effected the changes in question. Men still strike against reductions (witness the recent struggle in the cotton mills of Fall River) or for advances in wages, but such strikes are not characteristic of the period. They involve no new issues, though such issues exist. The new issues are not always raised explicitly or recognized frankly; not a few of the stubbornly fought strikes, indeed, have had other causes than those avowed by the parties.

THE ISSUE OF THE CLOSED SHOP.

Of the "new" issues, that which has received the maximum of attention and been productive of the greatest bitterness and ill-will is, undoubtedly, the closed shop versus the open one. The thing is not new; the controversy over it is, however, a recent development.

unfortunate. It is an appeal to sentiment, not to right reason. The closed shop is the union shop or the contract shop for it is bottomed on a contract between the employer and the union authorized to speak for his employes. If any closed shop rests, not on a voluntary agreement prompted by mutual advantage, but on duress, threats, or force, the intelligent student will readily distinguish the end from the means adopted to secure it. Freed from all accidental and gratuitous complications, what is the closed-shop issue?

ADVANTAGES TO THE EMPLOYER.

It has two sides-one legal, the other economic and practical. The latter is simple. A well organized union offers to supply all the labor that an employer needs in a certain line. It proposes a

The

In many industries, closed shop contracts have lately been entered into or renewed as a matter of course. publishers of the daily newspapers maintain "closed shops" as a rule, and it is notorious that the builders and contractors of New York have actually on expediency grounds, defended against vigorious assault this much denounced arrangement. It is apparent, however, that most of the employers' associations organized in late years have determined to make systematic war on the closed shop. As the dispute is great and momentous, it requires unprejudiced and dispassionate treatment.

To begin with, as Miss Jane Addams, head of Hull House, has pointed out, the term, if not positively unfair is

contract covering wages, hours, etc., and prescribing a certain form of discipline. It is based on the principle of collective bargaining and, as a necessary corollary, collective responsibility. The union is supposed to guarantee efficient and good work on the part of the employes. It cannot assume responsiblity for outsiders, having no control over them. It asserts that a shop cannot be half union and half non-union, and therefore it asks the employer who is willing to recognize the union at all (and with it the principle of "collective bargaining") to agree to employ none but union labor. The union shop, in other words, is to be closed to non-union workmen not only in the interest of the contracting employes, but also

sell his labor as he sees fit, and the freedom of every employer to hire such labor, are given by the laws of the land, and may not be affected by affiliation or non-affiliation with any organization whatever.

The Citizens' Industrial Alliance of America emphatically reiterated, in the resolutions adopted at the December convention in New York, its firm belief in the open shop, which was declared to be a corollary from the "right to work" and the principle of fair dealing and free contract. "Demanding only good faith," the resolutions ran, "it [the Alliance] discriminates against neither union nor independent [nonunion] labor."

The inference from these deductions is obvious. Even if the closed shop were in every way advantageous to employers, it would be their patriotic duty to sacrifice the benefit for the sake of liberty and equality of opportunity.

THE ARGUMENT OF THE UNIONS.

But is the closed shop inconsistent with liberty and equal opportunity? The unions ridicule the suggestion, and not a few able lawyers and sociologists sympathize with them. Their argument may be indicated very briefly, thus:

The right of every man to sell his labor as he sees fit is exactly the right on which the closed shop is based. The right to work and to contract for work includes the right to refuse to work except under certain conditions, and the non-employment of certain classes of labor may very well be one of these conditions. The right of the non-union man is not infringed upon when the unionist merely refuses to work beside him, or when he asks the employer to choose between them. As to the employer, he has a right to hire any one he pleases, and he may discriminate at will against union or non-union labor. Indeed, he lays great stress upon this right, and should he desire to make an exclusive contract with a union, what is to prevent such preference?

A CHICAGO JUDGE DECIDES AGAINST
THE CLOSED SHOP.

Certain courts-not of the last resort however-have recently ruled against

con

the legality of closed-shop contracts. The decision of the Cook County (Ill.) Appellate Court has attracted siderable attention, the employers' associations of the county having circulated it with much energy. The opinion in the case was written by a learned and respected judge, but several lawyers of note have not hesitated to pronounce it gratuitous and fallacious.

Judge Francis Adams, referring to closed-shop agreements which certain strikers sought to enforce, said: "The agreement in question if executed, would tend to create a monopoly in favor of the members of the different unions, to the exclusion of workmen not members of such unions, and are in this respect unlawful. Contracts tending to create a monopoly are void."

This ruling, in the opinion of able lawyers, is open to several serious objections. In the first place, it is not, and never has been, the law that all contracts tending to create a monopoly are unlawful. The common law distinguishes between contracts or combinations which reasonably or partially restrain trade and contracts which establish oppressive and complete monopolies. To say that all closed-shop agreements constitute unreasonable restraint of trade is clearly absurd. The question is not so much whether the shop is open as it is whether the union is. Under certain circumstances, a closed-shop agreement may actually create a monopoly; in many cases no monopoly results, and even the alleged "tendency" to monopoly is merely theoretical.

