wholly in favor of such a protection to non-union men, practically it is well-nigh impossible for non-union men to get employment in the cities, and, if they suffer violence, as they continually do, it is even more difficult to get justice from the courts.

The reason for all this is the affiliation of labor organizations with politics. A company of militia will awe a whole village, and can put an unorganized mob of a thousand to flight. Organized laborers as they are led in these times, though not numerically strong as compared with unorganized laborers, in too many instances use the power of organization, not to build up and benefit their number, in ways not now to be enumerated, but simply to overawe and bulldoze employers into paying more than market price for labor from fear of violence resulting from strikes. Organized labor has thus the advantage over unorganized labor. It makes more noise, and causes a greater quaking among weak-kneed politicians and conscienceless demagogues, than its real power would warrant. The senseless fear which falls upon the pot-house politician when organized labor beats on the drum and pounds on the cymbal is amusing and pitiable. A drum major with a few fifes and snare drums makes a great show, but he wins no battles. The will of the American people is not so easily defeated. Many labor unions are, therefore, largely political organizations with whom the maintaining of wages is only a secondary object. They are used by their leaders for political and selfish ends.

What labor organizations should stand for, and what they should be commended and approved for, may be stated as follows:First,-To present and maintain a solid front against the encroachments of selfish and avaricious capitalists by acting in unison and in harmony. In other words, to secure the best market price for labor, the most reasonable number of hours for work, and all possible advantages which are due to laborers as human beings.

Second,-To improve the character of the members and to advance their knowledge of their trades by disseminating literature appropriate and helpful.

Third, To improve the craft by clearing it of unworthy and dishonest members, thus supplying good and skilled men whenever such are needed, for whose character and efficiency the organization can vouch and become responsible.

Fourth,―To elect the wisest and best men for leaders to represent them and act for them in all contests for their rights. Such leaders should be men of conscience and ability with no political aspirations or .affiliations.

Fifth, To provide a form of accident and life insurance providing against loss of wages by injuries where "contributory negligence" releases the employer, and which provides for funeral expenses and even an additional weekly fund for a limited time for support of the family.

Sixth, To provide legal means of enforcing rights for collecting wages

or claims for injury.

Seventh,-To secure the necessaries of life for its members at a fair price above wholesale cost, and to borrow money at fair rates of interest for its members on chattel security in case of emergency. Labor organizations founded on such principles would have the sympathy and support of the public, and few struggles would arise with unjust employers. Such organizations would easily enroll the great majority of the worthy members of the craft. But the labor organizations, as at present constituted, with sufficient exceptions to prove the rule, are formed, like the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, solely for strike purposes, and the leaders are not busy unless engaged in some sort of warfare that creates hatreds, awakens prejudices, widens the breach between employer and laborer, and imperils the positions and good name of the members. Too often the men are led unwittingly into acts of violence which make them outlaws and enemies of the public peace.

The object of too many labor organizations is not to get the best market price for labor, but by threats of violence and by intimidation to get better than market price for labor. Such an unnatural result is short-lived, for the inexorable laws of the economic world assert themselves in time, and the employer thus "held up" fails in his business; uses up his surplus and goes out of business, or joins some trust to keep up prices to the consumer and make him pay for the extra wages. Oftenest he quietly discharges the men and replaces with new hands. But the result is quite uniformly at the expense of the laborer or of the con

sumer.

To get more than a fair market price for wages involves a cornering of the labor market at some point, and an absolute suspension of the law of competition in the sphere of labor. The uniform result must be a failure, which, the longer it is delayed, comes only with greater momentum and loss in the end. Hence woman labor and child labor is unorganized, for it has no brute force to maintain a strike; and yet, of all labor, it is deserving the most of sympathy and support from the public. Even the State has been properly compelled to come to the relief of such labor by statutory enactments regulating hours and sanitary conditions. Is there not a future for labor organizations, along these or similar lines, and are not the old ideas of organized labor doomed in a free democratic Republic like our own.

THE MARQUETTE BUILDING STRIKE.

THE strike at the Marquette building in Chicago will illustrate forcibly some of the principles enunciated in the preceding note. Unlike the strikes at Homestead, Brooklyn, and other places where the battle waged

was between union and non-union laborers, the struggle here was between different organizations of union men. This war began in October, 1894, and culminated in December with the killing of one Donald Gruar, a union carpenter, by John Kemperman, a non-union carpenter; for, though it was a battle between unions, it involved the presence of some non-union men. The results were two killed and nearly fifty wounded. And this in the heart of Chicago-called by Archbishop Ireland the "Imperial City'' of the United States;-opposite the Post Office, within a block of the First National Bank, in sight of the Federal Courts; in a Christian country, and under a free democratic Republic, in the year of our Lord 1894.

The trouble originally arose between what is known as the Building Trades Council and some men, employed by the Edison Company, who did not happen to belong to the union that was affiliated with the Building Trades Council,-the Electrical Workers' Union.

