men, but 
 with the system, or rather the complete absence of system. 
 
 These men, with their inherited prejudices and with 
 their out-of-date methods of dealing with labor particu- 
 larly organized labor failed to recognize certain fixed prin- 
 ciples, certain laws which are as unrepeatable as the laws 
 of nature. The labor union has proved a great training 
 school for labor leaders by the thousands, and it has sent 
 forth to battle in the industrial arena a few notable leaders 
 whose skill in controversial warfare is trained to a point of 
 scientific excellence. They are, strictly speaking, labor ex- 
 perts ; and no novice, however learned or well equipped 
 otherwise, can successfully cope with them. Warfare, 
 
The Organization of Capital. 49 
 
 whether of that sterner kind where arms clash and lives are 
 sacrificed, or that warfare which is a conflict of ideas or in- 
 terests between capital and labor, is a science; and in the 
 one, as in the other, those who contend under untrained and 
 unscientific leaders, and are opposed by trained bodies of 
 men under the direction of skilled leaders, simply defy ex- 
 perience and tempt fate. 
 
 In every great industry the experience of experts and the 
 knowledge of scientists is a prime necessity, and in no other 
 department of any great industry more so than in the de- 
 partment of labor. 
 
 Thus we shall cease stubbornly to declare that organized 
 labor is wrong and that it must be resisted ; but, thus 
 equipped, we can meet and reason with it, and seek to per- 
 suade it to do what is wise and fair and best for all. Thus 
 we apply the skill of the specialist to the tangled problem 
 of labor, and bring every great industrial branch under the 
 influence of economic science and all the departments of in- 
 dustry under the control of labor experts, to the end that we 
 shall find labor and capital "melting into each other," so 
 to speak. 
 
 But ignore scientific knowledge and skill, and we shall 
 find reason to agree with the Duke of Argyll that "there 
 is danger lest the spirit of association should attempt to act 
 against nature instead of with it." Many years ago Abra- 
 ham Lincoln said : "This government cannot endure perma- 
 nently half slave and half free." With equal truth we can 
 declare now: Industrial peace cannot be preserved with 
 labor organized and capital unorganized. 
 
THE LABOR PROBLEM 
 
 IN THE SOUTH 
 
 In almost every discussion of the labor problem prac- 
 tically the only class of labor taken into consideration is that 
 known as common labor by which term is meant the labor 
 that is grouped into large bodies. That labor which is 
 known in the North, East and West as common labor is 
 similarly known in the South. Mill, mine and factory 
 hands, workers on streets and highways, employes in rail- 
 way depots and on wharves are everywhere, for want of a 
 better term, designated as common labor. In this discus- 
 sion no notice need be taken of highly skilled laborers who 
 can be safely classified among the crafts, and who are sel- 
 dom found in considerable groups. The craftsmen can 
 take care of themselves and need no union to protect them. 
 They are treated, not like a commodity that can be easily 
 replaced by substitutes from an emigrant ship, but like in- 
 telligent human agents. 
 
 In considering the general subject of labor with special 
 reference to the South, the question of labor in itself, while 
 important, is not complicated with so many difficulties as 
 confront us in the North ; and yet the difficulties are many, 
 and some of them, unless intelligently dealt with, may be- 
 come serious. 
 
 For instance, the loss of the black man as a laborer at 
 the South might prove a serious embarrassment, or the loss 
 by the black man of confidence in and respect for the white 
 man's authority, might necessitate an admixture, by immi- 
 gration, of races and nationalities which would push the 
 black laborer to the wall, and should be avoided if it is 
 possible to avoid it. To no one is this a matter of so much 
 importance as to the black man. 
 
 The labor problem at the North would be infinitely sim- 
 pler if there were fewer nationalities, all of them speaking 
 and understanding the English tongue. This statement 
 does not imply that those speaking foreign tongues are 
 
 ^Reprinted by special permission from Bob Taylor's Magazine for 
 April, 1905. 
 
 50 
 
Labor Problems in the South 51 
 
 necessarily inferior in character or intellect to the English 
 speaking laborer, but the troubles arise rather because the 
 non-English speaking- laborers are the victims of deception 
 by unscrupulous interpreters who purposely misrepresent 
 what is said to them for their benefit, or what is said by 
 them to their employers. 
 
 A Common Language Spoken. 
 
 The fact that the black man speaks a language under- 
 stood by the white man is a point in his favor, and that is 
 also a reason why he should continue to be the most de- 
 sirable common laborer obtainable. The negro at the 
 North is discriminated against in all labor organizations as 
 well as in every relation of life, but in the South he still 
 has a fair chance to market his labor, if he will avail him- 
 self of it and will realize his opportunity. So far the very 
 abundance of cheap common labor in the South has hin- 
 dered the growth of the labor union there and has in many 
 instances defeated its purposes when established. The want 
 of ambition, which makes the negro content with low wages 
 and inferior conditions of living, is sometimes found in 
 common labor at the North, but it is by no means so gen- 
 eral as among the black race in the South. Particularly is 
 this the case in the cities, to which the negroes have flocked 
 in great numbers, denuding the plantations of needed help 
 while, in the cities, holding down the wages of common 
 labor, the only labor in which the negro competition has 
 yet been apparent. The employers of labor in the South 
 should do everything in their power to make of the black 
 man all that it is possible to make of him as a laborer ; but, 
 as he has his limitations and as the black man will at times 
 leave the South and so leave an opening for new white 
 labor, the South must use her energies to educate this new- 
 ly acquired immigrant labor up to American standards 
 and no work that it can do will bring greater returns than 
 teaching the non-English laborer the language of his newly 
 adopted home. 
 
 The very fact that union or organized labor is not 
 strong in the South, when compared with the average sec- 
 tions of the North, gives the employer class in the South an 
 opportunity which they may and should utilize in preparing 
 for that time when the contests incident to organization are 
 sure to come. And in this preparation they want to bear 
 in mind the undeniable truth that the quality of the laborer 
 
52 Papers and Addresses 
 
 is generally determined by the quality of the employer. In 
 considering the capacity of any body of laborers we are un- 
 failingly considering the capacity and intelligence of the 
 employers in directing their employes. Employer and em- 
 ploye alike have splendid opportunities opening to them in 
 the South, opportunities in many respects unrivalled ; and it 
 is of the highest importance that they make a right begin- 
 ning and understand each other at the start. The union 
 will indubitably grow, and the employer should welcome it 
 if it presents itself as a business body seeking the highest 
 wages compatible with commercial or competitive condi- 
 tions in return for the best services of which the labor of- 
 fered is capable. 
 
 Labor Must Be Respectful, But Not Servile. 
 
 But in the South labor must come with reason in its 
 request. It need not be servile, but it must be respectful, 
 for it is still, as it has always been, characteristic of the 
 people of the South that they will brook no interference 
 with their individual liberty. The North does not, and 
 never did, understand the strength of this underlying prin- 
 ciple of Southern manhood. It is a principle so strong 
 that it does not disappear in a single generation. 
 
 A notable instance of this was seen in a recent dispute 
 over the mining scale in Franklin County, Illinois. The 
 southern part of Illinois was settled by Southerners, mainly 
 by Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, who poured into that 
 rich country a few years before the war and for a few years 
 afterwards. There are whole communities now dominated 
 by Southern thought and principles. When the miners' un- 
 ion was seeking to establish itself in Franklin County, these 
 farmers, either of Southern birth or of Southern ancestry, 
 having heard that the representatives of the miners, whom 
 they described as agitators, were undertaking to interfere 
 with the individual rights of their sons to work without dic- 
 tation from any one, offered their services to the newly es- 
 tablished companies. The newly established companies, 
 however, politely declined the proffered assistance, prefer- 
 ring peaceable adjustment. But the tendered services 
 would have been given as willingly as they were tendered. 
 
 Propaganda of Education Necessary. 
 
