Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/461

 CAMPAIGN AGAINST GERMAN ORGANIZED LABOR 447

number of the voluntaries, the number of shops in which work is going on, and of those in which labor has ceased, etc., if they are not permitted to inform themselves by watching the places of employment ? How are they to instruct their com- rades who come from a distance, without knowing that in the place in question a strike is in progress, if they are not per- mitted to meet them at stations and elsewhere and to talk with them ? The employer has the right to insert advertisements in papers published at a distance, to send his overseers or other representatives, and to do whatever else seems to him possible to collect laborers from other places ; but the laborer is to be deprived of the one means which he now has of winning these new arrivals over to his side. The employers may use the tele- phone, the mails, social intercourse of every sort, to keep them- selves informed about the condition of the strike. The laborer, who has practically none of these quiet and uncontrollable means at his disposal, is to be deprived of the sole means of informa- tion which he possesses. In this provision, consequently, the spirit is most evident which has dictated the bill.

It is easily understood, to be sure, that nothing is so dis- agreeable to the employer as success on the part of the laborers in preventing accessions of labor in case of a strike. Such suc- cess compels the employer to treat with them for terms of peace. It is, however, not so easily understood and not so natural — it rather creates the impression of gross partisanship — if the law- giver, who ought to maintain an unprejudiced attitude toward both parties, places himself, with his authority, entirely on the side of the capitalist, and actually forbids the laborer to use the best campaign equipment which he possesses. Already must we accuse most of the police authorities and most of the courts in Germany of having abandoned the non-partisanship which they ought to maintain as representatives of the sovereign power. In the case of the great dock strike in Hamburg in 1896 and 1897 the strikers were forbidden to approach the harbor, while under ordinary circumstances it is open without restriction to everybody. During a strike of masons in Leipzig (summer of 1897) entrance to railroad stations and the promenades of the