Government regulation has two classes of advocates: One hopes thereby to insure the welfare of the people, the other hopes to insure his own continuity of control. It is often hard for the average man to discern the first from the second, and frequently seekers for the commonweal are deluded into following false leaders and trying a remedy that is worse than the disease.

Government regulation is a remedy frequently suggested for all manner of political social, and economic evils, resulting from modern industrial chicanery and incompetency. It is not itself a universal good or evil; its application, or otherwise, must be determined by the individual character of the principles involved in the situation.

If the compulsory element is introduced and Government machinery is invoked in determining industrial disputes, then it devolves upon the Government to enforce any and all awards that thus become the law of the land, in order to protect the Government from contempt. Should the employer object to the decision and award he may go out of business, which may involve financial loss, or he may enter upon another business career; or if he violates the terms of the award, he can be held financially liable. But should the employees feel that an award and decision have been ever so grossly unfair and unjust, what recourse is open to them? To accept the award and sullenly work as slaves under conditions which are not only onerous to them, but enforced by all the powers of Government? Or rebel and go on an "illegal strike"? In the latter event, they may be all arrested, tried, and sentenced to fines or imprisonment. But supposing fines, how collect them? In lieu of means or willingness to pay fines, several thousand may be sent to jail. But how, all at one time, or in relay squads?

Decisions can not be enforced in the face of the united and determined resistance of the people to tyranny and in defense of freedom. You can not stop strikes by law; you can not, at least in the United States in this year of grace, enforce involuntary servitude upon unconvicted American citizen workmen. Even if strikes could be made illegal there would be no guarantee of industrial peace. A strike is not an aggressive act; it is not an affirmative act; it is negative. It is expressed by nonresistance. It is the state of doing nothing. It is expressed by men folding their arms or holding them to their sides, a refusal to expend their physical and mental powers in service for another. And so long as freedom in its faintest concept shall obtain in our country, so long as workmen, citizens of the United States, may claim the rights and the guarantees of the Constitution of the United States and of the Several States, they can not by law be forced to expend their labor power, which is part of their very life and being, in the service of another.

The enactment of compulsory arbitration is no remedy for strikers. This fact is proven wherever the effort has been made. All agree that strikes should be avoided whenever possible and every honorable effort made to aver them. But the very best evidence is afforded by the board of arbitration's award in the case under consideration-that strikes are more generally avoided and brought to a minimum in number when the workers are organized, capable of ascertaining and maintaining their rights, with the power and the right to strike, and yet submitting their cause, as they submitted this case, to an arbitration board the majority of whom were predisposed against them.

Even though the award in regard to wages, hours, and conditions of employment is not entirely satisfactory, it has been accepted and will be complied with by the men and the organization affected. But, as Mr. Morrissey, a member of the board, points out, the terms are unjust, inapplicable, and can not in any ay be regarded as at all permanent. But be that as it may, the board of arbitrators in the case could well have afforded to have allowed its award upon the conditions of labor to stand without traveling far beyond the purpose for which it was called into existence and entering into a realm dangerously trespassing upon the rights of man and guaranteed American citizenship.

Would a compulsory arbitration law, with its provisions enforced by the Government, prove a deterrent to strikes? We think not. But even if it did, such a law would only repress the feeling of anger and resentment at unjust decisions until the repressed current would burst through all control, sweeping everything before it in the revulsion of feeling. The pages of the French Revolution afford example after example of cumulative revulsion resulting from tyranny and repression. As the Outlook truly observes: "Compulsory arbitration would promote rather than prevent labor wars unless it can be so framed as to secure the consent of the trainmen "-which is to say must be voluntary instead of compulsory.

As already stated, strikes should be avoided whenever possible, but is a strike essentially an evil? As Dr. Lyman Abbott said, in discussing international arbitration treaties:

"

What we should be especially interested in is not that this be a movement for peace, but that it be a movement for justice. Peace has its tragedies no less than war."

What the right of resistance to injustice is in the political world the right to strike, to cease work, is in the industrial.

A reserve power held in abeyance to be used only in the interests of justice when all other means have failed.

The right to strike must be retained if the workingmen would retain the position of free men.

