which would require men while remaining in the service of the Company to refuse to handle certain kinds of business. The fourth decision was that of Judge Speer, of the U. S. District Court for the southern district of Georgia, which was rendered April 8th, at Macon. In this case the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers petitioned the court compel the receiver of the Central Railroad of Georgia to enter into a contract with that organization for the services. of its members on that road. Though Judge Speer's decision incidentally involved the declaration that rule 12 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was null and void (indeed the council for the Brotherhood offered to waive that rule), it sustained the petition, and required the receiver to make the contract. There was no suit here for the determination of rights, and the action of the court was justified only by the fact that the road was in the hands of a receiver. But it is significant on account of the recognition given to the brotherhood. These decisions have been treated in some detail, because there seems to be a misunderstanding in some of the current accounts of the daily papers as to their real bearing. The decisions of Judges Ricks, Taft, and Billings have been hailed in certain quarters as a great triumph for capital, while in others they have been denounced as a great outrage upon labor. The fact that so many of those who criticise these decisions have found themselves called upon to misrepresent them is, in itself, a strong presumption of their justice. Thus, the editor of the Social Economist, in the number for April, (p. 243,) interprets the decisions as meaning "that a strike against a corporation is a strike against the government, and the courts have the right to compel laborers to work for a corporation or to put them in jail." And again he says: "If laborers are to be arrested for organizing, and for refusing to work for objectionable employers, then a Siberia must be created, the army enlarged, and a reign of terror inaugurated." (p. 244.) Not only, however, do these decisions not compel anybody to work against his will, but Judge Ricks' decision practically allows engineers to quit work, without warning and under peculiarly aggravating circumstances. The same right was implied in Judge Billings' decision, while Judge Speer required the receiver of a railroad to make a contract with, and therefore recognize, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. Thus Judge Billings' decision goes no further than to prevent trade unions from interfering with the freedom of those who are not members, while Judge Taft's decision merely requires that, as long as engineers remain in the service of the company, they shall not be allowed to make discriminations which federal law declares to be a misdemeanor, when made by the corporation itself. All of these decisions are, moreover, very limited in their scope. The Ann Arbor decisions only apply to corporations that come under the action of the interstate commerce law. The decision of Judge Billings, though broader, only applies to unions which may interfere with interstate or international commerce. If we may sift from these four decisions the tendencies of law which they seem to indicate, we should say that they tend: 1. To apply to labor organizations the same responsibility with regard to the public that has been applied to corporations. 2. To recognize labor organizations as bodies which in themselves are legal and which have a standing in court. It is perhaps well that these principles should in the beginning be the result of judicial decision. rather than of legislative action, and that they should be based upon laws which did not primarily apply to labor organizations at all. But we can hardly regard them as a final settlement of the legal status of trade unions. Both Congress and the States should, in future legislation, enforce broadly and directly these principles of responsibility and legal standing which have been brought out incidentally, and almost accidentally, by the decisions of the courts. INDIVIDUALISM AS A SOCIOLOGICAL PRIN WHE CIPLE. 7HEN a writer upon a social theme begins to hint that individualism, though doubtless originally a sort of gospel, may possibly not have been intended to be an everlasting gospel, he is usually set down at once as an advocate of paternalism in government. The undersigned does not wish to be considered such. An extension, even a very great extension of its actual work by the public power, may be had without at all babying or coddling the citizen. The point which needs careful guarding is that the extension, if it occurs, be made in right directions, so as to stimulate and increase independence and the spirit of self help, instead of lessening them. If in this conviction we proceed to suggest certain strictures upon the laissez-faire industrial régime, be it clearly understood at the outset that no criticism of the sort can lay any claim to sobriety, unless it takes full account of the good which this régime has done and is still doing. How competition has spurred individual initiative, quickened invention, brought out character, augmented production, and to what a valuable extent it is doing these things still, cannot be for a moment forgotten by a careful inquirer. Yet this admission does not end discussion. It is kind in economists of a certain stripe, seeing "how heavenly far we have carried things" by the old means, to tell us about the exceeding worth of capital, and how superior a railway train is to a wheelbarrow as an instrument of transportation; but that they should suppose any whom their words will reach to be ignorant of these important truths, or should presume that information of this sort really touches the problem to whose solution they imagine themselves to be contributing, seems remarkable. No thinker cognizant of the world's economic history will bring himself to believe that this competitive stage of industry is certain, or even likely to be the last. We have, let us hope, studied too deeply to fall into the error which Karl Knies denominates 'perpetualism,'-the error of thinking that one and the same form of economy characterizes or can characterize all ages. As the primitive hunter became a shepherd, and the shepherd an agriculturalist; as, upon the basis of agriculture, rose the medieval city with its merchants and manufacturers, and as the mediæval merchant and manufacturer turned in course of time into the nineteenth century merchant prince and captain of industry, flourishing by free competition and the wages system, so similar transitions are to be considered as in store for present economics. The open competition system: personal freedom, unlimited private property, liberty of commerce, contracts, and migration, is not yet a century old, and only the rudiments of it reach back to the middle age. It were stupid to suppose the development ended now. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be" industrially, but it is certain that we shall be something that we are not as yet. The industrial civil war, this feverish Ishmaelism in commercial life, cannot last forever. In fact, if we but look about us, we see that already a new economic era has opened and is well advanced. While no government ever really let industry alone, there was a time. when the English Parliament, sovereign over the greatest industrial nation beneath the sun, so owned the sway of Cobden and the Manchester School, that laissez-faire tenets were rather scrupulously regarded in its work. It is so no longer. Since Lord Palmerston's death, in spite of the immense Manchester influence continually brought to bear, the trend of English legislation has been steadily away from physiocratic maxims. A noble system of public schools has been created. Restrictions have been put upon the employment of women and minors. The hours of work have been limited. Rigid inspection of factories and mines has been introduced. An employers' liability law has been passed. There is scarcely a realm of England's industrial life which the legislator has not invaded. Municipal governments now perform a multitude of duties once left to individual initiative. Crowning all stand the Irish land acts, which remove from the landlords, and vest in a commission, the determination of tenants' rents.' This revolt from Manchesterism is the very key to recent political history in Great Britain. It explains at once the Unionist secession from the Liberals, and the growing strength of the Liberals themselves. For the present, victory seems certain to crown that party in British politics which evinces willingness to go farthest in the direction of state surveillance over industrial affairs. In our own country, too, the same political influence is working. The known devotion of the Democratic party to extreme laissez-faire principles is probably no inconsiderable cause of its continual defeats in certain sections of our land. Society does not supervise merely: itself enlists as entrepreneur. All advanced peoples have long been removing species after species of business, from the coining of money to the working of railways, telegraphs, and the express service, out of private into public hands. We Americans have lagged behind in this; yet behold the state of things even here. Wagon roads are private property no longer. Nearly all ferries, bridges, and municipal water-works are public. In 1850 not a free bridge spanned the Connecticut south of White River; now, all, except perhaps one, are free. Our colossal Post Office Department is a speaking monument of successful social enterprise, and it is carrying on, on an enormous and ever broadening scale, that transference of money values from place to place which was formerly the work of banks and express companies alone. The men and women immediately employed by the United States form a vast multitude, reaching into the hundreds of thousands. Were those in State and municipal service to be added, it would be a veritable army. So of property. A statement was made a few years ago, showing the amount of the wealth held in common by the people of Boston. The city's valuation, as reported by the auditor in 1886, was $710,621,335, these figures representing the wealth of separate persons and corporations. The same year Bos 1 Hyndman, History of Socialism in England. Webb, Socialism in England. Publications of Amer. Economic Association, vol. iv, no. 2. |