 What is needed in the North is also needed in the South, 
 namely, wise and well informed teachers who are able to 
 
Labor Problems in the South 53 
 
 illumine the great problem of labor to the masses, in order 
 that they may distinguish between anarchy or socialism on 
 the one hand and the accepted political principles of our 
 country on the other. But there is one thing to be truly 
 said about the South that will always commend itself to 
 employers contemplating a change of base or the establish- 
 ment of themselves for the first time and it will com- 
 mend itself to labor whether organized or unorganized 
 and that is the doctrines of the socialist have found no en- 
 couragement there. Such doctrines cannot thrive in the 
 South any more than tropical plants can survive in the 
 polar regions. Labor leaders should rejoice in fact wise, 
 educated, far-seeing labor leaders do rejoice that this spir- 
 it prevails in the South, for only so can they hold their 
 own against the trouble-making element in their own ranks. 
 Thinking too much of established institutions and 
 guarding them too zealously may at times be a disad- 
 vantage, but as a general thing that community is most law- 
 abiding and most conservative in maintaining the rights 
 and privileges of all where due reverence is cherished for 
 old established institutions ; and yet the wisest conserva- 
 tism is that which steadily, no matter how slowly, prepares 
 itself for changes that are inevitable. Labor conditions in 
 the South cannot endure as they now exist, unless the 
 South is to lose all that she has gained since the overthrow 
 of slavery, and is to stand and view the triumphal march 
 of the country without participating in it. 
 
 Labor Must Be Given a Fair Chance. 
 
 The South should not seek to rest under present condi- 
 tions, for they cannot continue. If the present labor of the 
 South becomes educated and then improves, it will organize. 
 And if it does not improve, new labor will come in either 
 already organized or to organize immediately on its arrival. 
 I know this view will be contested by many able employers, 
 but, believing it to be true, I deem it best to say it. It is 
 a great deal better to make yourself strong so that you may 
 trust in your strength when the certain change comes than 
 to rely upon the fairness of the other side and this is equal- 
 ly true of the employer and the employe. 
 
 Experience has taught the South much on the question 
 of labor, but so far as a thorough understanding of the mat- 
 ter goes, the South is barely at the threshold. The first and 
 greatest thing that the South has to realize, which as yet is 
 
54 Papers and Addresses 
 
 not realized there at all, is this : In the South as elsewhere 
 it will be found that cheap labor is the most expensive. To 
 secure good results is the desired end of all industry and 
 the experience of older industrial communities has taught 
 that the best results are, have been, and will ever be obtained 
 by the employment of the best labor. The best labor is and 
 will always be that labor which receives the highest wages 
 and which is most nearly satisfied with surrounding condi- 
 tions. We can therefore set ourselves no more important 
 task, no more sacred duty, than that of finding the most 
 nearly perfect system under which the highest wages can 
 be paid in return for the most efficient service. And, aside 
 from the justice of this course, aside from the material 
 benefit to the employer, there is no investment that brings 
 its returns so quickly to the community at large, as money 
 paid for good labor. Money so paid is at once spent for the 
 necessities of life, for all the comforts that can be afforded 
 by its recipients, and so is circulated almost automatically. 
 
 Labor Conditions North and South Contrasted. 
 
 Labor organizations have made small headway in the 
 South for other reasons than the preponderance of negro 
 cheap labor; the first to be stated being the advantages of 
 climate and of cheap living possessed by the Southern work- 
 er. The winters are short, the summers long. Outdoor 
 vocations can be pursued in comparative comfort almost the 
 entire year. Fuel bills are smaller, the cost of clothing 
 less, and the cheapness of land opens the way for the work- 
 man of even moderate means to possess his own home, if 
 frugal and industrious. He can be his own landlord on 
 easier terms than in the North. But on the other hand, 
 while climatic and other conditions favor the workman of 
 the South, it must also be remembered that the housing of 
 workmen in the sparsely settled communities or in the min- 
 ing camps is not as good as in the North where legislation 
 and the agitation of the labor leaders have brought about 
 greatly improved conditions. 
 
 In the cities of the North the conditions and surround 
 ings of the workmen are even more noticeably superior to 
 those of the workmen in Southern cities. The comforts of 
 such flats as workingmen occupy in the large cities of the 
 North, notably in Chicago, are practically, if not altogether, 
 unknown in the South, where conveniences are fewer. This 
 very custom of living without comforts and conveniences 
 
Labor Problems in the South 55 
 
 has operated to keep wages down and consequently to offer 
 a check to the spread of unionism. The homes of many 
 skilled Northern workmen belonging to the union would be 
 a revelation to the workman in the South equally skilled 
 but not a member of any labor organization, and receiving 
 less pay for his services. 
 
 The organization of labor in the South has also pro- 
 ceeded more slowly as compared with the North because of 
 the more rapid growth and development of the North. It 
 is a fact at once apparent that cities where the unions are 
 strong are the cities that are growing most rapidly. Another 
 cause is the scarcity of manufacturing interests in the South 
 and the consequent small demand for skilled workmen, who 
 are therefore not in the South in sufficient number to or- 
 ganize effectively against the mass of unskilled and partly 
 skilled labor. The lack of numerous large manufacturing 
 enterprises, and of numerous mercantile interests, also cause 
 a lack of sharpness in competition and has made employes 
 less ready or able to exact the utmost that could be paid them. 
 
 The difficulties of organizing labor in the South are such 
 as always mark the initial efforts at organization. The un- 
 ion men are out of the Alabama mines, just at this time, for 
 instance, and new men have their places. The new men are 
 being trained to their work, and are receiving practically, if 
 not exactly, the wages asked for by the union. As the num- 
 ber of the skilled workmen increases, the necessity of or- 
 ganization will become more apparent to them all, and the 
 larger the number of men trained for the work, the more 
 effective the union will become. The union wins victories 
 for others oftentimes where it is itself nominally defeated. 
 
 Drawbacks to Organized Labor. 
 
 The question is asked, and with propriety, of the leaders 
 of organized labor, why it is, if organized labor offers or 
 promises the best workmen, that employers constantly resist 
 its encroachment and turn it out and replace it whh unor- 
 ganized labor if they can. There are several reasons why 
 this is so. It is not, as the labor leader frequently answers, 
 because the employer is short-sighted and imagines that 
 when he can get cheap labor he is making money, al- 
 though it is at times due to the want of discernment and en- 
 lightenment on the part of the employer. The objection 
 made to organized labor by its very best friends among the 
 employers is the short-sighted policy of the organization in 
 
56 Papers and Addresses 
 
 winking at or permitting the well-known tyranny of the un- 
 ions, and also that air of proprietorship which petty labor 
 leaders so often assume. 
 
 I have never denied the right of labor to organize, nor 
 can I deny the necessity for labor to organize; and, in the 
 very nature of things, it seems to me that it is best that 
 capital deal with labor as a unit. But at the same time I 
 have, in pursuing my duties in adjusting labor disputes, 
 been brought in contact with labor leaders here and there 
 whose insolence and arrogance, whose absurd claim of being 
 labor's unselfish and only friend, made me wish the whole 
 world of organized laborers and their leaders at the bottom 
 of the sea. More than one true friend of organized labor 
 has been lost to a worthy and noble cause for no other rea- 
 son than that they have been grossly offended and outraged 
 by unworthy representatives of labor organizations. 
 
 While the slow growth of the union in the South is no 
 doubt a discouragement to labor organizations, it is a benefit 
 to labor in the long run. It is also at the same time an ad- 
 vantage to capital that labor is being slowly organized. 
 Looking to the future it is an advantage both to capital and 
 labor that the growth of the labor organization does not go 
 too far in advance of the education of the laboring classes 
 and that the employer class may, if it has an eye to its own 
 interest, organize in order successfully and intelligently to 
 treat with organized labor when it has become a force to be 
 dealt with in the South. 
 
 Employers Must Organize. 
 
 Experience proves that even the most thoroughly organ- 
 ized labor unions are not all-powerful when the employers 
 stand together, and the paramount importance of organiza- 
 tion among the employers has been repeatedly demonstrated. 
 When this organization of the employers shall have been 
 effected, inquiry into cause and effect, careful study of the 
 labor problem, will quickly show the great advantage and 
 profitableness of dealing fairly with labor. It will show 
 that, if the employers are loyal to each other, and if they 
 have an organization in which all of its members have con- 
 fidence, they, whether dealing with organized or unorgan- 
 ized labor, are certain to obtain their approximate rights. 
 The many labor tangles in which the country has at times 
 been involved were due far more to the disorganized condi- 
 tion of the employer class than to the cohesiveness and pow- 
 
Labor Problems in the South 57 
 
 er of the labor class. Whenever the labor class has become 
 needlessly strong and where it practices tyranny and oppres- 
 sion, there the employer class will be found to have neglect- 
 ed its duty to itself. 
 
