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and restricts the ratio to the journeymen; it requires three, four, or five years of apprenticeship, and enjoins the journeymen to aid and instruct the apprentice. It prohibits the employer from keeping the apprentice at one operation, but requires, as do the machinists, that the employer shall change him to another machine every six months. The object is twofold: the number of apprentices is limited in order that the trade may not be overcrowded and wages reduced; and an all-round education of the apprentice is stipulated in order that the union man may become a better mechanic than the non-union man. These are undoubted restrictions on the employer; they prevent him from specializing his workmen and adopting that minute division of la bor which the economist sets forth as a fruitful instrument of wealth-production. But it is evident that they are necessary to the existence of the union, that their motive is self-protection, and that, by way of a method immediately restrictive, their ultimate result is to raise the general efficiency of the union mechanic.

As regards profit-sharing, evidently the offer must come from the employers. It is one form of the inducements which they offer to their managers and workers to engage more actively in the production of wealth. It scarcely needs an association of the workmen, and, if it did, such an association would not be a trade union.

The only other form that a union could adopt in order, as an association, to promote production would be that of a cooperative society or corporation. Indeed, this is what almost every organized trade in the United States has done at one time or another in its history. The experiments have either failed or have been disasters if they succeeded. When the union takes the risks and responsibilities of production, it becomes, not a co-operator with the employer, but a competitor. Herein is failure. If it succeeds, then it raises up in its own ranks an element interested in profits rather than wages. This element becomes exclusive, treats its fellow-members as employees, hires outsiders if it can get them cheaper, and, sooner or later, goes over to the other employers or is expelled by such remnant of the union as survives. The molders and the coopers have furnished illustrious warnings of this kind to unions not to engage in production, with its motive of profits. By painful experiment, or by the experience of others, the unions have generally come to the point of confining their attention to wages-that is to distribution-leaving to employers the questions of production. This may be unfortunate. The resulting policies may seem unreasonable, If so, it is because industrial conditions have

separated those interested in the production of wealth from those interested in its distribution. The labor union is a protest on the part of the latter. Its policies. are necessarily restrictive, but the restrictions vary in extent, partly with the extent to which the separation has been carried, partly with the extent to which the union dominates. Where the separation has been bridged by conciliation or where the union has been weakened or suppressed, the restrictions have been lessened, but their essential restrictiveness remains in the very protective nature of the trade union itself.

The methods of unions cannot be understood except in terms of conflict. This is true not only of strikes but also of the methods used to retain the winnings of strikes. The conflict continues after the strike is won. Consequently, to the experienced members, more important than wages is the preservation of their union. New and inexperienced unions fall in pieces after a strike is won. Their members have a juvenile faith in promises. But with experience they learn that it is the union rather than the promises that they must rely upon. Take the minimum wage. The employer agrees to pay not less than a certain amount by the day or hour. But the agreement is not a contract in law. It cannot be enforced in court. It has probably been made under duress that is, under a strike or threat of a strike. Furthermore, it applies only to union members. If the employer agrees to pay it to non-members and if he lives up to his agreement, the state of conflict ceases and the union need go no further. This is the case with the railroad brotherhoods-the engineers, firemen, conductors and trainmen. They deal with corporations conducted like governments. Their scale of wages is like a legislative enactment fixing a uniform rate of pay for government employees over a vast area. scale is issued as a general order from the highest authority to all subordinates who hire and discharge these classes of employees. The positions themselves are well defined-there is but one man, and no chance to divide up his work among a set of helpers. The superintendent is not expected to pay less or to pay more, nor to change his force in order to get cheaper help. Years of experience have shown the railway brotherhoods that they can rely upon a promise so far removed as this one is from the ordinary treatment of labor as a commodity fluctuating upon demand and supply. A successful strike or threat is as good as a contract. Consequently the brotherhoods do not go further and demand that irritating restriction so naturally presented by employers, the "closed shop."

The

But take the building trades. Here the cardinal principle of unionism is the refusal to work with non-union men. The employer is restricted to those who are willing to join the union and whom the union is willing to admit. Waiving questions of law and ethics, look at the economics. Here is an industry decentralized to the furthest extent. A general contractor agrees to put up a building. He lets out most of the work in 10 to 30 sub-contracts by competition to the lowest bidders. These sub-contractors have little or no capital; their work is narrowly specialized; labor is their largest item of cost; they tend to become simply brokers on the labor market; their jobs last for but a few days or weeks; they hire men by the hour and lay them off on the half-hour, according to the weather or the supply of material or the progress of other trades. Here is the ideal labor market from the standpoint of demand and supply. It is like that of the bulls and bears in the wheat-pit, while railroad employment is like the market for postage stamps. It is not surprising that building mechanics are extreme and peremptory in their restrictions. Their minimum wage would be impossible if labor could be thrown in and out of this market at the will of the struggling brokers. Hence their insistence on the one great restriction that supports all others the closed shop. Their members they can control-they can fine, suspend, or expel the one who works for less than the minimum. But if the contractor is free to employ the expelled members, their discipline is gone. The contractor who can import and hire outsiders can get the contracts, and the others must do the same or lose the business. Sentiment is excluded, and the benevolent contractor must come down to the level of the lowest. Under these conditions the closed shop restriction is the necessary protection of the minimum wage.

