says Blackmore "with the position of the majority is that it persists in regarding the members of the union as separate individuals and the act of the union officials as the act of a third party when there are many authorities to the effect that the laborers have a right to combine and be treated as a unit." 1 Perhaps the most difficult of all the several tasks that fall to the courts from this class of cases is to preserve all that is valuable in individualism in the form of individual rights and at the same time to make room for that organization which in modern industrial society is so necessary and so inevitable in the form of socialization and social rights. 1 "Intimidation by Fines in Labor Disputes," Green Bag, vol. 20, p. 620, Dec., 1908. CHAPTER XIV PAYMENT Of Wages ONE of the questions that has given rise to important differences of opinion is as to the time for the payment of wages. Legislation has been secured requiring payment at regular stated intervals. One week is the period usually adopted. On the constitutionality of such legislation the courts have taken very diverse views. When upheld, it has usually been on the ground of the evident intent of the legislators to improve existing conditions. When declared invalid, on the other hand, it has been on the grounds usually urged against labor legislation. In State v. Brown and Sharpe, Judge Rogers of Rhode Island argued the advantage of the corporation over the individual workman in the adjustment of the conditions of employment. Unless the employees are paid at regular intervals their real wages are less than their nominal wages. This is because they are frequently dependent upon their current wages for their daily bread. If they get credit, they must pay for it, as others do, and, in proportion to their inability to pay cash and the risk in trusting them, they have to pay for the time indulgence they obtain. To save labor and expense, many corporate pay rolls were made up but 12 or 13 times a year, and sometimes, when corporate means were cramped, even less often, whereby employees were obliged to wait for their pay, and the longer they had to wait the less it was worth to them. The counsel for the defense had evidently argued that the 261 |