A strike, like any other power, is not to be used flippantly. It has been one of the most effective means with which the workers have fought their way to higher elevations. Workers have ever been the oppressed class; but slowly, steadily, they have forged their way upward from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to freedom. Then as a free man they have fought to maintain the right to strike, to dispose of their working power as they deem best, to associate themselves together to promote their general welfare. Now come vested interests seeking again to reduce the workers to a condition in which they may be more readily exploited. The danger threatens in the form of governmental intervention and regulation of industrial relations through judicial machinery, and the jails. In the interests of industrial continuity the workers may not cease work when they please.

The toilers are to lose their defensive weapon. The Government directs that they shall unfold their arms and forces them to work. The workers are to return to the condition which prevailed under the old medieval conspiracy laws, when men were jailed, branded, or hanged on the charge that they had "robbed their employers of their labor." Strikes are to be made illegal.

Must it come that to regain freedom from slavery the workers must fight the Government? That for the purpose of preventing strikes and maintaining industry undisturbed compulsory arbitration must set unconstitutional limitations on the freedom of the great masses of the people? However much we may regret the economic loss, suffering an inconvenience attending strikes, there is involved that which is of greater moment. What should be the object of our endeavors is not a cure, not a palliative, not merely something that will stop industrial warfare and economic loss, but to understand and remedy the underlying conditions that result in injustice so that our changes may be really constructive. Industrial warfare will cease when the grievances of the wrongs and injustice to, the toilers no longer exist. Then the worker shall still remain a free man, retain his weapon of defense, cumbersome though it be.

"The crucial boundary line, the border between industry and democracy," does, indeed, need more light, more fair, open investigation and discussion, not the compulsory awards and decisions that would result from substituting Government regulation, control, and enforcement for voluntary action concerning personal relations on the part of free citizens.

How the principle operates in practice gives a line on its actual value and reveals whether the results promised are secured; that is, Are there no strikes? Is industrial progress uninterrupted? Has the industrial problem been solved and are the interests of labor and capital coordinated so that an era of good feeling and industrial peace is maintained? Have social justice and democracy been realized? Can law prevent strikes? Can compulsory arbitration affect industrial changes that will result in setting up machinery that will insure the employees a fair share of the product of their toil? The most extensive laboratories for experimentation in these questions are in Australia, Canada, and British South Africa.

For the first 12 years after the adoption of conpulsory arbitration in Australia its advocates had many reasons for satisfaction. The grievances and the wrongs of the men were so obvious that no court could refuse them awards, so the workers were satisfied. As the adoption of the law coincided with the period of prosperity the employers did not seriously object to increased wages. The high-tariff wall gave the employers additional protection. Their profits were further insured by the tendency toward standardization of production costs. Australia and New Zealand were usually spoken of as a workingman's paradise-the land of no strikes.

Beginning with 1901 dissatisfaction developed among the workers. This culminated in a long series of strikes beginning in 1906, when a strike occurred on

the tramways in Aukland; in 1907 there was a large strike among motormen and conductors in Aukland and the bakers of Wellington. The labor report for New Zealand for 1908 showed 23 strikes, affecting 2,389 men, and since then strikes have increased in number and in scope.

The

In February, 1907, the slaughterers demanded an increase in wages. packers refused to grant this and referred the question to the arbitration court. Knowing that the court would consume the most valuable time of the season in reaching a decision, which in the end would probably be unfavorable, the men struck illegally. The four principal centers of the packing business were tied up. This desperate situation forced the employers to grant the increase. The court was in a dilemma for “" 'the law must be upheld." They arrested the slaughterers and fined them $25 each. It was a long and tedious process. Men were numerous and hard to identify. Those brought in were searched, but the $25 was not forthcoming. The wheels of justice ground slowly. When summer was ended many unfined slaughterers had vanished. The law had been defied with impunity; it was impotent to prevent the strike and could not enforce the penalty for striking.

The necessity of enforcing the law prompted the Government to increase the penalties for its violation. In the future anyone who struck while a case was pending might be fined and in lieu of the fine his goods confiscated or the man himself imprisoned. Any labor union ordering a strike or permitting its members to strike must pay a fine. Then, lest the unions evade the law by withdrawing their registration, the fine for striking was extended to all trades supplying a utility or necessity, whether the trades were organized or not.