 Another result of the study of conditions will be that the 
 employer class will decide to be fair in dealing with labor, 
 because in the long run it will bring the largest dividends. 
 This cannot be accomplished by dealing with unorganized 
 labor, where the employers have the whole matter practical- 
 ly under their own control, and thinking only of immediate 
 returns, will, consciously or unconsciously, take advantage 
 of the worker. Dealing with organized labor is not only 
 more satisfactory, but more profitable in ultimate results. 
 
 The question of individual rights has had a large part in 
 Southern labor troubles. It was a question of the employ- 
 er's right to manage his property for himself in his own way 
 that defeated an almost universal strike of the Nashville 
 Street Railway employes two or three years ago. The un- 
 ion was formed and made its demands. The management 
 declined to recognize the union or to grant the demands, 
 and successfully resisted the resulting strike. But the man- 
 agement, I am informed, gave careful examination to the 
 facts thus brought to their attention and has voluntarily 
 advanced wages and improved conditions to a point far be- 
 yond what was formulated in the union's demands. There 
 is no union of the street railway's employes now at Nash- 
 ville, and so long as the present intelligent and progressive 
 policy is pursued there will be none and there will be none 
 needed. Indeed, the only excuse for labor to organize is 
 that the policy of the employer has too often been unintelli- 
 gent, unprogressive and not in sympathy with the reasonable 
 rights and needs of labor. 
 
 Higher Standard of Wages a Necessity. 
 
 But the organization of labor and the advancement of 
 wages will do more than any other thing to lend confidence 
 to those who are looking to the South as a field for invest- 
 ment. The Northern capitalist and investor cannot be made 
 to believe that labor as good and efficient as Northern labor 
 will remain unorganized and render its service for one-third 
 or one-half of what the Northern workman receives. Nor 
 does the Southern worker have the same incentive to the 
 high efficiency reached by the Northern workman. One of 
 the most serious mistakes made by many Southern communi- 
 
58 Papers and Addresses 
 
 ties in presenting to the Northern investor the advantages 
 at the South is that they put emphasis on the fact that skilled 
 and unskilled labor is "cheap." Cheap labor that is at the 
 same time efficient is an unknown thing in the North, and 
 Northern men who are familiar with the labor question will 
 not believe that it exists in the South. "If it were as ef- 
 ficient, it would be as well paid," they say. The proffer of 
 "cheap" labor has done much to retard the industrial devel- 
 opment of the Southern states. It is now the universal cry 
 among the employers of the North, particularly among 
 those who oppose organized labor, that they are willing to 
 pay and do pay the highest wages anywhere obtainable and 
 that they are willing to afford and do afford to their em- 
 ployes the most favorable working conditions. 
 
 Child Labor. 
 
 The question of child labor is one which must be deter- 
 mined by humane principles, and yet it is a question on 
 which much fanaticism has been expended and much maud- 
 lin sentiment indulged. The child develops earlier in the 
 South, where the average boy of fourteen is as mature as 
 the average boy of sixteen in the North. It is a cause for 
 gratification, a fact to the credit of the South, that recent 
 child labor laws have removed from mills and mines and 
 factories a vast army of child laborers who properly be- 
 longed in the nursery or at school. It was the South's 
 shame that they were ever permitted there under conditions 
 once existing, and still existing to a degree. 
 
 But, while believing that the question of child labor 
 should be closely studied and the interest of the child guard- 
 ed, I know that this is not always accomplished in the case 
 of boys by making it an offense punishable by fine and im- 
 prisonment to keep boys of thirteen and fourteen years at 
 work, particularly since in certain classes of society they 
 have no idea of continuing at school after they reach that 
 age. Anything is better than idleness. It is a thousand to 
 one better for a boy of twelve to be at work in mine, factory 
 or mill than to be allowed to remain unemployed and unoc- 
 cupied. If he is to be forced out of employment, then pro- 
 vision must be made to force him into school. The atten- 
 tion that has been drawn to child labor in the South comes 
 about not so much by the efforts of philanthropists, not so 
 much by the work of earnest students, as by that class of 
 employers in New England who formerly employed children 
 
 
Labor Problems in the South 59 
 
 of tender years, but who were forced to desist as the result 
 of legislation, and who for this reason, and not from any 
 high motives, directed attention to child labor in the cotton 
 mills of the South. I do not mean to justify what is in- 
 jurious to the children, but in considering this whole ques- 
 tion trade or competitive conditions cannot be wholly ig- 
 nored. We know that the advocates of child labor laws 
 are often selfishly influenced and that they aim to reduce 
 the army of workers in the hope thereby to monopolize labor 
 as far as possible. It is often for the same selfish reason 
 that the hours of labor are restricted. 
 
 Much of the opposition to child labor has undoubtedly 
 been removed by the course of mill owners in the South, 
 such as the Eagle and Phoenix mills at Columbus, Ga., the 
 Unity Cotton Mills at Lagrange, Ga., and mills in Guilford 
 County, N. C, and Pelzer, S. C. In these the children are 
 required to spend a certain portion of their time in schools 
 ranging from kindergartens to industrial training schools, 
 which are supported mainly, and in many cases altogether, 
 by the cotton mills themselves. The press and pulpit 
 unite in saying that in those mills many of the children have 
 much better facilities for improvement than they had before 
 their parents left the farms and brought them to the mills. 
 
 Excellence Rather Than Cheapness. 
 
 The South suffers from poorly paid labor, and continues 
 to suffer despite the fact that conditions are such as make 
 it possible for her to pay higher prices without injuriously 
 affecting any of her industries. As the wealth of the world 
 increases the individual wants more and greater conven- 
 iences, and more and more grows the demand for excellence 
 rather than cheapness to be the chief consideration. The 
 era of cheapness is on the decline; the product of mill and 
 factory, of shop and lathe and hand, must be better to-day 
 to be satisfying than at any time in the world's history. 
 While excellence is sought the more, cheapness is laughed at 
 and passed by. 
 
 The Southern states are in an enviable position to-day. 
 The South ought to produce nearly all it consumes, and 
 those things it can economically produce for its own con- 
 sumption it should certainly be able to sell in Mexican and 
 South American markets in successful competition with the 
 rest of the world. How successfully this can be done will 
 depend upon the ability of the South to produce the best 
 
60 Papers and Addresses 
 
 goods for the least money, and it can only do this provided 
 its labor is the best. But its labor cannot be the best unless 
 it is paid the highest wages and is afforded the most satis- 
 factory conditions under which workmen can perform their 
 services, and under which they and their families can live. 
 
 When labor has been organized on business lines and is 
 a live competitor of unorganized labor, it will not only be 
 the successful competitor but will furnish the best labor 
 obtainable. Nowhere has organized labor under such con- 
 ditions so fine an opportunity or so fair a chance as in the 
 South. But as I said before, the South is the stronghold of 
 individual rights. The workman must respect the individ- 
 ual rights of the employer and the employer in return will 
 respect the individual rights of the workman. 
 
 It is not only skilled, law-abiding laborers that are neces- 
 sary to the South's industrial success, but it is first of all 
 necessary that employers be enlightened and abreast of the 
 times in order that they may see clearly what their rivals 
 are doing and what the markets of the world require. And 
 chiefly employers must be just, wise and humane in order 
 that they may, en joy the confidence and respect of their men. 
 
