Causes of Discontent | Page 7

so that they are free
neither to work nor to hire the workmen they choose, it is an
extraordinary tyranny. It almost puts in the shade Mexican or Russian
personal government. A demand is made upon a railway company that
it shall discharge a certain workman because and only because he is not
a member of the union. The company refuses. Then a distant committee
orders a strike on that road, which throws business far and wide into
confusion, and is the cause of heavy loss to tens of thousands who have
no interest in any association of capital or labor, many of whom are
ruined by this violence. Some of the results of this surrender of
personal liberty are as illegal as illogical.
The boycott is a conspiracy to injure another person, and as such
indictable at common law. A strike, if a conspiracy only to raise wages
or to reduce hours of labor, may not be indictable, if its object cannot
be shown to be the injury of another, though that may be incidentally
its effect. But in its incidents, such as violence, intimidation, and in
some cases injury to the public welfare, it often becomes an indictable
offense. The law of conspiracy is the most ill-defined branch of
jurisprudence, but it is safe to say of the boycott and the strike that they
both introduce an insupportable element of tyranny, of dictation, of
interference, into private life. If they could be maintained, society
would be at the mercy of an, irresponsible and even secret tribunal.
The strike is illogical. Take the recent experience in this country. We
have had a long season of depression, in which many earned very little

and labor sought employment in vain. In the latter part of winter the
prospect brightened, business revived, orders for goods poured in to all
the factories in the country, and everybody believed that we were on
the eve of a very prosperous season. This was the time taken to order
strikes, and they were enforced in perhaps a majority of cases against
the wishes of those who obeyed the order, and who complained of no
immediate grievance. What men chiefly wanted was the opportunity to
work. The result has been to throw us all back into the condition of
stagnation and depression. Many people are ruined, an immense
amount of capital which ventured into enterprises is lost, but of course
the greatest sufferers are the workingmen themselves.
The methods of violence suggested by the communists and anarchists
are not remedial. Real difficulties exist, but these do not reach them.
The fact is that people in any relations incur mutual obligations, and the
world cannot go on without a recognition of duties as well as rights.
We all agree that every man has a right to work for whom he pleases,
and to quit the work if it does not or the wages do not suit him. On the
other hand, a man has a right to hire whom he pleases, pay such wages
as he thinks he can afford, and discharge men who do not suit him. But
when men come together in the relation of employer and employed,
other considerations arise. A man has capital which, instead of loaning
at interest or locking up in real estate or bonds, he puts into a factory.
In other words, he unlocks it for the benefit partly of men who want
wages. He has the expectation of making money, of making more than
he could by lending his money. Perhaps he will be disappointed, for a
common experience is the loss of capital thus invested. He hires
workmen at certain wages. On the strength of this arrangement, he
accepts orders and makes contracts for the delivery of goods. He may
make money one year and lose the next. It is better for the workman
that he should prosper, for the fund of capital accumulated is that upon
which they depend to give them wages in a dull time. But some day
when he is in a corner with orders, and his rivals are competing for the
market, and labor is scarce, his men strike on him.
Conversely, take the workman settled down to work in the mill, at the
best wages attainable at the time. He has a house and family. He has
given pledges to society. His employer has incurred certain duties in
regard to him by the very nature of their relations. Suppose the

workman and his family cannot live in any comfort on the wages he
receives. The employer is morally bound to increase the wages if he
can. But if, instead of sympathizing with the situation of his workman,
he forms a combination with all the mills of his sort, and reduces wages
merely to increase his