Furthermore any contract "tends" to create a monopoly. Indeed, partial monopoly is the object of every contract. What you give to A you cannot give to B. A manufacturer may contract to purchase all his steel from the United States Steel Corporation; that would tend to create monopoly, but who seriously contends that such a contract would be held unlawful? If you are a building contractor and agree to give all your orders for brick to a particular firm, no one will accuse you of doing something wrong, reprehensible, unAmerican. What is true of raw material,

machinery, tools, etc., must be true of labor. A union may undertake to supply labor as a manufacturer undertakes to supply goods, and an exclusive contract with the one cannot be more objectionable than a similar agreement with the other.

A COUNTER DECISION.

Nor does this view lack high judicial countenance. Indeed, the remarkable opinion of Justice Jenks, of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court for the Brooklyn department, in the case of certain non-union employes of the United States Printing Company versus the International Stereotypers' and Electrot y pers' Union, goes

secured the exclusive employment of their members, an adjustment of wages, and a determination of the working hours. If the defendants had the right to refuse to work for the printing company until their demands were met, I cannot see why they could not agree that they would work only under conditions which represented a concession of such demands. If the employer preferred to have those workmen work for him on the conditions that he should employ none but their fellows, increase their wages, and settle the hours of labor than to have them strike and organize a boycott, I cannot see why in the exercise of its right to regulate,

very far to sustain it, along with other important contentions boldly advanced by labor leaders. The case involved the questions of peaceful picketing and boycotting, of a concerted strike ordered with the view of securing the discharge of non-union men, and of the enforcement of a closed shop contract. Modifying materially an injunction obtained in the lower court, the Appellate Division speaking through Justice Jenks said:

"The discharges in this case are the result of the agreement between the printing company and the union. It is clear enough that the company made this agreement in order to end the strike and the boycott. Thus, the defendants

its own affairs it [the company] could not follow this course and make the agreement.

Since, the court continued, an employer may engage whomsoever he chooses, and the employe may work for whom he chooses, and if under the influence of purely economic interests a contract for the exclusive employment of union labor is entered into, how can an outsider, say, a non-union man adversely affected by this contract,interfere with the performance thereof? Has he a vested right in his place? Can he dictate either to the employer or to the union demanding the closed shop as a condition of accepting employment?

Without usurping the function of the highest courts, which in the course of time will review the whole question in all its bearings, the opinion may be hazarded that, after all, economic, not legal, considerations will decide this great controversy. What has been witnessed in the case of industrial trusts or combinations will be witnessed in the case of labor organizations.

Among enlightened employers and corporations the opposition to collective bargaining is vanishing. The reaction against unionism that has been so marked a feature of the past year or two (especially in Chicago and other Western centers) has not affected this principle

at least, so far as the older and more conservative unions are concerned. Even Mr. Parry in one of his addresses to the manufacturers, expressly indorsed the principle of collective bargaining and collective bargaining may, where labor is thoroughly organized and morally. if not legally "responsible," regularize and preserve the union shop.

It should be noted, as a fact of no little significance that at the Chicago meeting of the American Economic Association and the American Political Science Association (held late in December), a spirited discussion of the "Open or Closed Shop?" question developed a very pronounced leaning on the part of our scholars and scientific inquirers toward the union attitude. Of the nine speakers, two-and both employers-attacked the union shop as industrially determental; one, a labor official defended it as essential to employes without involving the least injury to employers, and six,all professors and eminent writers on politico-economic subjects, saw in it a necessary measure of defense and amelioration under existing industrial conditions.

THE SOLIDARITY OF UNIONISM.

In view of circumstances like these, it is not surprising that organized labor should exhibit a determination equal to that of the majority of the employers' associations in fighting to maintain the union shop. The San Francisco convention of the American Federation of Labor while expressing in sundry ways opposition to Socialistic doctrines and reaffirming its faith in trade-unionism pure and simple, made it perfectly plain that there was no intention of taking a single step, however short, in the direction pointed to by the organized employers. Mr. Samuel Gompers was re-elected president without opposition and all his recommendations and policies were emphatically indorsed. In the words of the New York Sun, "Under the leadership of Mr. Gompers, unionism will doubtless continue to stand for the union shop, for the use of the union label, and for the maintenance of the boycott."

I may add that the Central Federated Union of New York has appointed a committee of ten to assist the openshop crusade; that the New York capmakers recently struck against a score of firms that had adopted the open-shop plan, and that the Carriage and Wagon Makers' International Union, numbering forty thousand men, has announced its intention of demanding the closed shop in all factories now "open."

A FRENCH ECONOMIST'S SOLUTION.

Since individualism-the principle of personal liberty and equal opportunity has been so eloquently and freely invoked by the opponents of the closed shop, it is interesting as well as instructive to call attention here to the remarkable book of M. Yves Guyot, ex-minister of the French Republic, economist and individualist of the "Manchester" school, and clear-headed thinker. The title of the work is "Les Conflits du Travail et leur Solution," and in it the author puts forward a plan for doing away with the war between capital and labor. M. Guyot has no faith in the ordinary methods of trade-unions, and arbitration he regards as a crude and unscientific remedy,