 It is indisputable that wherever there are employers who 
 are wise and humane, working in harmony with laborers 
 who are skilled, frugal and law-abiding, the community 
 where the combination is found has a sure guaranty of 
 numerical growth and of substantial material prosperity. 
 Growth in population is gratifying to most citizens, notably 
 so when accompanied with industrial growth as well, but 
 substantial and lasting prosperity has too often been sacri- 
 ficed in the eager desire of one community to herald to the 
 world a larger population than its rival possessed. In- 
 creased numbers and wealth if they bring in their train 
 an unnatural increase in vice and crime, as we too often 
 find to be the case, are infinitely worse than if there were 
 no growth. Southerners sometimes lament that the South 
 does not grow fast enough, yet that it makes haste slowly 
 is the South's good fortune, since the criminal classes have 
 not increased with the population as at the North. The 
 Southern people, conservative always, should be in nothing 
 so conservative as in the determination that this shall still 
 be true ; that while it is increasing in population and wealth 
 the South shall also accomplish the more difficult and im- 
 portant duty of diminishing the percentage of vice and 
 crime. 
 
THE SOUTH'S SURE WAY 
 
 TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 
 
 The Industrial South is an ever increasing factor in 
 the nation's growth. From the peaceful and somewhat 
 indolent life of the broad plantation to the strife and stir 
 of the manufacturing center has been a short, though most 
 decisive, step. From the time when the South raised cot- 
 ton for Old England and New England to spin and weave 
 into the world's garments ; when the South made the money 
 received for the raw cotton purchase every necessary of 
 life and all the luxuries, buying back the finest fabrics made 
 of its own snowy staple for use at home, till now, has been 
 a span so short that through all of it have passed men and 
 women still living. The changed conditions that followed, 
 or rather that came with, the great Civil War, form a sharp 
 contrast with the old order, and yet the shock of the change 
 was hardly passed before the South was awake to her op- 
 portunities. 
 
 Returning from the war to their ruined fortunes and 
 their desolated fields, and adopting as best they could the 
 revolutionized labor system that came after our national 
 tragedv, Southern men began to build anew, and to de- 
 velop from the wreck of the agricultural past an industrial 
 future. There were problems new and as yet unsolved 
 awaiting them, but they tempted the earnest student and 
 were not without solution. Slowly, as the year passed, one 
 stage of development has succeeded to another until the 
 Industrial South is not a new or a misunderstood term. 
 
 Consider the fact that it has not been many years since 
 the whole industrial field lay between Portland, Maine, and 
 Pittsburg, and that elsewhere in the country business con- 
 ditions fluctuated in sympathy with activity or depression 
 within this contracted sphere. Now, industrial activity has 
 permeated other sections, the Mississippi Valley, the Rocky 
 Mountain section, the Pacific Coast, and has spread south- 
 ward, and thus the way has been and is being gradually 
 
 *Reprinted by special permission of the publishers from Bob 
 Taylor's Magazine for October, 1905. 
 
 61 
 
62 Papers and Addresses 
 
 paved towards a time when no general panic can occur, 
 bringing on world-wide catastrophies. Ordinarly hardly 
 more than a single section will be affected at a time, and thus 
 all other sections may aid in staying any general depression. 
 In recording this advance, it may be safely said that the 
 most marvelous industrial development recorded in history, 
 along with unexampled agricultural progress, is that of the 
 South during the past twenty-five years. This develop- 
 ment has been largely brought about by the people of the 
 South themselves. Where most has been done it has been 
 done by men "to the manor born." They not only accepted 
 the new and strange condition with a never before seen 
 philosophy, but, realizing the opportunities that lay spread 
 around them, they went to work with determined will and 
 fixity of purpose. 
 
 Only the Beginning. 
 
 And yet, with all that they have so far achieved, the 
 South has not yet even entered upon the first stage of her 
 industrial greatness. 
 
 It may be asked, "When will the first step be taken for 
 this first stage?" When the South is able to provide for 
 her people practically all the necessaries as well as the lux- 
 uries of life. Nature has given the South every raw ma- 
 terial and the originating effort necessary for all her needs 
 the luxuries as well as the necessaries of life. For ex- 
 ample, she has everything that is needed to produce silk, 
 and to produce wines, among the luxuries, and she has 
 every variety of timber, every variety of cereals, vegetables, 
 fruits, and all the minerals to supply life's various neces- 
 sities. She can make her own paints, her own dyes, and 
 she can weave for herself fabrics of every class and kind. 
 The fattest cattle cover every hillside, and her paddocks 
 are filled with the fleetest and most famous thoroughbreds. 
 In a community that can produce all these things, the neces- 
 saries and the luxuries of life alike, and with almost equal 
 facility, where friction in the labor world does not exist, 
 because there is found stability with plenty, and where the 
 maximum wages can be paid in every industrial pursuit 
 without violating the economic laws and where there is 
 only the minimum of the commonest, hardest and most 
 hazardous labor industrial greatness, a fairly equitable 
 distribution of the world's wealth, and a contented people, 
 are found. All of this, now in progress, is aiding greatly 
 
The South' s Sure Way to Industrial Peace 63 
 
 the material advancement of the South, and affords condi- 
 tions most favorable to its substantial and continued in- 
 dustrial development. 
 
 So far, along with the degree of industrial develop- 
 ment that has been brought about, there has been a gen- 
 eral industrial peace, broken rudely at times, but not at such 
 frequent intervals as to cause alarm. Still, the peace has 
 been broken enough to demonstrate that the study of 
 thoughtful men should be directed to the important con- 
 sideration of the best methods for preserving this industrial 
 peace as a concomitant and companion of the industrial de- 
 velopment that is certainly in store. 
 
 Industrial growth elsewhere has been accompanied by 
 industrial warfare that has become at times so bitter that 
 the two are by many regarded as inseparable companions. 
 Indeed, many people of the South do not favor the acqui- 
 sition of industrial establishments in their communities for 
 fear of the labor conflicts which they verily believe these 
 industries inevitably bring in their train, and unless they 
 shall learn how to fairly and properly manage labor it is 
 best so. 
 
 Industrial War Can Be Averted. 
 
 While this belief has been in part justified by the ex- 
 perience of other communities, the South is fortunately and 
 exceptionally situated in this respect, for it is demonstrable 
 that industrial peace and industrial growth are possible at 
 one and the same time in the South, more than in any other 
 part of the world. The reasons for this belief are well 
 founded. The South's Way to industrial peace, along with 
 industrial development, is made easy in the first place by 
 its homogeneous population. This tremendous advantage 
 over conditions in the North is not a sentiment, but a grati- 
 fying fact. As yet there has been no flood of foreign im- 
 migrants pouring into the South, large numbers of whom 
 do not speak the English language, and who do not care 
 to learn to speak it. The people are homogeneous because 
 they are either native to the soil or immigrants from the 
 other states of the American Union. This condition should 
 be maintained for the best interests of the South, for herein 
 lies its power to lay deep and firm and enduring the founda- 
 tions of satisfactory labor conditions, without the necessity 
 of any marked changes in the conditions now existing. To 
 this end there should be a continued effort to maintain the 
 
64 Papers and Addresses 
 
 use of one language only in all the South. If those who 
 do not speak the English language should be brought in, 
 they should be taught to speak it should be made English- 
 speaking people; for a homogeneous people enjoys advan- 
 tages almost incalculable as compared with one where 
 many, or even a few tongues, are spoken daily. Ignorance 
 of the language, whether it be our ignorance of theirs or 
 the foreigner's ignorance of ours, is most fruitful of sus- 
 picion. 
 
 Many communities in the South are struggling for the 
 wrong things in the belief that big cities and pretentious 
 names for the streets and public thoroughfares are elements 
 of greatness. But the great advantage of the South lies 
 in the fact that it is without big cities that its cities and 
 towns are full of historic interest. 
 
 Historical Associations an Asset. 
 
 The history of any community is a valuable asset, and 
 nothing draws the visitor or investor more quickly other 
 advantages being equal than the historic surroundings and 
 associations of a city. There are many old-world cities 
 whose history and historic names draw multitudes of vis- 
 itors, that do much towards supporting the city's popula- 
 tion and the city's business. It is wise in Southern com- 
 munities to foster all that tends to the preservation of the 
 things which are distinctively historic for the history of any 
 place is a valuable asset. 
 