Take machinery and the division of labor. The superficial effects of their introduction are well known. They increase the production of goods and decrease the cost. But there lurk in this statement two entirely opposite effects. One is the increase in the output of the workman, and the other is the substitution of cheap labor. Perhaps no mechanical invention has worked a greater revolution than the invention of the linotype in the printing trade. It has increased the speed of the operator at least fivefold. But it made possible a three months' apprenticeship of girls in place of a three years' apprenticeship of boys. Yet this substitution did not occur in newspaper offices, because the Typo

graphical Union was able to prevent the introduction of women. Consequently men were transferred to the machine, reducing their hours of labor from ten or twelve to seven and one-half or eight per day and increasing their wages. At the same time the cost of composition was reduced 80 per cent, and the size of papers was increased and their price was reduced. The benefit of the invention was thus distributed among the four parties to the transaction-to the inventor in royalties and dividends, to the publisher in profits, to the public in prices, and to the printer in wages. Thus the machine came in on its merits as a means of increasing speed and not as a means of substituting cheap labor.

The cigarmaking machines are different. They increase the rate of output not more that 50 per cent, and there are good cigarmakers whose speed on hand work is equal to that of the machine. The profit on these machines has come from the substitution of girls at $7 for men at $18. These machines come into the trade not as labor-saving but as wage-saving devices. The benefit does not go to the inventor, the manufacturer, and the consumer, but not to the workman. The Cigarmakers' Union has resisted them, and, though permitting its members to work on them, refuses to grant the union label to manufacturers using them. It may be said that the union made a mistake and should have welcomed these inventions as the printers welcomed the linotype. But there is a difference between welcoming a maIchine that lightens your work and welcoming one that takes your job. And the public, which, in its desire for cheap products, sees no distinction between an invention that shares its benefits with the workmen and one that makes their daughters their own competitors, is not a disinterested critic of the workman's restrictions on machinery. The linotype in newspaper offices is an exception to the rule. Skilled workmen in general have seen machinery and division of labor make way for girls and immigrants. The union opposition has been a losing fight. They have the consolation of cheaper products but this they cannot realize if they are displaced by cheaper labor.

So much for the introduction of machinery. When once introduced, instances may be found where unions stand in the way of their unrestricted output. These restrictions apply, however, to machines whose speed depends mainly on the work of the operator, and not to automatic machines. Thus the machinists' union hold to the one-manone-machine tradition of the craft, but they interpret their rule to apply only

where the machine requires constant attention. The disagreement with the employer grows out of the fact that this line of division is indefinite, and is continually moving forward as machines become more automatic. The bituminous mine workers hedge the undercutting machines about with many rules, limiting the number of "runs" in a day, limiting the number of hours per day, increasing the number of men to the machine, and reducing the differential between the price per ton for pick mining and the price for machine mining. These rules tend to transfer much of the benefit of machinery to the wage-earner, giving him more wages for less work. They also restrict the intoduction of the machines by lessening the profits on them, but this must necessarily occur to a certain extent in any case if the gain of a machine is shared with the wage-earner. Some of the miners' restrictions are unjustifiable, because they go farther than needed for this purpose.

Doubtless the most familiar and widespread criticism of unions is the one that they hold back the ambitious and energetic workman and prevent him from making the most of his abilities. I have examined a large number of cases where this charge is made, and have usually found that it is one-half of the truth. The other half is in the circumstances of modern industry which take away from the more energetic workman the fruits of his energy and drive the slower workman beyond the point of endurance. In the first place, the criticism is seldom made by employers whose emphasis is on the quality of their product. Such employers are sometimes found to encourage the union, and even openly to agree with it, in limiting the amount of work to be done in a given time. If they can succeed in this, they can increase the expenses of their competitors who emphasize quantity instead of quality. In the building trades the "legitimate" builder often looks with favor on the union rules which restrict the speed of workmen employed by the "speculative" builder. The limitation seldom affects his own work, because men cannot do good work if they hurry. A similar division between employers is found in the clothing trade, in pottery, and in almost every trade where the quality of the work depends on the care of the workman and not on automatic machinery. Even in non-union establishments the same is true. The manufacturer of a widely advertised cigar prohibits his girls from earning more than $7 a week, when the best of them could earn $10 or more at the piece rates paid. In these cases the restriction on output is necessary if the

manufacturer cares to uphold the reputation of his product.

