Labor Unions and the State Police

Some days ago newspaper despatches reported that during the recent car strike in Schenectady, N. Y., one of the unions there passed a resolution expressing the determination that no member of a trades

union should belong to the National Guard. This has not unreasonably been interpreted, by those who see great danger in the unregulated social and political power of trades-unions, to mean that labor organizations are in spirit, if not in fact, opposed to law and order as represented by the State militia, which is virtually a State police. The Editors of The Outlook wrote to Schenectady and asked a trusted, competent correspondent to endeavor to find out the grounds stated by the leaders of the union for their action in this respect. We comment elsewhere on his illuminating and interesting reply, which is as follows: Several men have been interviewed in the attempt to answer your questions fairly. One is the President of the Trades Assembly, and the others are both leaders and laymen. These men all agree in the main contention that unionism stands insistently for arbitration. This being a leading article in its creed, it protests vigorously against all introduction of armed force in the settlement of labor difficulties. Unions do not stand for riot. All the labor men I have met are emphatic in saying that it was for their interest that strikes should be settled peaceably. Every disorder in a strike prejudices the public against the unions and sets back the result aimed at a wider prosperity and a higher standard of living for all workmen. They feel that much more of disorder could be suppressed by local authority than is usually the case, and that employers and owners are over-ready to call out the Guardsmen, nominally to suppress riot, actually to intimidate the workmen, prejudice the public against the strikers, and break down the solidarity of labor. You ask whether this is a sporadic movement on the part of the local assembly, or whether it is an old sentiment. In answer I am told that it dates back to the Homestead strike. Calling out the military in Buffalo, Chicago, Brooklyn, Coeur d'Alene, Albany, Pennsylvania, and recently at Glens Falls, to union men means that in some way unionism must protest against the introduction of armed force in settling labor disputes except under the extremest provocation. They insist that property in labor is as sacred as property in material things, and that if one is to be guarded by force the other must as well. There is the heartiest approval of the action of the Mayor of San Francisco in refusing to allow street-car owners to use armed deputies,

under the argument that if one side used force the other had an equal right, but that he did mission. It will be remembered that that strike not propose that either should have that perwas settled inside of a week, and without disorder.

Labor in the present instance is taking arbitration is its insistence on an impartial exactly the same ground. Its insistence on hearing. A refusal to treat with the men is met on their part with a strike order, which, When the response is hiring outside men and translated, means, "We insist on a hearing." calling in the military force, nominally to protect property, actually to safeguard its own action in hiring strike-breakers and refusing to even consider real or fancied grievances, labor unionism from this standpoint of interpretation is entirely consistent in taking such action as will guard against dividing its own house and having some of its own men put under arms against its own cause. For it must be clearly realized that the issue is not a refusal of labor men to do police duty against rioters, even if they are the irresponsible men from whom no union is wholly free. It is not a far cry to the time when unions will offer picked men to act as deputies in protecting property from rioters. But the real issue here is that unionism never will permit its men to act either as deputies or Guardsmen in protecting men hired to take their own places. The so-called eleventh commandment-Thou shalt not take thy neighbor's job-has in the present stage of labor evolution an authority almost sacred. The action of this Trades Assembly is but a modification-Thou shalt not take a gun and stand guard over the man who is taking thy neighbor's job.

Nor is this commandment indefensible. The industries of this city represent men brought from the whole world. The following countries are represented in this city, according to the last census: Africa 1, Asia 1, Atlantic Islands 5, Austria 74, Bohemia 8, English Canadian 282, French Canadian 157, Central America 4, China born 18, Cuba 17, Denmark 60, England 632, Finland 1, France 18, Germany 2,316, Greece 11, Holland 12, Hungary 69, India 3, Ireland 1,103, Italy 607, Japan 5, Mexico 1, Norway 11, Poland (Austria) 61, Poland (German) 305, Poland (Russia) 137, Scotland 242, South America 3, Spain 3, Sweden 136, Switzerland 81, Turkey 3, Wales 20, West Indies 2, other countries 6. There are men here from forty-four different States of the Union-2,000 from Massachusetts alone. Under these conditions there is a certain sacred obligation on the part of the corporations doing business here toward their employees, which is being recognized constantly, and in the event of trouble would come prominently to the front. With such conditions, in lesser degree wherever men are employed, unionism feels that a refusal to confer with employees is well-nigh criminal,

and efforts to break strikes with armed force, without exhausting the possibilities of arbitration, are to be met with rigid measures. As a choice between the two masters, peaceful arbitration and armed force, labor unions have chosen the former.