 The South should realize, therefore, the commercial 
 value of the wealth of history connected with its great bat- 
 tlefields. Such places will never lose their interest. The 
 establishment by the national government of 'military parks 
 is in recognition of this interest, and wherever, therefore, 
 there are parks or national cemeteries there will be in years 
 to come a constantly increasing throng of visitors. Rich- 
 mond, Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga, Vicks- 
 burg, Nashville, Murfreesboro, Atlanta, Kennesaw Moun- 
 tain, Montgomery, and many other famous places in the 
 South connected with the war will forever retain their 
 historic importance. States, cities, communities, should 
 unite with the national government in not only preserv- 
 ing those historic fields, but in adding museums and schools. 
 The cities and places where they have been set apart and 
 dedicated to the public use are already drawing increasing 
 numbers of visitors every year. The South is full of such 
 
The So-nth' s Sure Way to Industrial Peace 65 
 
 historic places, and for the good of communities and for 
 the pleasure of all who would see them, it is wise that they 
 are dedicated to the public. The attractiveness of these 
 government reservations already so dedicated vindicates 
 both the motive and spirit in which the work has been car- 
 ried forward. Let the South cultivate this great but much 
 neglected asset. 
 
 Large Numbers Not a Necessity. 
 
 The craze for large numbers of people gathered into 
 a single community is a new one and a strange one for the 
 South. Large cities and large factories, however desirable, 
 too frequently bring evils in their train which often out- 
 weigh all the imagined importance gained thereby. The 
 ideal city, where men are most prosperous, where homes 
 are happiest and where conditions are best, is the city of 
 moderate size and of steady, conservative growth. The 
 South needs no large cities. What she does need, what 
 she wants, and what she must have, is a vast number of 
 cities of average size, so distributed over the entire section 
 as necessity will demand and as the conditions of trade and 
 industry shall require. The prosperous, thriving parts of 
 the North and West are not the vast cities with their mil- 
 lions or their hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. The 
 thriving, happy sections are those where the center of every 
 productive area is a city of moderate size that supplies all 
 the conveniences required by the surrounding country and is 
 supported by it. Examples are not needed ; they will read- 
 ily recur to every mind. The more equal and equitable 
 distribution of wealth is the great end desired in our mod- 
 ern civilization, and this is impossible in large cities. The 
 ambition of the South to have a New York or a Chicago 
 is a wrong as well as a hopeless ambition. The average 
 of happiness, of morality, of wealth, is higher in the South 
 and in the cities of average size in the North than in either 
 of these. The large cities may be hives of industry, but 
 they are also hotbeds of discontent, crime and disease, and 
 the home of a grinding, hopeless poverty, not known else- 
 where. 
 
 With the desire for large numbers and for industrial ad- 
 vancement has come the desire for the establishment of 
 great enterprises, and communities everywhere are striving- 
 for "million dollar" concerns without giving thought to the 
 fact that million dollar establishments are not built in a day. 
 
66 Papers and Addresses 
 
 Then they, too, want "mergers" consolidations. But let 
 us not forget that "mergers" and consolidations are only 
 in their experimental stage. Who can say that disintegra- 
 tion will not soon follow? All the vast industrial concerns 
 that really succeed start in an humble way and by legiti- 
 mate and steady growth and development attain their co- 
 lossal proportions. To transplant an enterprise of this 
 magnitude to a new location or to begin the inauguration 
 of one and put it into immediate operation involves more 
 than communities realize. There are markets to be secured 
 raw materials in steady supply to be found, skilled labor in 
 abundance to begin with the first day of its operation. Ques- 
 tions of transportation and disposition of the product and 
 innumerable other questions vitally important to be con- 
 sidered are too often overlooked. Granting the establish- 
 ment of such an enterprise the chances for its success are 
 small. 
 
 Self-Help in the South. 
 
 The Southern people have been too much given to wait- 
 ing for new and large capital to establish large industrial 
 plants, but those who have solved the problem are those 
 who have not waited. It is a mistake to wait. If a com- 
 munity knows what enterprise it wants, let that commun- 
 ity start that enterprise on its own means, all uniting to 
 the extent of their ability or desire, and from the beginning 
 thus made they can build it up with great success. The 
 multitude of small individual investments has pointed many 
 communities the way to success. When one succeeds the 
 rest is easy. And there is a better chance for success be- 
 cause of the fact that every one of these numerous stock- 
 holders is a worker and a talker for the general growth. 
 
 A field that holds out large promise of reward is in 
 the erection of elevators and warehouses in communities of 
 the South. If every community or the center of an agri- 
 cultural district possessed facilities for storing the surplus 
 grain, cotton and tobacco, and so saving it from being 
 thrown on an over-supplied market, the saving to the pro- 
 ducer would be vaster than can well be calculated. Thus 
 legitimately stored in warehouses, the grain, tobacco or 
 cotton could be used as collateral by the producer, and 
 millions of dollars that are now lost to him under existing 
 conditions might overwise be saved. 
 
The South' s Sure Way to Industrial Peace 67 
 
 Proper Labor Conditions. 
 
 There is. certainly no other section of the United States, 
 and possibly no other part of the world where, with the 
 right sort of effort, the labor conditions can be made more 
 economically correct, and the life of the laborer more de- 
 lightful than in the South. There is a guarantee of safety 
 to honest labor in the South that is given nowhere else. 
 The climatic conditions are favorable to the laborer. There 
 he may work more days every year, live at less expenditure 
 of his earnings, and with greater ease provide himself with 
 a home. The possession of a home gives to the laborer 
 stability, permanency and safety, for he who has a home of 
 his own is conservative, economizing, industrious, and he 
 is thus protected against his own worst inclinations. These 
 facts should be of inestimable value in aiding to bring 
 about the improvement in all labor conditions that make 
 for the lasting good of the laborer in general. 
 
 Labor, as understood in great industrial communities, 
 is in its infancy in the South, and the great industrial in- 
 stitutions as compared with those of the North and East 
 are still few, and of less than the average proportion. It is, 
 therefore, possible in the South to go to work and build 
 up labor institutions and conditions from the very begin- 
 ning, and build them up as they should be for the greatest 
 good of the commonwealth ; whereas, to accomplish sim- 
 ilar results in other countries, or in other portions of our 
 own country, existing customs and conditions must first be 
 radically changed, or revolutionized, by the expenditure 
 of enormous effort. How shall we proceed, then, to build 
 them up aright? 
 
 To bring about the best and quickest results, a system 
 of general industrial education must be inaugurated, and 
 that should be done at once. What the South needs is 
 trained mechanics, the best and most efficient by virtue of 
 being the most skilled, and these the South must make, for 
 it has not now any large number of them. The times de- 
 mand them, and the South offers rich rewards for them. 
 History repeats itself, and so do fashions and tastes and 
 customs. To-day we have a returning to old ways in many 
 regards. For nearly half a century everything has been 
 tending in the direction of machine-made goods. Both the 
 best and the worst has been accomplished by the aid of 
 machinery. But now the demand is for things made by 
 
68 Papers and Addresses 
 
 hand, and in the taste for hand-made things, the admiration 
 for the handicraft of man, lies the opportunity of the 
 skilled worker. In hand-made articles skill is required, and 
 in their manufacture much or all of the work, if deemed 
 advisable, can be done at the worker's home. For it is 
 in the workshop at home in which every member of the 
 family can find employment that the truest happiness will 
 be found. 
 
 Practical Education a Necessity. 
 
 The world's educational need to-day, and the educa- 
 tional need of the South in particular, is industrial educa- 
 tion the education simultaneously of the hands, the eye 
 and the brain. It is in the doing of things and in the mak- 
 ing of things that people find happiness, and the way to 
 make a prosperous as well as a happy people is to show 
 them what to do and how to do it. Some of the millions 
 of dollars given to great universities and to great libraries 
 could be most profitably applied to institutions for indus- 
 trial training and to teaching the English language to the 
 foreigner. It would injure neither the universities nor the 
 libraries and would be a tremendous benefit to the working 
 classes and to the commonwealth. While the many will 
 still want that which is cheap, there must be a constantly 
 growing number of those who have the money to get that 
 which is the best and which has the individuality found in 
 hand-made things alone. The demand for such articles is 
 already greater than the supply. Attention must be paid 
 to the utilities of life in these days, and we have Emerson's 
 word for it that "the acquisition of some manual skill and 
 the practice of some form of manual labor were essential 
 elements of culture, and this idea has been more accepted 
 in the systematic education of youth." Art can flourish 
 only where the worker is, and where the hands are, edu- 
 cated. The hands may lead the soul to loftier heights. 
 
