Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/455

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 439

passed laws expressly regulating such unions ; others have taken legal measures to limit and protect them, and to grant to them special privileges. In most states their legal rights as corporations are defined, and Congress, by an act of June 29, 1886, defined " national trades-unions," requiring that such corporations should have their headquarters in the District of Columbia.

All states grant the right of peaceable assembly, the general limitation on all such gatherings being the motive of violence to the rights of others, or trans- gression of the law concerning mobs and conspiracies. The right of any man to labor or employ labor must not be interfered with. If a state has no law on this point, any emergency is met by the right of injunction.

Strikes are fully permissible, if they are voluntary co-operations of persons for the purpose of bettering their conditions, or of changing the existing status by proper means ; they are unlawful, if they have a purpose of evil. An organization may call out its workers, unless some special form of contract exist, even though it do great harm to the business of the employer ; provided only that some violence to the employer is not intended. The strike would then become a conspiracy.

Nine states have special laws forbidding locomotive engineers wilfully to abandon their engines except at the regular destination ; also forbidding anyone or any body of persons to intimidate, impede, or obstruct, except by due course of law, the regular business of any railroad.

It is unlawful to use force or violence to compel a laborer either to quit work or to join a union. Many states make it a punishable offense for a union or an individual to intimidate an employer or a laborer, with the purpose of hindering the undertaking or carrying out of a proper task. Here again the right of injunc- tion may be used, if the case demands it.

The practice of " picketing," within certain determined limits, is forbidden by national and state laws, and violation permits injunction.

Nearly all the states have passed laws permitting unions to use special labels or trade-marks to distinguish their products, and forbidding other persons and unions to imitate them. In five states it is unlawful for anyone falsely to exhibit the insignia of any union, and in some states this applies more specifically to railway employees.

Most of the states have laws to the effect that it is a misdemeanor for any employer of labor to coerce a laborer into a contract not to join a union, as a condition of being employed. Some states also indirectly protect labor unions by legislation against trusts ; others have passed laws favoring the employment of union men in the prosecution of public works.

A hopeful sign for labor-unionism is the fact that it is being granted an increasingly large representation in the settlement of disputes. Labor laws are still in a stage of experiment. Legislators have been unsympathetic, and courts have had a tendency to feel that there was something inherently wrong in labor com- binations for the purpose of raising wages and upholding the laborers' rights. J. H. Ralston, " Die Rechtslage der Gewerkvereine in den Vereinigten Staaten," Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, September, 1905.

D. E. T.

Physical Deterioration in England. Among the unhappy surprises that have come to Great Britain in this beginning of a new century, one is the result of a careful and conscientious study of the physical and moral condition of the lower classes in the cities. Sir Walter Besant and Mr. R. H. Sherard have vividly described the conditions in which the people of the manufacturing districts are born, live, and die. The man who has every comfort of life is totally without knowledge of such terrible suffering, and of the fact that it is growing gradually worse.

The military department has also made a statement that for some years it has been compelled to turn away from 40 to 60 per cent, of its applicants because of failure in the physical examinations. Driven by such cries of dissatisfaction, the government instituted a commission to investigate physical conditions, to note tendencies, and to determine, so far as possible, whether they are permanent or accidental.