Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/481

 TRADES UNIONS AND PUBLIC DUTY 461

ized trades unions in America. This union, which dates from 1864, sent its first president into the Civil War, where he was killed in battle. His portrait is often found in the local head- quarters of the union ; his history and character are familiar to many of the members of the organization, and his name has become surrounded by a genuine hero-worship. Yet this same union has now a clause in its constitution providing that no benefits can be paid to any member whose illness results from " the performance of military service," on the ground that his service would only be required to put down his brother-work- man when striking for his rights. So thoroughly has a large body of intelligent workingmen become convinced that the country's troops are on the side of capital, and instances may easily be adduced showing a like distrust of the courts and legis- latures.

Any sense of division and suspicion is fatal in a democratic form of government, for although each side may seem to secure most for itself, when consulting only its own interests, the final test must be the good of the community as a whole.

One might almost generalize that the trades-union movement, as such, secures its lower objects best where there is a well- defined class feeling among the proletarians of its country, but that it accomplishes its highest objects in proportion as it is able to break into all classes and seize upon legislative enactment. A man who is born into his father's trade, and who has no hope of ever entering into another, as under the caste system of India or the guilds of Germany, is naturally most easily appealed to by the interests within his trade life. A workingman in America who may become a carpenter only as a stepping-stone toward becoming a contractor and capitalist, as any ambitious scholar may teach a country school until he shall be fitted for a college professorship, does not respond so easily to measures intended to benefit the carpenter's trade as he does to measures intended to benefit society as a whole ; and it is quite as important that the appeal should be made to him in his capacity of citizen as that it should be large enough to include men outside his class.

That all its citizens may be responsible is, then, perhaps