The Labor Secretary and 
 Labor Questions 
 
 The last Congress created a Department of Labor and 
 made its head a member of the President's Cabinet. To the 
 new department were transferred the Bureaus of Immigra- 
 tion, Naturalization and Labor Statistics, and it was 
 empowered to offer its good offices to conciliate and mediate 
 in labor disputes. 
 
 Immediately upon the election of President Wilson it 
 became publicly apparent that the Federation of Labor had a 
 candidate for the new Cabinet position in the person of 
 Congressman Wilson, then Chairman of the House Com- 
 mittee on Labor and former Secretary -Treasurer of the Mine 
 Workers. Mr. Gompers had made it evident in the editorial 
 columns of the “American Federationist” that Mr. Wilson’s 
 selection was due to the Federation and its executive com- 
 mittee recently gave the President formal thanks for this 
 appointment. 
 
 It was not to the discredit of Mr. Wilson that he had 
 been a prominent trade unionist, and it was very greatly to 
 his credit that having been born on foreign soil and worked 
 as a miner in the depths of the earth he was invited to 
 become the counsellor of the President. But we venture to 
 suggest that it is quite one thing for a Cabinet officer to sym- 
 pathize with his former associates or any legitimate special 
 interest with which he has been formerly associated and 
 
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quite another to either use or promise to use the powers of 
 his new office for the peculiar advancement of their interests 
 or to procure them special privileges in the administration of 
 the law. A public servant, whatever his antecedents, can 
 neither continue to be a corporation counsel nor a labor 
 union agent without violating his oath of office. 
 
 The country has severely criticized the conduct of public 
 men whose actions have justified the belief that they have 
 continued to serve a private client under the mask of a public 
 title. It is for this reason that the first public utterances and 
 actions of a high official, whose past has been peculiarly 
 identified with a special interest, attract especial attention. 
 Secretary Wilson crossed the continent to address the Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labor at Seattle. His appearance was 
 visible evidence of the power of that organization to create 
 a Cabinet place and fill it. His utterances should enable the 
 country to understand whether he realizes that he is the 
 representative of all American labor or only that small part 
 of it to the exercise of whose highly organized influence he 
 owes his elevation. 
 
 His first statement, that his department, as now directed, 
 would co-operate with a trade union movement in its effort 
 to elevate the standard of human society, might well be 
 accepted as a proper expression of willingness to aid legitimate 
 unionism in every laudable effort, but his second declaration 
 is that of an apostle of the closed shop, who offers his office 
 to force an un-American creed upon unwilling converts. 
 
 Emphasizing his important duty to appoint Commissioners 
 of Conciliation in trade disputes, he said : 
 
 “There can be no mediation, there can be no 
 conciliation between employers and employes 
 that does not presuppose collective bargaining, 
 and there cannot be collective bargaining that 
 does not presuppose trade unionism.” 
 
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 If this possesses any logical meaning it indicates that the 
 Secretary of Labor believes that the first duty of his office in 
 every trade dispute is to proselytize for the benefit of the 
 union engaged therein. If a portion, however large, of the 
 employes affected by a dispute desire to remain at work, 
 individually or by an agreement that affects themselves alone, 
 the logic of the Secretary’s statement requires that he shall 
 use the. forces of his Department and his personal influence, 
 or that of his agents, to secure accessions to the ranks of the 
 strikers, if they be trade unionists. 
 
 This conclusion is not left to this declaration alone. It is 
 confirmed by an express attitude of mind, by further circum- 
 stantial statements and by a reiteration of the stock phrases of 
 closed shop unionism which can lead the reader to but one 
 judgment— that the Secretary of Labor embraces the peculiar 
 fallacies of the Gompersian school and regards the office 
 which he occupies as a legislative creation for the furtherance 
 of closed shop militant unionism. 
 
 He even appears to regard the Federation of Labor as 
 entitled to his pre-judgment in the subject matter of industrial 
 investigations committed to his charge. He informs them in 
 the course of his address as “a bit of confidence” his conclu- 
 sions respecting a corporation which his agents had incident- 
 ally examined in the course of the miners' strike now raging 
 in the Michigan copper country. He informs his hearers that 
 one copper mining corporation had made $200,000,000 in 
 actual profits in forty -two years on an investment of 
 
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 $1,250,000, and intimates that they underpay their work- 
 men because they refused to accept the suggestions of his 
 own Department or to meet a committee of the Western 
 Federation of Miners as a self -constituted spokesman for its 
 own employes. As a great metropolitan paper has pointed 
 out, the Secretary has chosen an exceptional instance of 
 successful enterprise and given it the appearance of a general 
 
rule. Anticipating the official report, it was his duty in justice 
 to both the mine owners and the public to give the whole 
 truth. He flung this fragment of his investigations to the 
 passion of a prejudiced audience, neglecting to state that the 
 entire copper industry in the district shows that only fourteen 
 mines have paid back the money invested, but that labor 
 always got its wages though the investor pocketed losses, and 
 with the exception of the phenomenal mine, which was the 
 subject of his illustration, the others showed $78,300,000 of 
 assessments against a total of $82,000,000 in dividends. 
 
 To say the least, the spectacle of a Cabinet officer 
 becoming a special pleader against the victim of his investi- 
 gation will not impress eirher employers or the public with 
 the impartiality of an official who uses carefully selected 
 excerpts from unpublished reports to feed industrial prejudice. 
 