So far as I can learn, no union debars constitutionally National Guardsmen from membership. Men are carefully questioned, however, as to their position in the matter, and some have been admitted here whose terms of service were nearly over. The action

of the Trades Assembly, it is admitted,

can be nothing more than a recommendation, with the probability that it will not be heard from within any of the unions. The action was doubtless inspired by the presence of one of the Glens Falls strikers at this meeting, at which also $100 was voted towards those strikers. Back of probable hot-headedness was, however, the wish to bring clearly to notice the fact that unions are not going to enter military service so long as that force is used to aid in breaking strikes. The Hudson Valley road has now consented to arbitrate, and seems to admit there having been a real grievance. The equipment was wretched and accidents were inevitable. The road was

bankrupt and has just changed hands. The commonwealth ought to have interfered long ago. As it is, the point made by the unions that arbitration was possible seems to have been established. W. B. ALLIS.

What Are the Facts?

To the Editors of The Outlook:

If you have any desire to retain the respect of your subscribers in the coal regions, you will send your editorial writer up here and instruct him to learn something of the actual conditions prevailing in this region. It is a very easy matter to sit in your New York office and write that the coal operators and the metropolitan newspapers have exaggerated the amount of crime and violence in the strike centers, but it is not the truth, and your readers want truth, not guesswork. Crimes are not always committed in the daylight, criminals do not always publish their misdeeds, the victims of their cowardly assaults, intimidations, and threats hesitate to disclose their troubles for fear that their persecutors may make things ten times worse than before, and the result is that not one-fourth of the outrages reach the public ear and eye. Our local newspapers are afraid to record, much less condemn, these outrages which are occurring daily around us, for fear of losing subscribers or advertisers.

This is no time for such articles as Wom 's Visit to the Coal Fields."

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take it that if Miss Fallows should walk through the streets of New York she would write that vice and crime had no place in that city.

And as for your statement that there is no evidence that these crimes of violence have been promoted, or encouraged, or are approved by Mr. Mitchell or the United Mine Workers, when read by the

people of this community it simply pro

vokes mirth.

There are hundreds of

mine workers who have been arrested for various crimes connected with the strike, and many more whose complicity in these crimes is known, but who have not been arrested because, even though their guilt were proven by evidence, it would be next to impossible to find a jury in this county that would convict them. Crimes have been planned at meetings of local unions, and carried out by officers and men alike; non-union men have been dragged in and compelled to swear allegiance to the union, letters threatening the destruction of life and property have been sent out signed by officers of locals, and efforts to ferret out and arrest the guilty parties have, in many cases, been thwarted by burgesses, constables, and other officers of the law. Conspiracy is a difficult thing to prove at best, and it would of course be difficult to directly prove Mr. Mitchell's complicity in these outrages. But has Mitchell ever done anything more than deprecate lawbreaking in the abstract? Has he ever specifically condemned rioting, assault, intimidation, or boycotting? Has he ever expelled, suspended, or even reprimanded any member of the union guilty of one of these crimes? Has he ever assisted in the apprehension of the guilty parties? On the contrary, he has condemned in most intemperate language the Citizens' Alliance, composed of several thousand of the best citizens of this community, whose sole object, as he well knows, is to uphold law and order.

Personally, I hold the opinion that the miners have no grievances of sufficient importance to entitle them to victory in the present strike; that their stubborn fight is due, not to a feeling that their cause is just, but to loyalty to their union and to a reliance upon its strength and power. I am also of the opinion that the miners do not deserve to win this strike, even though their grievances were of some

importance, because of their un-American conduct both before and since the strike, in denying to men the right to work except in obedience to and under the direction of their union, and because of the boycotting, rioting, intimidation, and violence which they have resorted to since the strike began, in their mistaken idea that "might makes right," and that "the end justifies the means."

If you purpose to publish further articles upon the coal strike, please get your facts from an authentic source.

Wilksbarre, Pa.

LAWRENCE B. Jones.

[We publish this letter primarily because it emphasizes and enforces the public demand for a determination of all the questions at issue between the parties by an impartial tribunal. One of the questions at issue is exactly this: Whether the violence in the coal fields has been promoted, and, if not promoted, encouraged and approved, by the United Mine Workers or not. Our correspondent says it has; the operators told the President it had; Mr. Mitchell said it had not. Mr. Mitchell offered to leave all the questions at issue-and this was one of the questions at issue—to an impartial tribunal to be appointed by the President, and the operators refused the proffer. When one of the parties to a controversy accuses the other party of instigating, encouraging, or even approving acts of criminal violence, and the other party denies the accusation and offers to have it submitted to an impartial tribunal, and the accuser refuses to go before such a tribunal for the purpose of making its accusation good, the presumption is that the accused is innocent and the accusation is unjust.