The illustration shows the double meaning of terms when we speak of the "ambitious," the "capable," or the "skillful" workman. "Ability" may mean ability to reach a high speed and thus turn out a great quantity of product, or it may mean ability to improve and to maintain a good quality of work. Modern industry, with its world market, its stress of competition, and its lack of responsibility to the consumer, has run to cheap products, low costs, and enormous speed of workmanship. A partial reaction is occurring, as seen in laws against adulteration, and in the large development of proprietary goods and advertised trademarks, and there is a sentimental reaction in the arts and crafts movement. This is from the standpoint of the consumer and the manufacturer. From the standpoint of the workman the reaction appears in the effort to restrict speed.

It is minute division of labor and extreme specialization that have brought forth this high speed of modern industry. The skilled mechanic who turns from one operation to another may be competent, but he is not expeditious. When his work is split up and specialized, two important changes occur. Wages are changed from a time basis to a piece basis, and the foreman can inspect the quality of output. Piece rates intensify the workman's motive to exertion by keeping the reward always in sight, and employers are surprised to find that the output is increased far beyond what they thought was possible. The men's earnings are often doubled and trebled; and the employer, ignorant of industrial psychology, concludes that they had been cheating him. He "cuts" the piece rate. But the men exert themselves still more, and then comes another cut, and so on. In a large establishment, with 20,000 or more piece rates, the workmen learned from a remark of the proprietor and the acts of the foreman that, no matter how much they exerted themselves, they could not expect to earn more than $2.65 a day. In one department of 70 men there were four ambitious ones who paid no heed to the hint, but strove to increase their earnings far above that limit. The foreman used them as a gauge on the others, and when he found a piece on which their earnings were excessive he cut the rate for all. At last the others organized a union, compelled these four to join, and adopted a rule that no man should earn more than $3 a day. All of them began to earn about $2.98 a day. Then the employer cried out that the union restricted output, which was one

It is an

half the truth, for they had both increased the output and restricted it. The restriction began with the employer. This is not an exceptional case. old story, and ought not to need repetition; but I have heard a great employer deny, in the presence of a large audience, that the piece rates in his establishment had been cut, when I knew of my own observation that it had been done under circumstances similar to the above-so ignorant and far removed from their workmen are the heads of great corporations. I am not defending the restriction of output, much less denying it; I am explaining it. Unions are often compelled to resort to it, and in some cases, like the one above, they are organized for that purpose alone. The policy is forced on them in self-protection, at first against their wishes, but afterwards accepted as something so self-evident that they do not recognize it as a restriction. As long as industry is conducted on prevailing standards, unions will spring up, will restrict or regulate output, will be "smashed," and will again spring up. The prevailing standards really crush ambition, except for the very few who can become foremen, by holding up a reward and then snatching it away as soon as the workman is able to reach it. Instead of appealing to ambition, such standards rely on coercion: and employers are prone to mistake the feverish energy of unorganized workmen for loyalty when it is really fear. In times of prosperity the speed of both union and non-union workmen is less than in periods of depression. The whip of unemployment rather than the hope of reward is the inducement offered by business methods.

There is another fact of some significance regarding restrictions. Nearly all of the typographical unions have removed restrictions on the output of the linotype machine, but there remain a few "locals" which limit their members to one-half or two-thirds of the unrestricted speed. In visiting some of the restricted newspaper offices I was surprised to see gray-haired men. This suggested a comparison of ages, and the returns from a dozen offices showed that in the unrestricted offices only two per cent of the operators were over 50 years of age, while in the restricted offices 15 to 20 per cent were over 50. The census of the Government Printing Office shows 22 per cent of the employees over 50, and 2 per cent over 70 years of age-a proportion about the same as that of the male population at large. This grievance arises from every industry conducted on modern principles. Wage-earners are at their highest mark of earning ability between the ages of 20 and 40. Above the latter age, when the pro

fessional or business man is just entering his prime, the wage-earner is declining and soon is discharged or transferred to lighter and less remunerative work. He must give way to a younger man who can keep up with the pace. But trade union and civil service restrictions protect him. Freed from over-exertion in his earlier years, he holds on in the advanced ycars. These facts will be viewed differently according as our standard is production or distribution. May it not be that some future generation will look back with gratitude on the heresy that justifies restriction of output?

Some of the foregoing restrictions are supported by irritating shop rules which interfere with the employer's efforts to improve his plant and management. In the interest of industrial progress and the increase of production, the employer should have a free hand in these particulars. But there is one form of restriction that is free from this objection-namely, restriction on the hours of labor per day. Here is the logical line of compromise. The bricklayers have recognized this principle perhaps more than any other American union, for they have yielded to the employer on nearly all points of management and have concentrated their demands on high rates for short hours. Compared with the London bricklayer at 20 cents an hour for nine hours, the New York bricklayer at 70 cents for eight hours is the cheaper workman; for not only is his exertion much greater, but his employer has specialized his work, has arranged an unremittent flow of brick and mortar, and lays him off at any halfhour. Not a minute of his precious time is wasted, nor a stroke of his arm permitted to lag. What is true of the bricklayers is true approximately of most American unions, compared at least with their European brothers. By restricting the hours the employer gets unrestricted output per hour.

