Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/476

456 payment of union wages, but fair conditions of manufacture. Many a workingman has spent his Saturday evening going from one store to another, until he found a hat with the trade-union label in its lining. He might, possibly, have bought cheaper and better-looking hats elsewhere, and it would have been easy to urge the smallness of the purchase as an excuse from the search. In short, the advanced woman is only now reaching the point held by the trade-unionist for years. The consumers' league carefully avoids the boycott, as does, indeed, the trade-unionist when he purchases only labeled goods. He is again using the method in his organization that the nation has long used when it prohibits by high tariff the importation of certain goods in order that home products may be purchased, which have been manufactured under better conditions. Who cannot recall the political speech urging high tariff for the protection of the American workingmen, in their wages and standard of living? It is singularly like the argument used by the workingman when he urges the boycott, or the more peaceful method of purchasing labeled goods made by union workmen who have been paid union wages. Here, again, as in the case of industrial warfare, I do not wish to commit myself to the ethics involved, but merely to point the analogy, and call attention to the fact that the public is apt to consider the government righteous and the trades unions unjustifiable.

4. For years trades unions in every country have steadily bent their efforts toward securing a shorter working day. In many unions these persistent efforts have been crowned with success, but many others are still making the attempt to secure the eight-hour day, and have before them a long and troublous undertaking. Here, again, trades unions are trying to do for themselves what the government should secure for all its citizens; has, in fact, secured in many instances. Almost all the large cities of the United States employ men upon municipal works for only eight hours a day, and the federal government has established eight hours as the normal working day in several departments. In England eight hours is the established working day for work undertaken by the national government as well as by the