Since that refusal another basis for arbitration has been suggested by the operators, has been modified by the President, and has been accepted by both parties. If the facts are as the operators charge, they now have an opportunity to make good their charges. It is for them to show the truth of the allegation that the United Mine Workers is an irresponsible organization, that it did not keep its contracts after it had made them, that it did not represent the great body of mine workers, that it terrorized them and drove them from the

mines; if the operators can substantiate these charges, they will deal the United Mine Workers a blow from which it can never recover; if they cannot substantiate these charges, they should not have made them.—THE EDITORS.]

What is a Monopoly?

To the Editors of The Outlook:

In one of your valuable articles on trusts you say the inherent evil in them is the monopoly, which makes it impossible for free men to compete in the labor market.

Has it occurred to you that perhaps the chief evil lies in the fact that the monopoly is consummated for the benefit of a half-dozen men instead of for all the citizens of the Republic? Is not our postal system a complete monopoly of letter-carrying? and was there not a time when hundreds of men had large establishments of mail coaches and horses, whose business was ruined when the people decided to run it themselves? But how many regard the monopoly as an evil when nearly eighty millions of people all over our land share the benefit of having their letters carried for two cents instead of twenty-five? There was undoubtedly seeming injustice done when the lawmakers said to the former coachowners, "You shall not go on with your business any longer, for it is not for our interest." They might justly have cried, Are we not free men? Are these not our own horses, and have we not established our own business?—just as the coal operators are saying now.

The fact is, we are none of us free men, and the more highly civilized any nation becomes, the less individual freedom it possesses, until now I may not spit where I want to. I may not cast my torn envelope in the street. I may not build a house, nay, even a chicken-coop, without the consent of my neighbors the aldermen. Having built my house and opened a saloon, I am commanded to close it-if in a no-license community. If it is for the benefit of my townsmen, I cannot even keep them from running a railroad right through my property, and smashing my home to bits.

We live in an era when "the greatest good to the greatest number, for the long

est time" is accepted as an axiom in many courts, and should be in all.

How many would object to the sugar monopoly if the profits were shared between the whole people in the shape of lower prices, instead of going into the pockets of a few millionaires? The "inherent evil" would not exist, any more than it does in our postal system or in Germany's railroad system or England's telephone system. Supposing the same men who now manage the Standard Oil Company were kept in charge by the Government which bought it and paid handsome salaries to run it successfully, but the dividends turned over to the people in the shape of oil at seven cents instead of eleven cents the gallon. Do you not think the "inherent evil" would fade out of sight.

No, the "inherent evil" lies in the private ownership of things which minister to the comfort and happiness of us all, and until those laws permitting it are changed, we, the public, must all be slaves to the will of a few men who have been intellectually powerful enough to grasp and keep the desirable products in their own hands, just as the old feudal lords were physically strong enough to rob their fellows. Then bodily strength meant the right to keep what they stole. Now we have risen so that our laws do not protect those who are physically mighty, but only those possessing mental power. I have faith that the day will come when our people will combine for the benefit of all in producing and distributing every good thing in existence, just as now some enlightened communities do with water, light, transportation, and shelter; but until that day comes, let us combine to protect the weak from the unscrupulous strong ones of the land. Yours truly,

The Tax on Art

To the Editors of The Outlook:

It occurs to me that The Outlook has a good chance to keep up its hammering on the question of the tariff on works of art, taking as an object lesson the recent purchase by Mrs. Roosevelt of a set of White House china which is to be made by the Wedgwood Pottery in England. Our potteries here are not in a position to advance along the line of artistic work which the potteries have on the other side, for the reason that our museums contain very little if any of the works of art made by the old English and Continental potteries. The only collection that we have here of any importance is the one in the Princeton Museum, and it cannot be compared in an artistic way with the numerous collections in various parts of England and the Continent. The pottery made one hundred years ago was decorated by artists, not by ordinary pottery painters, and the beautiful work which is turned out on the other side of the water is almost all copied both in form and design from the works of potteries long since gone out of existence. The design which was selected undoubtedly was submitted by the Wedgwoods owing to the fact that the British museums are filled with pottery decorated with crests and coats of arms. Hence it is very natural that, having these examples constantly before them, it seemed most fitting to this firm that the china to be used at the White House should have the design taken from the Seal of the United States. It is also interesting to note that some of the pieces of the socalled Lowestoft china imported into this country in the early days of the Republic had the crude representation of this same design. Of course, our museums will never obtain the fine collections which the British museums have, because the old pottery is in great demand on the other side of the water and sells at prices which an American collector cannot afford to pay when he has to pay in addition sixty per cent. to the home government. All the fine collections in the English museums have been the result of years of work of collectors who have finally given these collections to their own museums. Cannot American collectors be given an equal opportunity? COLLECTOR.