 The gentleman’s philosophy is as strange as his figures. 
 The Vice-President of the United States astonished the 
 country by declaring to a New York audience that legis- 
 latures could destroy the right to inherit. Mr. Wilson, taking 
 a more advanced position, announces that the legislature is 
 the author of the right to possess and that all title to property 
 is held at the will of lawmakers, a singular and astounding 
 doctrine which the founders of this government went out of 
 their way to condemn by announcing that men were pos- 
 sessed of certain “inalienable” rights, among which were the 
 rights of life, liberty and property. Most of us have believed 
 that man existed before government. Mr. Wilson’s theory is 
 that he came afterwards. Every form of civil society of 
 which history has record is supposed to have been created to 
 preserve the individual and his possessions. Our own 
 government was especially devised to secure him, in his 
 person and the fruits of his labor, not only against his fellows 
 but against his own governmental agencies. 
 
 Perhaps the Secretary of Labor has never learned to 
 
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distinguish between the power which society exercises under 
 certain conditions to regulate the use and alienation of 
 property and the right to despoil the individual and take 
 what he has either for itself or some individual. 
 
 “Law,” Mr. Wilson tells his fellow unionists, 
 “created titles not primarily for the welfare of 
 the man to whom it conveys it, but for the wel- 
 fare of the community. Society has conceived, 
 whether rightfully or wrongfully, that the best 
 method of promoting the welfare of society is to 
 convey titles to individuals in real estate and 
 personal effects.” 
 
 It would be interesting to have the Secretary point out 
 any instance, in the beginning of this government or since, 
 when it conveyed any title, real estate or personal effects, to 
 anybody, except when it happened to transfer a part of the 
 public domain or dispose of the second-hand furniture in 
 some unnecessary office. Historically and morally the 
 citizen and his property existed before this government and 
 he created this government to protect himself and that which 
 was his. He does not derive his title to his possessions from 
 his government. His rights existed before he formed a 
 government. The Constitution recognizes but does not 
 create his rights. The gentleman has merely fallen into the 
 common error of his former associates whose various legisla- 
 tive proposals, many of them introduced by himself, have so 
 frequently indicated that they believe a law-making body 
 can do anything. So that those who have the votes would 
 only find it necessary to exert their political influence through 
 legislative agents and deprive a large portion of the public 
 from the protection of themselves and their property to which 
 the law of the land entitles them. In addition to this unique 
 contribution to our political philosophy the Secretary of Labor 
 lets it be known that he is against all attempts to break strikes, 
 
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which, of course, indicates his belief that every strike is 
 necessarily right and every employer who does not immedi- 
 ately accede to any demands of his organized employes is 
 necessarily wrong, a condition of mind which admirably 
 qualifies the distinguished Cabinet officer for his duties as an 
 impartial investigator. 
 
 He did not, of course, point out that many of his 
 employes and agents are former labor union officials, and 
 that the Department of Labor had, for instance, sent one 
 Mr. John Moffett, former president of the International 
 Hatters’ Union, and their agent in the famous Danbury 
 boycort, to investigate the Indianapolis street car strike. 
 The humor of such a selection would have been peculiarly 
 manifest to the audience he was addressing. They would 
 have been highly entertained by the spectacle of Mr. 
 Moffett, with his well-known views, gravely balancing the 
 claims of the Traction Company and its employes, and 
 meditating in profound impartiality the assertion of the 
 company that it was entitled to operate an open shop and 
 employ any citizen, whether or not he was the possessor of a 
 license to work from a local organization of self-constituted 
 judges of the right of the unorganized portion of the com- 
 munity to earn its living. The Secretary finally informed his 
 hearers that he would use every power of his Department 
 to prevent men who protested against unfair employers from 
 being crushed beneath their power, a laudable and just 
 declaration. One looks in vain, however, through this 
 frankly partisan address for any declaration that the Depart- 
 ment of Labor will protect the unorganized worker against 
 the “crushing power” and violent methods of his organized 
 fellow. 
 
 The Secretary of Labor sat at the right hand of his 
 former associate who, twice convicted of defiant diso- 
 bedience of judicial authority, still proclaims that Congress 
 
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must legalize the boycott condemned by every court of last 
 resort and by the continuing moral sense of every generation 
 of English-speaking people. Among the delegates before 
 him the Secretary doubtless recognized three familiar faces 
 of officials convicted by a farmer jury at Indianapolis of that 
 atrocious conspiracy to uplift by dynamite, which shocked our 
 country with every line of its revelations. The Secretary 
 finds much to condemn in the alleged abuses of the employer. 
 But this representative of the American workman, speaking 
 to an organization, numbering in its membership many whose 
 recent crimes outraged every sense of decency, will find no 
 word of condemnation for those who use intimidation and 
 force to compel the acceptance of their demands or who seek 
 exemption from the general laws of the country, or who 
 make membership in their associations the prerequisite to the 
 earning of a living for themselves or those dependent upon 
 them. 
 
 The first public utterance of the Secretary of Labor does 
 not inspire confidence in his capacity for his position. 
 
 Announcing a philosophy that is in contradiction to the 
 established principles of the people whose servant he is, he 
 presents himself in the guise of a partisan, assuring his late 
 associates that he regards his elevation to high office as an 
 opportunity to further their special interests. He reveals 
 himself to be not the servant and spokesman of the working- 
 man of America but the business agent in office of American 
 closed shop trade unionism. 
 
 WILLIAM H. BARR, 
 President, 
 
 National Founders’ Association. 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y . 
 
 November 20, 1913. 
 
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