Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/370

 THE CLOSED SHOP CONTROVERSY the performance of the contract is entered on, any non-union man than or thereafter in the employer's service, who is discharged in pursuance of the contract, will have no ground of action against the union or its members because he was discharged at their request. He has lost his job to a com petitor and that is all. It would seem, then, that if ordinary analogies hold, the contract for exclusive employment is unobjectionable. It may be added to what has already been said that the employer may desire to make such a contract, finding it for his advantage to do so in that the workmen are more contented and harmonious and render better service if they are all members of some guild or organization than if they have nothing in common. He should have a right to make such a contract, and he should be bound by it when made. The principal arguments advanced against the validity of the contract are that by means of it men are driven out of employ ment or forced to join the unions, that the purpose is to prevent competition by forcing men into the unions and to obtain a monop oly of the labor market. These arguments appear to take into con sideration that there is a widespread move ment to unionize labor and derive their principal force from that consideration. A contract for exclusive employment, con sidered in a solitary instance, would not be held void because it excluded others from the employment. Men are entitled to name the terms on which they are willing to work, including a stipulation as to who shall be their associates. They are for obvious reasons interested in various ways in who shall be their associates and to deprive them of the right to contract about it is an in fringement of natural rights. The work man who is excluded has no legal ground of complaint, for he has no claim to be employed and he cannot require the con tracting workman, any more than the em ployer himself, to consider his interests.

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The contracting workman is fully justified in looking out for his 'own interests exclu sively and consulting his own tastes. He need not give a reason why he prefers to work with certain associates and not with others. If a band of Italian or Chinese laborers, for example, undertook a job on the terms that no outsider should be em ployed with them, it would hardly be con tended that that was not a lawful and valid contract. If some one else already on the job should be discharged in consequence, it seems safe to say that he would not have a cause of action. We may say, then, that there is nothing in the nature of the contract for exclusive employment as such which makes it invalid, and it would probably never have been claimed to be so but for the increasing power of the unions which has led the courts to scrutinize more closely than they other wise would the methods used by the unions to achieve success. If the objection to the contract for the union shop is that its adop tion on a large scale is attended with certain injurious tendencies, not being such as apply to contracts for exclusive employment gen erally, it suggests that that is an evil which should be dealt with by legislation rather than by the courts of their own initiative. But passing by this view of the matter, let us consider the objections raised in the light of the existing industrial situation. The coercion argument is put in different ways. At one time it is said that inde pendent workers are forced to join the union, that that 'is the purpose and intent of the movement demanding the closed shop. Men are forced to do something against their will, something which they have a right not to do. This is coercion, is it said, and is un lawful. At another time it is said that men are driven out of employment and deprived of an opportunity to make a living, because they will not join the unions. This is not lawful, it is said, because men have a right to pursue their vocation and earn a living unmolested. The charge as a whole is,