Strikes among the slaughtermen have been especially numerous in New Zealand, and for that reason are counted separately in the labor reports. In the year 1908-9 penalties were inflicted on workmen in 266 cases, the fines aggregating $6,650, of which at the end of six months 58 per cent remained unpaid.

In 1908, after having presented their grievances again and again, and receiving no answer except the dismissal of the men making the complaints, the miners struck. Preparatory to action they divided their union funds among the individual members to prevent their being levied on for fines. The employers invoked the new law. The household goods of the men were seized— cook stoves, sewing machines, and furniture, including articles owned by wives before marriage. The goods must be sold at public auction, but buyers there were none. Finally a smiling man offered $1.25 for the whole lot, and got it. Before night the miners' goods had been returned to the miners' homes. Thus it was again plain the law could be defied with impunity. Enforcement of law depends on popular sentiment, or concept of justice.

Mere enactment of legislation is no remedy. Compulsion can not be extended beyond certain limits.

In West Australia there were many "unlawful" strikes and lockouts, but as a rule no attempt to enforce the prohibiting clause. The act broke down completely in 1907 in the sawmilling industry. Three thousand men were affected, but there was no attempt to enforce the unpalatable award.

In a mass meeting of the employers of Broken Hill Mine, of New South Wales, on October 18, 1908, the chairman declared:

"The idea of the new political union is to get an agreement and register. The bona fide unions in the Broken Hill Mine would have no voice in it. These irresponsibles would have the agreement made a general law. A strike is our only remedy. Wade's act says we shall go to jail if we strike, but no Government on earth would put the 6,000 men on the line of load in the Barriers in jail."

This chairman definitely voices the conviction that has been growing among the men, that the compulsory law was a political move and that the labor men had never controlled the political situation. As a result the workingmen had come to feel that they had no part in the system, and that whatever had been given them was only given to hold them in line quiescent that industry might be uninterrupted, but that freedom of action, the birthright of all free men, was yet far from their reach, tied up by absolute governmental control.

The exploited can not cherish good will toward those who use governmental control for their hurt. Compulsory arbitration did not emanate from the workers, but from the rural public, which was the controlling political force. They had always assumed a savage attitude toward strikers and made frequent use of the militia against them. The militia used in strikes was told to aim to "lay the strikers out." The police of Australia have used against

strikers a most brutal method found no place else, known as frog marching." The arrested striker is seized by the feet by two policemen, then he is inverted and held with his head so close to the ground that he is forced to protect it as best he can by using his hands as feet, as he is escorted in that position to the jail.

Many investigators have tried to determine the value of Australian industrial legislation. Some of their opinions are as follows:

Paul Kellogg says:

But it is not through fear of fine and certainly not through the martyrdom of imprisonment that men and women are to be led to agree with their masters. The new act will continue to succeed as a prevention of strikes in spite of its strike-prevention clauses rather than because of them."

Sidney Low, in the April Fortnightly, concludes:

It would be rash to affirm that the Australian precedent has been sufficiently successful to call for hasty imitations by other and more complex communities."

Hugh H. Lusk, a most ardent advocate of the system, says:

'However anxiously I have looked around for some way in which the system of New Zealand could be applied here (the United States), I have been met by difficulties that seemed to me insuperable."

When the law of 1901 expired, New South Wales enacted the law of 1908, which practically abandoned compulsory arbitration. Wage boards were provided for the more important groups of industry. There was a clause enabling unorganized labor to appeal to the wage board for relief, but no such appeal has ever been made. Strikes and lockouts were made illegal under certain conditions only. Though a penal clause of the law was strengthened, it has not prevented large bodies of men from striking.

In 1902, 12,000 coal miners went on strike; 1,000 men were idle in other industries as a result. Then, in December, Parliament passed a coercive act giving the police power to break up any meeting for strike purposes, making the procedure more effective and increasing the severity of the penalties. In December, 1910, the Government secured the conviction of the president of the Colliery Employees' Association, sentencing him to one year at hard labor in prison. Three other leaders were given sentences of eight months, and others shorter terms.

