Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/471

Rh of toil"; others exist to be exploited in his strife against the natural law of work.

Labor unions and their defenders justify the use of violence because without it they could not succeed. The assumptions are that labor and society are at war, that the interests are irreconcilable and that demands by labor leaders are always just. McNamara at Los Angeles saw no moral turpitude in arson and murder, because he fought for a principle. The unions evidently agreed with him for they expended a vast sum in his defense. Thirty-eight men were convicted in Indianapolis of complicity in his and similar crimes, but the union approved their work and re-elected the convicts to their offices. The daily papers report almost daily cases of murder and arson in localities where strikes have been ordered. Labor unions defy the law but are ever ready to demand its protection; their principles are no better than those of the India Thugs, who practised robbery and murder in the name of the goddess Cali.

The cruel disregard of other's rights is not born of folly; the union men know that a great part of the community sympathizes with them. Propagation of their doctrines has not been ineffective. There is a general disaffection against those who have achieved success; it matters not what kind of success, the thing itself is a crime. The brutal rapacity of "capitalists" is a welcome theme and no charge is too absurd to be accepted as true. If it be proved false, retraction is made grudgingly with the reflection that the old wolf has escaped this time, but he ought to have been hanged long ago. It is still an article of faith in many quarters, even outside of those inhabited by peoples alien to our mode of thought and to our language, that the panic of 1907 was contrived deliberately by capitalists of New York city, the ground for the belief being, apparently, that they can bring on a panic if they choose. The worst charge that can be brought against a man is that he is rich or against a combination of men, that it is a corporation. The most serious feature of present conditions is the blind, inconsiderate hostility to "capital" manifested by legislators, who are clearly ignorant of what the term means. There is reason to suppose that the average business man is no more and no less honest than the average of mankind or of labor leaders; but his lack of integrity is less dangerous than that of a labor leader, because his interest requires that the community be prosperous, whereas the labor leader is indifferent to the community's interests; he is concerned only with his imperium in imperio.

The propaganda has been so successful that in every contest between wage-payers and unions the popular presumption is against the former. During trolley strikes, indignant sufferers vent their wrath upon the company which refuses to grant the petty demands; when trains or trolley-cars must be withdrawn because of half-hearted protection by the authorities, a cry for repeal of the franchise is raised. A public utility corporation seems to have no rights which the law is