Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/372

 THE CLOSED SHOP CONTROVERSY served the question of the right of a labor union to compete with individuals. This question is the key to the whole problem, for all that the union does is to compete with individuals. It is universally admitted to-day that a trade union is a lawful body and that work men have a right to combine to advance their interests. The most conservative courts concede the right of organization, the right to carry on the contest for better terms of employment, not only through local unions, but through federations of unions, such as the brotherhoods of locomotive engineers and locomotive firemen.1 Al though it seems strange to us of the present day that this right should ever have been questioned, we need to recall that at one time the trade union was an illegal body and a strike was regarded as a criminal conspiracy to raise wages; that the present state of the law has been reached only after a long struggle with courts and legislatures. It should also be noticed, as giving point to this right of laborers to combine, that the rule applying to them in their relation to employers appears to be directly the opposite of the rule applying to dealers in commodities in their relation to the public. Combination to raise wages is permitted, but combination to raise prices is not. The old law, in making the rule the same for wages as for prices, was strictly logical and consistent, but it was opposed to common sense and common justice and had to yield. The reason for permitting combination among laborers seems to be that it is re quired for their protection, it is their only available weapon in dealing with capital. In an English case, Wood v. Bowron, L. R., 2 Q. B. 21, 25, it is said by Chief Justice Cockburn, "Large numbers of men, who 'have not the advantage of wealth, very often

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can protect their own interests only by means of association and cooperation, and we ought not to strain the law against men who have only their own labor and their association by which they can act in the assistance of one another." It follows, then, that combinations of workingmen have the same rights as individuals in bargaining for employment. They can compete with individuals as one individual can compete with another. Combination, which is allowed primarily for the purpose of contest with the employer, may incidentally result in some disadvantage to individuals by oblig ing the latter to compete with organized bodies, but the disadvantage, if such it is, must be taken with the advantages. On the whole, the right of combination is im portant, even vital, to workingmen genererally, and individuals cannot object that they suffer by the exercise of it. Most of the reasoning directed against the conduct of the unions relies to a considerable extent upon the feature of numbers and combina tion. All such argument must be rejected as unsound. And does not this view dispose of the argument from monopoly? It is said that the contract for the closed shop tends to monopoly. The monopoly argument is one that is always to be viewed with suspicion. As in the struggle for success every one is trying to get all he can, anything in the line of achievement may be said to tend toward monopoly. At all events when it is ad mitted that combination is permissible, the contention that such combination tends towards monopoly is deprived of its force. Suppose, to take a simple form of combina tion, that all the workmen in a certain trade, e.g., carpenters, combine and agree not to work for less than certain wages, say ten dollars a day. According to the conceded right to combine this is lawful. Yet here 1 Wabash R. R. Co. v. Hannahan, 121 Fed. Rep. is the monopoly complained of. 563. Thomas v. Cincinnati, N. O. T. P. Ry. Co. The opinion in Berry v. Donovan, supra, <>2 Fed. Rep. 803, 817. Union Pacific Ry. Co. v. after dwelling upon the fact that workmen Ruef 120 Fed. Rep. 102. See Arthur i1. Oakes are forced to join the unions by the danger 63 Fed Rep. 310.