Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/468

 TRADES UNIONS AND PUBLIC DUTY.

The habitual use of "the people" as a phrase practically equivalent to the "working classes" is a constant admission of the fact that the proletariat is not, properly speaking, a "class" at all, but the body of society itself.

— Auguste Com

In this paper I have assumed that the general organization of trades unions and their ultimate purposes are understood, and also that we recognize that the public has a duty toward the weak and defenseless members of the community. With these assumptions granted, two propositions are really amazing: first, that we have turned over to those men who work with their hands the fulfillment of certain obligations which we must acknowledge belong to all of us, such as protecting little chil- dren from premature labor, and obtaining shorter hours for the overworked ; and, second, that while the trades unions, more than any other body, have secured orderly legislation for the defense of the feeblest, they are persistently misunderstood and harshly criticised by many people who are themselves working for the same ends.

The first proposition may be illustrated by various instances in which measures introduced by trades unions have first been opposed by the public, and later have been considered praise- worthy and valuable, when the public as a whole has undertaken to establish and enforce them.

For years trades unions have endeavored to secure laws regulating the occupations in which children may be allowed to work, the hours of labor permitted in those occupations, and the minimum age below which children rnay not be employed. Workingmen have accepted women into their trades unions, as an inevitable development of industrial conditions, but they resent the entrance of children into their trades, not only because children bringdown wages, for women do that as well, but because children are injured by premature labor. The regulation of child

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