and the leg be not lost. As Frank P. Sargent, U. S. Commissioner of Immigration, says, "We would prefer to prevent the injuries rather than to secure indemnity therefor." The trade unions must continue by agitation and education, by appeals to legislatures, and, if necessary, by strikes, to enable good and compel bad employers to do everything within their power to lengthen the life and maintain the health of their workers.

In the matter of the health and safety of the workingman, society has not yet learned its full lesson. There was a time when the criminal law was a matter of private settlement, and a man could relieve himself of responsibility for the murder of his neighbor by making a blood payment of so much money to the kinsmen of the murdered man. Our attitude toward preventable accidents is still much the same. If the employer pays a ludicrously inadequate sum to his injured employees or to the widow of a workman who has been killed, society assumes that he has performed his full duty and that his concern in the matter has ceased. The commission or permission of preventable accidents should be considered a public crime, an injury not only to the workingman but to society at large. The factory laws of all states, which at the present time are frequently inadequate and sometimes remain a dead letter upon the statute book, should be greatly extended and should be enforced with the utmost rigor; and when men are killed or maimed or injured on raiiroads, in factories, or in mines through a violation of the plain letter of the law, as frequently happens at the present day, the employer should not only suffer in pecuniary damages, but should be liable to prosecution for a penal offense. No country, however powerful or formidable, can be considered truly great which does not hold important the life and happiness of its citizens, even if they be the humblest of untrained workingmen or the least of the little children in the factories.

There is nothing which so justifies the existence of trade unions as the work which they have done and are still doing in improving the sanitary conditions of the workingmen and saving them from premature or violent death. The solution of these problems in so far as the state does not take the direct

initiative can be left to no one but the organizations of labor. The individual workingman cannot regulate the conditions of his work. The textile workers of the United States, if organized into one vast, all-comprising union, could enforce proper sanitary conditions in all the textile mills; but a single weaver or spinner would be utterly unable to make any impression whatsoever. A weaver who offered to work only on condition that all the machinery of the mill be fenced, that the temperature of the rooms be not above a certain maximum, that such and such sanitary conditions be maintained, would find that his prospective employer would be able and willing to do without his services. No single workingman could determine upon, even if he could enforce, the hundreds of reasonable conditions which enter into our factory or mining laws or into the shop rules incorporated in trade agreements.. The shop and mining rules agreed upon in conference between employers and unions are, in many instances, absolutely essential to the health and even to the life of the workingman, and these rules require united action on the part of all workingmen. It would be impossible for the employer to treat with each workingman as to what shop or mine rules he would be willing to accept, however possible such an individual agreement might be in the case of wages. The rules relating to sanitation and safety are common, general rules, and serve to demonstrate clearly that the workingmen in a factory or in an industry are not to be considered as individual men contracting separately, but as members of one united group.

Even if it were possible for the individual workingman to contract upon the matter of safety and health, it would be contrary to public policy and public welfare to permit him to do so. The state refuses to allow a man to sell himself into slavery, even though he is an adult, in full possession of his faculties and not acting under duress. The law also refuses to permit a man to make any contract by which he will maim himself or allow himself to be maimed. If, however, the law is to permit a man to accept any risks of employment which his employer is willing to force upon him, the position of the workingman so contracting is practically identical with

that of a man selling himself into slavery or offering for a consideration to kill or maim himself. If it is against public policy to permit a brakeman by private agreement to relieve a railroad company of the obligation to use automatic couplers, then it should also be against public policy to allow an individual workingman to relieve the employer of the obligation to take such precautions for the health and safety of the workingmen as have been agreed upon jointly by the employers and the employees of the trade. The action of trade unionism in these matters should become increasingly universal, and to a greater and greater extent must secure a sanction like that given to the law itself.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MORAL UPLIFTING OF THE WORKMAN

Trade Unions Raise the Moral Tone of the Workingmen. Effect upon Character and Habits of Higher Wages-Shorter Hours-Decreased Peril-Better Sanitary Conditions. Can the Workingman be Trusted with Leisure. Labor as a Commodity. The Laborer as a Man. "Hands" and Men. Morals and Insurance. Morals and the Standard of Living. The Dignity of Labor. Self-respect, Democracy, and Morals in Industry. The Educating Influence of Trade Unions. Self-sacrifice and Unionism. The Erasure of Lines of Race, Creed, and Nationality. The Lesson of Universal Brotherhood.

THO

'HOSE who look only at the surface of things and judge trade unionism by an occasional glimpse are likely to fail signally to appreciate the uplifting influence of this institution upon the character of the wage earners. Many who admit that trade unions have been successful in raising wages, shortening hours, and improving the material conditions of the worker's life still believe that their effect upon his intellectual and moral tone has been either bad or entirely nil. Many deplore what they are pleased to call the "tyrannizing" of trade unions, their alleged reduction of all men. to the same level, their supposed tendency to "breed" discontent; and it is asserted that the strike and the boycott, which are laid at the door of the trade union, also affect injuriously the morale of the wage earner.

To all, however, who do not view these matters superficially, it must be evident that trade unionism has had exactly the opposite effect. The increased wages and shortened hours of labor have in themselves brought about a vast improvement in the mental and moral status of the workers. Workmen who formerly went from their twelve hours of work to the nearest saloon now spend their time with their families, improving their minds, or enjoying a sensible and sane recreation. In most instances increased wages have meant the gratification of the intellectual and artistic sense of the

workers; have meant books and pictures; have meant a few extra rooms in the house and more decent surroundings generally; have meant a few years' extra schooling for the children, have meant, finally, a general uplifting of the whole working class. The same is true of the measures taken by trade unions to prevent disease and accidents in factories. There is nothing so demoralizing as the recklessness which comes with the constant peril of one's life. A man who may be cut down at any moment by the sinking of his ship, by a bullet from the enemy, by a mine explosion, by the crash of cars without automatic couplers, or by the deadly clutch of an unfenced factory machine is apt to take little heed of the morrow and is not unlikely to spend the present day in a reckless debauch, which will injure him physically and degrade him morally. The measures taken by the trade unions to prevent the killing, maiming, and poisoning of the toilers, to prevent the men, women, and children of a factory from being huddled together indiscriminately with insufficient air, in an overheated or overmoist atmosphere, and with insufficient sanitary arrangements, have had a distinctly beneficial effect upon the morals of the persons affected.

Trade unionism has benefited the worker and raised his whole intellectual and moral tone by the emphasis which it has laid upon the welfare of the workingman. The employer, like the political economist of former days, was interested solely in the amount of production. He forgot the producer in the goods produced. Trade unionists and other reformers have thrown the emphasis not on the goods, but on the men by whom, and ultimately for whom, they are produced. It is no longer the machine, but the man at the machine, that is now taking the center of the stage in economical thought.

Formerly and, in fact, until quite recently, all discussions upon the subject of labor, its rights, and duties assumed the workingman to be a mere animate machine. The comparison was frequently made between the sale of labor and that of any other commodity, without reflection that the seller of a bushel of wheat cares not how, when, where, or by whom it is con