Oldest Railroads.

The oldest steam railway, says London Answers, which is still in existence is the Stockton & Darlington, which was first opened in the year 1825. But America can boast the possession of an iron way still existing as part of the South Carolina & Georgia railway, which was laid two years before that date, and which is perhaps the only passenger line that ever was worked by wind power. It is recorded that, with a favoring breeze, thirteen passengers and three tons of iron were carried at a rate of ten miles an hour.

In this country you find both the

cheapest and most expensive miles of railway ever constructed. The eight-mile line known as the Wotton tramway, and which was built to the order of the late Duke of Buckingham and Chandos cost only £1,400 per mile. It is of standard gauge, and is now used merely as a light railway.

Be

The most costly piece of railway line in the world is that between the Mansion House and Aldgate, on the Underground, London. It cost nearly £2,000,000. tween Trinity square and King William statue the record rose to no less than 1,000 guineas a yard, or about £30 an inch.

In order

For cheap traveling the Trans-Siberian railway holds a world's record. to encourage immigration into Siberia third-class fares are granted from any Russian station on the line to Tobolsk for a sum equivalent to four and sixpence. From Tobolsk on to the very edge of Manchuria you can travel for 9 shillings. Thus the emigrant can cover 6000 miles for 13s. 6d. This rate, which works out at about twenty miles per penny, is certainly cheaper than the fares on the California line, the Pueblo & Beulah Valley. Passengers by this railway are weighed and carried the whole distance for 3 farthings a pound.

The most northerly railway line in existence is the Ofoten, built across the upper end of the Scandinavian peninsula by a British company, to tap the great iron ore beds which cover 300,000 acres. At the frontier station between Norway and Sweden an enormous hall has been built into which the whole train runs bodily, and which can be closed as a protection against the weather. When crossing the Arctic circle the engine driver makes a point of blowing the whistle.

What is or was, before being taken over by the Great Western-the smallest independent railway company in existence was the Abingdon railway, a mile and a half in length, and connecting Abingdon with Radley. It was a paying concern, and fetched a very good price when sold.

The Manila & Dagupan railway, which is to be found in the island of Luzon, has some claim to be considered the most ele

gant in existence. Certainly no other line can boast that all the sleepers are solid mahogany.

The London & Northwestern, besides being the richest of British railway companies in fact, perhaps the richest in the world-can boast also of owning the largest engine works in existence. The inclosed space at Crowe is 85 acres, and a little over 30 acres is under cover. The Midland has at Derby 26 acres of covered workshops.

The Midland has various claims to dis

tinction. It possesses in the Leckey incline the steepest gradient upon any main line in the Kingdom. This is one in 371⁄2 for a distance of more than two miles. There are few gradients in British lines exceeding one in 60. The Midland has also broken transportation records by dispatching in one day from Burton-onTrent no fewer than 1,231 wagons loaded with beer.

The Great Western holds the British records for the longest regular non-stop run between Paddington and Plymouth without stopping. The distance is 246 miles. The same railway also possesses much the longest tunnel in the country. The famous Severn tunnel, which took more time and money to construct than almost any other in existence, is 7,664 yards in length.

There is an Australian line which owns a most odd record. The New South Wales line between Nyngan and Bourke runs a distance of 126 miles in a mathematically straight line over a plain level almost as a billiard table.

American Wages.

Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture made a Thanksgiving address which explains why wages in the United States are high. Carried to its logical conclusion, Mr. Wilson's statement of facts proves that wages should be a great deal higher, and that the real wage cost of production is less in the United States than anywhere else on the surface of the globe.

One illustration which Mr. Wilson used was the production of rice. He said that one American farm hand produces more rice than 400 Chinamen. Wages in China are 10 to 12 cents a day, making the money payment for the 400 Chinamen's day's labor $44 to $48. Paid at the Chinese rate for the work which he performed, the American farm hand should receive over $40 a day instead of $1.50.

James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern and other railroads, has brought out similar facts proving the inadequacy of the pay of his railroad employees. A train gang on Mr. Hill's roads handles more than seven times as many ton Imiles of freight as the train gangs on English, French and German railroads. The American engineers, firemen, conductors and brakemen receive half again or perhaps twice as much money as the European railroad men, and produce seven times the result.

The reports from the Fall River cotton mills show a greater number of looms and spindles attended by each woman and child than in the Lancashire cotton

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