Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/268

 76 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

pose the taking of the profits of landownership for the community.

As to working-men's associations, what your Holiness seems to contemplate is the formation and encourage- ment of societies akin to the Catholic sodalities, and to the friendly and beneficial societies, like the Odd Fellows, which have had a large extension in English-speaking countries. Such associations may promote fraternity, extend social intercourse and provide assurance in case of sickness or death, but if they go no further they are powerless to affect wages even among their members. As to trades-unions proper, it is hard to define your posi- tion, which is, perhaps, best stated as one of warm appro- bation provided that they do not go too far. For while you object to strikes ; while you reprehend societies that " do their best to get into their hands the whole field of labor and to force working-men either to join them or to starve ; " while you discountenance the coercing of employers and seem to think that arbitration might take the place of strikes ; yet you use expressions and assert principles that are all that the trades-unionist would ask, not merely to justify the strike and the boycott, but even the use of violence where only violence would suffice. For you speak of the insufficient wages of workmen as due to the greed of rich employers ; you assume the moral right of the workman to obtain employment from others at wages greater than those others are willing freely to give ; and you deny the right of any one to work for such wages as he pleases, in such a way as to lead Mr. Stead, in so widely read a journal as the Review of Reviews, approvingly to declare that you regard " blacklegging," i.e., the work- ing for less than union wages, as a crime.

To men conscious of bitter injustice, to men steeped in poverty yet mocked by flaunting wealth, such words mean more than I can think you realize.

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