Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/469

Rh negligent shopmen will find little mercy at the hands of union officers; miners will see to it that props are put in place and that covers are not removed from lamps; incompetent workmen will be weeded out from the factories and the loss through defective wares will be small. Leaders will not be too earnest in breeding discontent or in urging strikes on frivolous grounds. But those who guide union affairs oppose incorporation; that means stability in conditions, steady work for workmen, no waste of savings during enforced idleness and consequently the destruction of the leaders.

The state, under such conditions, would be compelled to distinguish sharply the several duties of the wage-payer and the employer. Serious responsibilities would still rest upon the owners of property in which men are employed. There would remain to them the duty of protecting workers against accidents due to imperfect machinery or appliances. Yet even here the complexity would remain and strife would not cease. It would appear that the only solution of the problem may be in placing control wholly in the hand of wage-payers, as in non-unionized industries.

The professions of the trade unions are at variance with their practise. They pretend that they are warring for human rights, but they deny the natural right of all men to work and endeavor to limit it to their own members; they deny the right to earn, by fixing a common wage for competent and incompetent, for faithful and unfaithful men alike; they cry for uplift of the working classes, but they resist all efforts to close the cleft between "classes" and "masses," insisting that it remain a bridgeless chasm; an "employer" of labor can not gain or retain membership in a union, because the several interests of labor and capital are antagonistic. When Sir Christopher Furniss offered to his striking workmen the opportunity to purchase his shipbuilding plant on easy terms or to become partners on a profit-sharing basis, the union officials rejected both proposals on the grounds that acceptance of the first would create only another class of capitalists and that acceptance of the second would develop a class of selfish workmen, who would not try to help the "under dog." The plan of the United States Steel Company to offer stock below market rate to the more efficient workmen was denounced as a base trick to bind men to their employers by selfish interest. Workingmen everywhere are taught to look with suspicion on all efforts of employers to encourage thrift. It is impossible to believe that the heads of labor unions have at heart the interests even of their own followers. Enforced idleness during frivolous or sympathetic strikes, lodge dues, strike assessments, testimonials and other contrivances, equally ingenious and successful, certainly prevent too rapid accumulation of savings and remove all danger that the men will become financially independent of their owners. Yet these owners never weary