The Building Trades Council is composed of representatives of several different unions of workingmen in the building trades,—the Plumbers' Union, Steam Heaters' Union, Carpenters' Union, Metal Workers' Union, Plasterers' Union, and many others. This Council objected not simply to non-union men's working on any building with its members, but even to members of any union not affiliated with itself. In this way the Council could control the construction of large buildings and have the contractors and owners at its mercy. This was actually done at the Marshall Field building and at the Columbus building on State Street. Corporations and firms acquiring contracts for work were compelled to join the Council and pay a large fee for so doing. By this means a complete and perfect monopoly was created and the owners of the building were wholly powerless to act independently of the Council.

For instance, at the Columbus building one corporation that refused to join this Council was driven from the building, and it was compelled to relet its work to a member of the Council at an advanced figure, which it did rather than submit to the dictates of the Council.

The public has little conception of the crimes that are committed in the name of poverty and want, and that find justification only on grounds that the most sickly sentimentalism can invent.

It would seem as if the police and the courts would afford protection to men who desire to work; but it is simply impossible for such men to secure it. The forms of law are respected, and disturbers of the peace are put under bonds, but even if the bonds are forfeited, or fines imposed, the attorney for the organizations manages by some political "pull" to have the fines suspended and the bonds cancelled.

It is simply the affiliation of politics with labor organizations and with labor leaders that makes such a vicious and brutal strike as that at the Marquette building possible.

We record this strike in passing because though in one sense an obscure one, being unknown throughout the country, it is yet none the less

important as revealing vital principles and truths. It has come to pass that much of the so-called cruelty and disregard of capitalists for laborers is far outweighed by the cruelty and hatred of laborers one for another.

Is it not important to recognize the evils of a tyrannical monopoly and trust when it occurs among labor unions, as well as when it is fostered by selfish and avaricious capitalists?

THE BROOKLYN TROLLEY STRIKE.

ILLUSTRATIVE further of these principles was the strike in Brooklyn. It arose because of a most unjust and unreasonable reduction in wages proposed by the company. The sympathy of the public was at first with the strikers. If violence had not been used it would have remained so; but it is a question if the strikers could have secured the object for which they struck, for their places would have been quickly filled by men standing in the market place idle.

To strike at all was to be defeated in an overburdened labor market. What could be done? Let a company with watered stock, declaring large dividends and living like any other privileged paupers on the public, grind them in hours and wages, and if they protest fill their places with strangers and aliens at the expense and risk of the very public that granted the right of way? Such, unfortunately, was the only alternative, owing to the miserable custom of granting public franchises to private monopolies.

The attempt of Justice Gaynor of the New York Supreme Court, to compel the company to run their cars when 7,000 militia could not clear the streets for them was a practical injustice and a farce. But it was theoretical justice which should have been considered before the company secured its monopoly right.

The cure for such strikes is in municipal ownership or in state control of the natural monopolies. Large dividends, watered stocks, wealthy drones and paupers, who are willing to live at the public expense, will be followed by violence and strikes as a result of injustice and oppression if private greed is developed in place of a proper sense of the public good.

ARTICLE X.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

PAUL DE LAGARDE. Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben zusammengestellt von Anna de Lagarde. Göttingen: Dieterich'sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung. 1894. (Pp. 191. 63⁄44x33⁄4.)

To write the life of Lagarde would itself be a life task. His was a gigantic mind, his knowledge encyclopædic, his interests legion. Frau Lagarde does not attempt a biography. He must be a trained scholar who would estimate his literary and critical labors; a close student of school and church problems in Germany who would understand the value of his thought upon those matters. She does not even attempt to say the last word as to the personal life and qualities of her husband. With very modest pen she writes down for her friends and his, a few pages of reminiscences from his life. Waiving all claim to elegance of literary form, the book charms us by its artlessness. If the light cast on the life of Lagarde is not electric, it is also free from the caught-in-theact effects of an electric light; enough appears to show that more might be revealed, and at the same time the reader does not feel as if he had been present at a post-mortem examination.

There was much of hardship in the life of Lagarde. The memory of his father's home was so painful that even the wife shrank from inquiry concerning it. The very name of his father, Bötticher, he was willing to discard later in order to assume that of the great-aunt Lagarde who adopted him. He was gifted musically, but he must not even touch the piano. This was typical of his lot through life; there was music in his soul, but stern necessity kept him busied with the coarser affairs of life. The grim, cheerless years of childhood passed into no less cheerless years of manhood. The world to him was "terribly cold and heartless," he says.

Intellectually his youth was full of promise. He secured various prizes from the schools, and in particular a travelling fellowship which enabled him to spend two years in London and Paris studying in the libraries there. In spite of this auspicious opening of his career, and its promise that he would receive recognition for the work he was doing, he was compelled to support himself for twelve years by teaching in Gymnasia and Realschulen, at a salary rising from 400 to 750 thaler. One scarcely dares conjecture what the loss to the world must have been from these years of work that others could have done as well. They were