 Until the last generation the necessity of earning a liv- 
 ing was not general in the South. Fortunes swept away by 
 the storms of war left the entire population facing a new 
 phase in the economic system. Earning a living is new 
 to many and these want work that is respectable. Under 
 the new conditions women in the South want to work, many 
 of them must work, and the question of how this work is to 
 be performed most agreeably and safely must be answered 
 in the combination of the workshop and the home. As a 
 
The South' s Sure W ay to Industrial Peace 69 
 
 single instance of work in a field that is wide, where women 
 may work with profit, a recent publication of the Bureau 
 of Labor was devoted to the revival of industrial handicraft 
 in the South as applied to the weaving of the ornamental 
 bed covers for which the women of the South were noted 
 in the days before the advent of the omnipresent machine. 
 For these covers, the bedspreads of our mothers, when 
 dyed after the old permanent fashion and woven in the 
 olden beautiful designs, there is a greater demand than 
 has yet been supplied, and at remunerative prices. Weav- 
 ing is peculiarity a womanly art, and the field for beautiful 
 and durable fabrics is practically unlimited. And so with 
 innumerable other delightful occupations. There are three 
 pursuits to-day held in high esteem working in leather, 
 wood-carving and book-binding in all of which the artistic 
 worker has a field from which great success can be reaped. 
 In the matter of book-binding alone, it is to be wondered 
 at that the expertness of women's fingers has not been 
 called more into play. As wealth increases, interest in the 
 book-binder's art grows amazingly, and if there is a limit 
 to the possibilities of the worker here, it would be hard to 
 place it. It is a fact that a majority of towns having small 
 public libraries have to send away from home binding and 
 repairing enough to employ the constant time of at least 
 one worker. And if there were a binder at hand, there 
 would be more than the libraries to work for. In this field 
 the demand grows faster than the facilities for supplying it. 
 It is a pleasant occupation, the finer parts of which are 
 readily acquired by any one having deft fingers and a fair 
 amount of the artistic instinct. 
 
 Up-Building of a Middle Class. 
 
 By fostering and multiplying pursuits we build up the 
 great middle class to be the dominant class ; and more than 
 this, the free, independent class anywhere in the world 
 and nowhere more than in America, is this middle class. 
 The prevalence of these pursuits makes a nation rich. What 
 else can explain the independence of the French people 
 than the multitude of artistic callings and pursuits in which 
 the middle classes are engaged? It was the unseen wealth 
 they had accumulated, not the few great industries, that 
 had enriched the country so that the French were able to 
 pay the great war debt to Germany without strain or suf- 
 fering or complaint. France is a great hive of minor indus- 
 
70 Papers and Addresses 
 
 tries, and from their general pursuit comes the keen and 
 overmastering artistic sense of the French as a people. 
 
 The South must prosper most substantially through the 
 multiplication of these small industries and in the increase 
 of its home institutions. The nearer we can get to the 
 times when everything worn by man and woman and child 
 is made from home-grown cotton and wool and flax, spun 
 and woven and dyed at home, the nearer we shall get to the 
 really beautiful in the home life and the farther on the road 
 to a permanent prosperity. The great factories bring with 
 them larger populations, larger responsibilities, larger cares, 
 but not always that larger happiness so desirable and so 
 necessary. The South, it is true, can better care for the 
 labor employed in factories than is possible elsewhere, but 
 what the South needs most, because best for the community, 
 is a vast number of the home industries, where the best 
 wprk is performed, which is easily disposed of at the high- 
 est prices, and where the income is for those who earned it. 
 
 My meaning may best be illustrated by the contrast be- 
 tween an English city and an English town, both well 
 known to the reader Birmingham and Coventry. Bir- 
 mingham has large factories and great wealth in few hands 
 a large but not a wholly happy population. Coventry is 
 a small, beautiful manufacturing town, situated in the heart 
 of England, and its people are noted for their content and 
 happiness. Wherein lies the difference? In the immense 
 factories of Birmingham working people are herded to- 
 gether in great numbers. In Coventry the factories are 
 small and the number of workers is limited to a few, in 
 many instances to the members of a single family. In the 
 large city all individuality is stamped out, while in the 
 small town individuality is developed. In Birmingham the 
 prosperity of the place may mean the poverty and wretch- 
 edness of the workers ; in Coventry every worker shares in 
 the general advancement and in what labor actually earns. 
 In both places the people labor with their hands, but there 
 is this great difference: In Birmingham they are simply 
 parts of great machines, while in Coventry they are work- 
 men. 
 
 Small Manufacturing Enterprises Best. 
 
 Small manufacturing enterprises are better, and help 
 a community more than great factories with their armies 
 of men among whom there is no high aim or rivalry to 
 
The South' s Sure Way to Industrial Peace 71 
 
 excel. What the South, therefore, wants is communities 
 of happy and contented people, but they will never secure 
 these by demanding a few or many immense manufacturing 
 establishments. These great and busy cities, with their 
 great factories and mills, may excite our envy at times, but 
 despite unsatisfied ambition for numbers the Southern city 
 of moderate prosperity is far better off than they. Coming 
 out of the noise and smoke of Birmingham, Coventry is a 
 refreshing sight. There are few factories of great size, 
 but as the visitor passes along the street there are rows of 
 pretty, well-built houses, ten or fifteen feet back from the 
 street. The doors bear the names of the occupants or own- 
 ers and the nature of their business never rough, but busi- 
 ness capable of being done in small compass. The people 
 are content that the large factories and mills shall be estab- 
 lished elsewhere. 
 
 There are cities in the South adapted to rolling mills, 
 furnaces, cotton mills, and other great industrial plants, 
 but most of the cities that are striving for these things 
 would be infinitely better off as Coventry is not with mills, 
 furnaces, factories and slaughter houses, that bring discon- 
 tent, poverty, dirt, disease and squalor but with small fac- 
 tories which turn out the finer, the more delicate and the 
 more costly products and that yield the surer and the 
 greater profits products not subject to violent market 
 changes. This work is more congenial to the Southern 
 people, and would make the communities more prosperous, 
 better satisfied and happier. In carrying out this idea, every 
 man, woman and child, white and black, has an equal 
 chance. No questions are asked when the products of in- 
 dustry are offered as to whether the maker is a black or a 
 "poor white," or an aristocrat. Race and caste are never 
 mentioned when a craftsman presents something worthy of 
 his craft. Social equality no sane person wants, but indus- 
 trial equality in all handicrafts is everywhere recognized. 
 Herein may be found a safe solution of the so-called negro 
 problem. 
 
 There are cities in the South with exceptional advan- 
 tages for the manufacture of every article made of wood. 
 The present demand for articles especially of furniture 
 made by hand, opens the way to a vast number of workers 
 in little shops of their own. They can find a ready market 
 for all beautiful things in which the labor is the chief 
 factor. The same is true of the finer ornamental or ham- 
 
72 Papers and Addresses 
 
 mered metal work. Where the great factories are beset 
 with problems of fuel and transportation and labor, the 
 home shop has none of these perplexities. Less trouble, 
 larger and surer profits, happiness and content, are all on 
 the side of the small industries. Here there are many mas- 
 ters few servants. In any city of 75,000 people there are 
 at least five hundred different articles that can be manufac- 
 tured in the home shop with profit from the home market 
 alone. 
 
 Encouragement to Home Products. 
 
 The home market brings us to a phase of the industrial 
 problem that is rarely ever understandingly met the duty 
 of helping your own community. In any new manufactur- 
 ing section this is usually an absolute essential of success, 
 but the South has in times past allowed disaster to over- 
 take many a promising enterprise that a little timely help 
 in the way of home patronage would have saved. It has 
 been often observed that many Southerners buy their sup- 
 plies at home only when they haven't money or credit with 
 which to buy abroad. 
 