A short time ago a published interview with J. S. Badger, an American who had been living in Brisbane for 16 years, indicated that compulsory arbitration had not resulted in the kind of feeling between employers and employees necessary to industrial peace, but rather alienation was increasing. He said:

"The question of getting labor and dealing with it, is a very serious one in Australia. The country has, perhaps, led in labor legislation, and all disputes between employers and employees are subject to arbitration. There is a Federal arbitration board, and in each State there are arbitration courts, or wage boards for each separate industry. These last have an equal membership of employers and employees, with an independent chairman, and they settle all details about maximum hours and minimum wages. Their decisions, when approved by a minister, and gazetted, have the force of laws, and severe penalties are provided for their infraction. These laws are enforced rigidly against the employer, but it has been found very difficult to enforce them against the employees. The whole history of this legislation has shown that you can readily get at an employer, and fine him, or worse, but if a large number of employees are dissatisfied, and decide to stop work, there is no way of making them take up their tools again. If you haul them up, they snap their fingers. If 10,000 men decide they won't work, it would be a little more than the Government could do to lock up the whole lot or attempt to fine them."

It will be remembered that in Brisbane, the "country without strikes," of which the late Henry D. Lloyd wrote, a general strike completely paralyzed all industry and commerce last spring. The causes of the strike were the refusal of the management to grant permission to street-railway employees to wear the metal badge of their union while at work, and the long delay in bringing the matter before the arbitration court. When finally the men did win a favorable decision from the arbitration court the employers appealed the case to the high court.

Compulsory arbitration can not guarantee industrial peace. If arbitration is followed by more harmonious conditions it must be arbitration sanctioned by the employees; that is to say, voluntary arbitration. Where there has been organization of the workers, voluntary arbitration has become the prevailing

custom in American industry. Why should we change to a method that has not secured as satisfactory results where tried?

In the light of such experience with compulsory arbitration, organized labor is justified in objecting to having any such legislation foisted upon it under the pretense and euphonious name of peace. Labor seeks justice, and peace will naturally follow-peace is a result, not a casual element. Labor deprecates all such suggestions introduced in the name of social welfare, but really serving as an entering wedge whereby the people may be beguiled into adopting a regulation prejudicial to the best interests of a great proportion of the population-the workers. Labor will oppose compulsory arbitration under any guise. In the next issue we expect to discuss the Canadian compulsory investigation act.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You agree, then, as I understand you, with some of the other men who have testified here, that even where the railroad and its employees do submit a dispute to arbitration, it is much better that there should be no third party represented on the board of arbitrators, but that it should be composed of those who are or have been actually engaged in the operation of the trains and those who are or have been railroad managers?

Mr. GOMPERS. I would as lief, if the employers and employees can not come to an agreement on a disputed point, that they toss up a coin and let it go at that, as to leave it to a so-called disinterested third party. Or, if they can not agree, then let the break come and let them endeavor to reach an understanding and an agreement upon the new terms upon which the workmen will sell the only thing that they have, their labor power, and upon which the employers will buy it.

Senator CUMMINS. Mr. Gompers, I do not desire to change the course of your argument at all, but there is no proposal before us for arbitration or to change the law in any respect with regard to arbitration. Two things are proposed: First, a Government investigation in the event of a dispute; second, restraint-prohibition against striking during the period of that investigation; third, giving some Government tribunal, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the authority to fix wages and hours of labor and conditions of labor. Those are the things I would like to hear about.

Mr. GOMPERS. Senator Cummins, I will, if I will be permitted to, present my thoughts on that subject. It is true that there is no bill pending before this committee providing for compulsory arbitration, but the subject of compulsory investigation and the prohibition of a strike during that investigation is the entering wedge to compulsory arbitration. There is never any act of that character but what is followed by something else. Adopt a law for compulsory investigation and a prohibition of strikes during the investigation, and rely upon it in the effort to prevent strikes that is, after all, the purpose, to prevent strikes experience and the fact that strikes can not be prevented that way will lead to a further effort being made to strengthen the law-I use the word "strengthen" in quotation marks strengthen" the law to make strikes absolutely illegal. Senator BRANDEGEE. Suppose there was no attempt in this bill to exercise any power to stay the strike pending the investigation. Do you, or does your organization, object to a law which would provide for a Government commission whose duty it would be to make its own investigation of the conditions of the dispute and publish its findings?