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 Reviews of Books LABOR PROBLEMS AND WORK MEN‘S COMPENSATION The Trade Union Label. By Ernest R. Spedden, Ph.D., Sometime Instructor in Political Economy in Purdue University. Johns Hopkins University Studies, series 28, no. 2. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. Pp. 100 (index). (81.) Latter-Day Problems. By J. Lawrence Laughlin, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Chicago. Charles Scribner's Sons. N. Y. Pp. 302 (index). (1.50 net.) Beneﬁciary Features of American Trade Unions. By James B. Kennedy, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy in Wells College. Johns Hopkins Univer sity Studies, series 26, nos. 11-12. Johns Hopkins Press. Baltimore. Pp. 128 (index). (50 cts. paper.) Work-Accidents and the Law. By Crystal East man, member and secretary of the New York State Employers’ Liability Commission. Being the ﬁfth volume of the Pittsburgh Survey in six volumes, edited by Paul Underwood Kellogg for the Russell Sage Foundation. Charities Publica tion Committee, New York. Pp. xvi, 220+ twelve appendices 109+ index 11. ($1.50 net; the set 810.) Risks in Modern Industry. Special number of Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science. v. 38, no. 1, July, 1911, Philadelphia. Pp. 278. ($1.)

RITING of “The Trade Union Label,” Ernest R. Spedden says: “The unions have not as a rule attempted to encourage the demand for label goods by making the label a mark of superior

material or workmanship.

The diﬁi

culty in the way of such a plan is obvi

ous;

the union is not organized to

further the interest of any particular

part of the workingmen in the trade, but to establish conditions for the trade as a whole."

The method governing the use of the

union label is typical of the methods of trade unions. The label, originally designed to appeal to trade-unionists to

support other unions and to combat cheap immigrant labor, eventually came

to be used to appeal .to the sympathy of the general public with the union cause. There have fortunately been

some indications to make the label a badge of superior workmanship in cer tain trades, but ordinarily it has been

simply a means of telling the public that workmen were receiving the union scale of wages. Even though the label may not have been a means of boycotting competing non-union goods, it has been a means of combating non-union labor by the characteristic method of solicit

ing support without showing any eco nomic superiority of the trade-union product. As a substitute for the trade-union policy of seeking to dominate the market by other means than those of normal

competition, Professor Laughlin pro poses the competitive principle of pro ductivity or efficiency. To illustrate the advantages of free competition over “bucking" against a threatened over supply of labor, he instances the great

increase of wages for both skilled and unskilled labor during the past ﬁfty or

John Graham Brooks, discussing the

sixty years, which increase has been

union label in 1898, said that in certain

accompanied by a fall in the price of many commodities consumed by the laboring class. Were the unions to adopt this principle of efficiency, "the contest between union and non-union men would

trades "a label that should be con ﬁdently known to stand for deﬁnite

improvement in the life of the worker would attract a powerful public sym pathy," and he complained that the rules under which the union labels were

issued gave ordinarily no guarantee of good quality of work or of sanitary con ditions.

no longer be settled by force," because

“the sympathy of the public would be transferred from the non-union, or the unﬁt, to the union, or ﬁt men. . ..

This policy unmistakeably opens the