 What right, then, have we to complain that wealth is 
 concentrated in a few hands so long as we, each one of us, 
 persist in giving all to them that have most persist in 
 sending our money into the large markets of the world, 
 where it goes into the coffers of the rich, and pass by on 
 the other side the deserving and the needy artisan at home? 
 This is not said in criticism or hatred of the rich, or because 
 of any dislike for large cities. It is said in justice to the 
 struggling masses seekng to reach the fine level of the 
 middle class. Thus we will be distributing wealth more 
 equally than is otherwise possible and hence establishing a 
 high average of morality, intelligence and contentment in 
 the community. If we would build an ideal commonwealth 
 we must first encourage and appreciate those closest to us. 
 These virtues, like charity, should be practiced first at 
 home. 
 
 A great advantage coming to the South in the early 
 future by way of encouragement to the home shop, spoken 
 of above, is the interurban railroad system just now being 
 talked of in the South. In the North and East, and in some 
 sections of the central West, already whole parts of a state 
 or sections of adjoining states are strung together on the 
 same electric wire, and along these lines, within easy reach 
 
The South's Sure Way to Industrial Peace 73 
 
 of adjoining- towns and cities, live many workers. In the 
 South, where land is so much cheaper -than in other sec- 
 tions of the country, this will offer an additional induce- 
 ment to the worker, and additional field for the prosecution 
 of minor industries. But before the fullest possible result 
 can be attained, there must be an uplifting along the line 
 of industrial education. A start is being made in the 
 schools of a few cities, but only in an initiatory way. It 
 is a matter of fact that more of this industrial education 
 movement is to be found among the negroes than among the 
 whites. Two notable examples of what is being done 
 among the negroes are furnished by the institutions at 
 Tuskegee and Hampton Roads, where noble work is being 
 done, and where have been developed suggestions that the 
 white people of the country would do well to follow. 
 
 Homogeneousness of the Southern People. 
 
 The South is fortunate in more than has been men- 
 tioned. The homogeneousness of its people, the speaking 
 of a single language, fine climatic conditions, a personal 
 liberty and standing which the worker does not elsewhere 
 enjoy, the greater opportunity of easily acquiring a home, 
 are in the worker's favor. But what of the employer ? With 
 the proper care the future is in his own hands. The em- 
 ployer must study the problem from a new standpoint, dis- 
 regarding the past. In the South conditions differ vastly 
 from what exists anywhere else. The scarcity of indus- 
 trial institutions is marked by a similar scarcity of skilled 
 labor. But right at his hand is an abundant supply of the 
 most intelligent, the readiest to learn, of any unskilled 
 labor in the world. The development of the South indus- 
 trially can be accompanied by guarantees of permanent in- 
 dustrial peace if the situation be studied and existing con- 
 ditions utilized by the employer. Employer and employe 
 may grow together, by building up the character and skill 
 of the workers along with the industries of the South. The 
 North is unfortunate in that the industries are often fully, 
 if not even abnormally, developed, so that it becomes neces- 
 sary to educate the workers as far as practicable, and this 
 usually amounts to half education imperfect, naturally, 
 under such conditions. It cannot be otherwise where in- 
 dustrial development proceeds faster than the education 
 of the workers. In this the South's greatest opportunity 
 lies. As the industries multiply and increase, as they de- 
 
74 Papers and Addresses 
 
 mand more workers and better workers, these workers 
 may be trained, may be made ready to meet the demands, 
 and may be increased in efficiency and numbers both, as the 
 industrial development proceeds. 
 
 Then can the South become a land where there is some- 
 thing for every one to do, and where every one has been 
 trained to do something. Nothing will so readily lead to 
 an equitable, a more nearly equal, distribution of the world's 
 wealth than the universal application of the energy and ca- 
 pacity with which God Almighty has endowed the human 
 race. 
 
 Let us not forget that the two things that more than all 
 others threaten the well being of the South to-day are, the 
 effort to quickly attain great wealth and the effort to grow 
 large rapidly. These have been found to curse elsewhere. 
 Riches that come steadily and legitimately remain longer 
 with us, and the gradual, healthy growth of a plant, a hu- 
 man being or a community, is the only desirable growth. 
 "Make haste slowly," is usually a good motto to follow. 
 So far the South's increase has been devoid of phenomena, 
 but the continued gain year after year has brought it in 
 the past generation to a commanding position and to a plane 
 where the promise of the future is greater than the achieve- 
 ment of the past. To win all that is implied in that promise, 
 it is only necessary for the South to proceed along the safe 
 lines of conservative and steady effort to make workers, 
 not machines to build character, not bauble reputation. 
 Then will all the good and desirable things be added to her 
 for her own glory and for the well-being of generations 
 yet unborn. 
 
THE RELATIONS OF 
 
 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 The great prince of peace, at the mention of whose name 
 every head should bow and every knee bend is credited with 
 having said to the Jews which believed on him, "If ye 
 continue in my word, then are ye my disciples, and ye shall 
 know the truth and the truth shall make you free." 
 
 On this glad day set apart by the representatives of a 
 free government, in order that American toilers might 
 appropriately commemorate whatever advance they have 
 made in the direction of higher standards of living and 
 higher ideals of citizenship, we should ponder well the as- 
 surances of the Savior : "If ye continue in my word, ye 
 shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
 On this happy occasion, my fellow citizens, I desire to apply 
 these divine words to the relations that you and all of us 
 bear to the true spirit of unionism. I desire also, with 
 genuine pride as an American citizen, to rejoice with you 
 in whatever advance has been made as the result of organ- 
 ized labor, and, under the changed conditions, to point out, 
 without offense, our duties and our dangers. The repre- 
 sentatives of American capital can ask no greater boon 
 than the fulfillment of the hopes and promises of the 
 founders of unionism, viz., the advancement of the toiling 
 masses to higher standards of living and to higher concep- 
 tions of citizenship. By keeping your eye firmly fixed on 
 these high and worthy aims of true unionism ; by bending 
 every noble energy to attain them, you will prove your- 
 selves true unionists ; you will show yourself to be true 
 American patriots ; you will know the truth indeed and the 
 truth will make you free. And unless you attain to these 
 high aims your progress in organization will have been 
 made in vain ; the highest possible scale of wages will do 
 you no good, and the eight-hour law will prove to be a 
 curse instead of a blessing. For assuredly if higher wages 
 do not mean greater comforts and opportunities for your 
 
 *An address delivered under the auspices of the Federation of 
 Labor, on Labor Day, Sept. 3, 1900, at Springfield, 111. 
 
 75 
 
76 Papers and Addresses 
 
 wives and children ; if the added hours of leisure are not 
 used wisely, it were better that your wages had remained 
 low and your hours of leisure were reduced. These may 
 not be pleasant truths to some of you, but I believe there 
 are tens of thousands of high-minded laborers and hundreds 
 of thousands of good women and promising children who 
 w r ill thank me for having spoken them. 
 
 Two Cardinal Truths. 
 
 I should be unworthy to stand here as a representative 
 of the capital class; I should show scant courtesy to your 
 committee who have invited me to speak on the relations 
 of capital and labor, did I not weigh well my every utter- 
 ance and speak the truth at this time as I would speak 
 it if this moment was my last. I might tell you only 
 pleasant things and so for the time being please you and 
 win your applause, but in the end I should thus injure you 
 and the cause you have at heart, and so deserve your 
 contempt. You know_ full well that the man who would 
 use the present occasion to tell you that the laborer is 
 always right and his employer is always wrong, is not 
 your friend. He is rather a mischief maker and a self- 
 seeking demagogue who feeds and grows fat upon human 
 strife and the consequent misfortunes of his fellows. Equal- 
 ly to be despised are they who ignore the rights of the 
 toiling masses, or who, having ears, hear not ; having eyes, 
 see not. As for those timid representatives of capital, they 
 who see in trades unionism a roaring lion at the end of 
 every lane, I would not worry about them. They are not 
 hostile to you, but are simply over-conservative, and so they 
 are slow to adopt new ideas. Rely upon reason and example 
 to win them over to these modern ideas, for as you well 
 know, every reform is attended alike with difficulties and 
 with mistakes, and the reform inaugurated by the cham- 
 pions of the cause of labor is no exception to the common 
 rule. They can see no excuse for or justice in violence, 
 which unfortunately has been too common, and as all re- 
 forms founded upon and prosecuted in a spirit of frank- 
 ness, fairness and love have survived and their principles 
 are eternal, so, too, your reform must have as its founda- 
 tion stones justice and right if the gulf that yawns between 
 capital and labor is to be forever closed, and universal 
 recognition is to be given to true unionism. There are 
 two cardinal truths which I desire to impress upon the 
 
Relations of Capital and Labor 77 
 
 representatives of both capital and labor, and which, if 
 kept in mind, will make their reconciliation easy. These are : 
 
 i st. That capital legitimately employed is entitled to 
 the protection of the laborer and to the protection of the 
 law. 
 
 2nd. That labor honestly performed is entitled to its 
 full reward, and that the conditions surrounding the labor- 
 er and his family shall be consistent with the demands of 
 modern civilization. 
 
 From these truths what conclusion is to be drawn, and 
 these truths being admitted what is our duty in the prem- 
 ises? Certainly the conclusion to be drawn is, that capital 
 and labor are mutually dependent, and that therefore each 
 owes to the other a solemn duty. This duty is embodied 
 in the two cardinal truths I have just endeavored to enun- 
 ciate, imposing at the same time upon both the still higher 
 duty of preserving at all hazards peace and order, and of 
 enforcing observance of the laws and respect for the con- 
 stituted authority of our land. But if it happen that either 
 capital or labor have a grievance growing out of the in- 
 sufficiency or inadequacy of our laws, then change those 
 laws in the manner prescribed by the constitution of the 
 state or nation, and not otherwise. Rest assured that no 
 cause can triumph on American soil, be it the cause of con- 
 solidated capital or of organized labor, if that cause is in 
 any sense opposed to the spirit of free institutions, and 
 even if that cause seem ever so worthy, public sympathy 
 will be withdrawn, if to achieve it we ignore the examples 
 of our Fathers, or depart from the principles for which 
 they struggled in the infancy of the republic. Thank God, 
 no cause can long survive in this free land unless it have 
 public sympathy and public opinion on its side, and depend 
 upon it also, that no question is ever settled until it is set- 
 tled rightly. Consolidated capital by reason of greater 
 wealth, or organized labor because of superior numbers 
 may triumph for a season, but it is only a question of a little 
 time until old wounds shall bleed afresh and capital and 
 labor shall become more estranged than ever, unless their 
 differences are settled by a standard that no fair man can 
 dispute. 
 
 Honest Praise and Honest Criticism. 
 
 On this day, therefore, set apart in the interest and in 
 honor of organized labor, I feel we should be honest in 
 
78 Papers and Addresses 
 
 our praise and fair in our criticism of the interests, which 
 in a sense, we respectively and at the same time jointly 
 represent. It is the proper time for capital and labor to 
 realize that the great labor problem is the problem of our 
 times; that it is the problem that affects us as does no 
 other one before the American people; that it is the one 
 problem we shall have with us always, or at least until 
 it is rightly solved and until the true relations of capital 
 and labor are fully established and universally recognized. 
 I congratulate organized labor upon its part thus far in 
 solving it, and upon its marvelous growth, and in wishing 
 it ever increasing prosperity, let me warn you that it needs 
 something more than numbers and power. Your organi- 
 zation is already powerful, but something besides numbers 
 and organization is necessary. You need discipline, and 
 underlying discipline high character is imperatively de- 
 manded. Abave all else wise leadership is necessary and 
 you can't all lead, nor can you all tell exactly how you shall 
 be led. Choose, then, as your officials, as your leaders, 
 your best men ; trust them, heed their counsel, make them 
 strong and wise by following them with confidence and 
 submission, and your success is assured. In no other way 
 is it possible. In no other way can you bring out the quali- 
 ties of leadership. Officials who go around with their ear 
 to the ground as do some public men in America are 
 only demagogues ; they are only time servers ; they are ad- 
 vocates of the cause of labor for revenue only, or for office 
 only. 
 
 Character Makes Triumph Sure. 
 
 No, my fellow citizens, it is not numbers, nor organiza- 
 tion, nor power that will make you truly strong, or great, or 
 make your triumph sure. It is character ; it is the lives you 
 lead; it is fidelity to your wives and duty nobly done in 
 behalf of your children, that will tell in the long run, and 
 will achieve everything you can reasonably desire. Let 
 your individual example of sobriety, industry and thrift, 
 your comfortable homes and happy families, be so striking 
 in their superiority that every toiler now without the fold 
 will seek admission to your union. You have then only to 
 open your ranks and they will come in. Thus they will be 
 doing what you desire of them ; labor will then be united 
 indeed ; reverence for things sacred will be re-established ; 
 authority will be recognized, the laws obeyed, and peace 
 
Relations of Capital and Labor 79 
 
 and plenty secured for all who labor, whether that labor be 
 of the hand or of the brain. Then, too, let me confidently 
 assure you, that employers of labor everywhere will not 
 only approve of the union, but they will gladly urge their 
 employees to enter it, and more than this, organized capital 
 everywhere will be happy to recognize organized labor and 
 treat with it on terms of equality and fairness. 
 
 When, then, we arrive at this advanced stage of civili- 
 zation, which I am optimist enough to fondly believe is 
 not far distant, we shall never hear of strikes, and only oc- 
 casionally will there be need for arbitration, all differences 
 and disputes being settled in a practical, common sense 
 and manly way, viz., by conciliation. Indulge me while 
 I give briefly my ideas of the different methods of settling 
 disputes between employer and emplo) e. 
 
 To try to compel settlement by a strike is simply to test 
 the power of intimidation and force on the one hand, 
 against money and endurance on the other, and in the con- 
 flict of the two it is always might that triumphs, and while 
 it is not claimed that right is not sometimes, or often even, 
 on the side of might it is only because the two are united 
 that justice prevails. 
 
 Settlement by arbitration is, in the main, a compromise 
 of interests, each party reluctantly yielding something to 
 re-establish peaceful relations, at the same time often secur- 
 ing only half justice to either party to the contest. 
 
 Settlement by conciliation is the common sense applica- 
 tion of the golden rule to differences or disputes arising 
 between employer and employe, and differences or dis- 
 putes so settled are founded upon what each side finally 
 concedes to be right. 
 
 The Illinois Plan. 
 
 Some of you no doubt know, and to those who do not 
 know it, I rejoice to tell it, that the United Mine Workers 
 of Illinois and the Illinois Coal Operators' Association, 
 have resolved to adopt the common sense, manly plan of 
 adjusting all differences between coal operators and coal 
 miners, of taking them up and considering them in a spirit 
 of fairness, and of adjusting them upon their merits solely, 
 and if their success of the past three months continues in 
 the future we shall hear no more of angry strikes in the 
 state of Illinois. 
 
 I rejoice to tell you that this movement has been met 
 
8o Papers and Addresses 
 
 by all classes everywhere with favor and it has received 
 their hearty approval. Is it too much to expect, or at least 
 to hope, that the same sensible plan will be universally 
 adopted, thus uniting capital and labor for the wise and 
 happy ends designed by the Creator? 
 
 But why not give to this movement the approval and 
 support of every citizen? Does it not deserve it? Was 
 it not conceived in a spirit of justice and fairness? Was 
 it not born of the necessities of our times? Can it mean 
 anything else than that we are resolved to render unto cap- 
 ital what it capital's and unto labor what is labor's? By 
 this plan do we not insure protection and profit to the one, 
 and employment and fair wages to the other? Does it not 
 restore peace where there was discord? Does it not en- 
 courage and exact fair dealing among men? Does it not 
 give to organized labor the recognition it asks and to capital 
 the consideration it deserves? Who, then, will have the 
 temerity to oppose a movement designed for your advance- 
 ment, and for ours, to higher standards of living and to 
 higher ideals of citizenship? 
 
 For one, my heart is in this work, and I fondly believe 
 it has the support of the wisest leaders of labor and the 
 fairest representatives of capital in free America. To- 
 gether let us all labor for a cause, which, if it succeeds, 
 and succeed it must, will contribute to the realization of 
 our highest hopes and add honor and glory to the American 
 name. Then, indeed, we shall realize the full meaning of 
 those sublime words, "If ye continue in my word,, ye shall 
 know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
 
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