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pecially where membership in a union means participation in a large accumulated surplus, it may be fair to charge an initiation fee somewhat higher than usual. One must look at the motive behind the regulation. But if the union is monopolistic, its refusal to work with non-union men is an aggravation of its offense, and an unduly high initiation fee may mean a tax levied upon capable men, willing to work according to union rules and regulations.

The second qualification is based upon policy rather than principle. While unionists have a perfect legal and moral right to refuse to work with non-unionists, it is not always politic to exercise this right, and the demand upon the employer for the complete unionizing of his plant is not always presented in a wise or politic manner. Many employers who are willing to have their shops unionized are not willing to appear to be forced into such a position, and many workmen can be persuaded who cannot be compelled to become unionists. No demand should be made for the unionization of a shop until all reasonable efforts have been made to secure the allegiance of every employee. It is unwise, moreover, to demand the unionizing of a shop or an industry where there is not sufficient strength to compel it. For every such demand and prior to every such demand there should be months of patient propaganda, and in this, as in every other, line of trade policy, compulsion should not be used until persuasion has completely and signally failed.

There is, it must be admitted, a certain danger apart from antagonism of employers in compulsory unionizing of shops. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still, and the union button does not make a unionist at heart. An enemy is sometimes more formidable within the lines than on the outside. Half a dozen obstructionists may defeat the purpose of an orderly meeting, while the presence of a few anti-unionists at trade union meetings may enable employers to inform themselves of the plans and projects of the organization, and may thus cripple the union more effectively than if the avowed friends were open enemies.

In conclusion, I believe that trade unions have a perfect legal and moral right to exclude non-unionists, but that this right should be exercised with the utmost care and only after persuasion has been tried and has failed. I also believe that with the growth of trade unionism in the United States the exclusion of non-unionists will become more complete, although animosity toward the non-unionists will diminish with the lessening of his power to do evil.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LABEL AND THE BOYCOTT

The Attack upon the Boycott. The Boycott and the Right of Free Speech. Boycott an Expression of Popular Feeling. Legality. Occasional Injustice. Difficulty of Drawing a Line. Secondary or Indirect Boycott. The Strike the Weapon of the Seller; the Boycott the Weapon of the Buyer. Boycotting, Advertising, and Modern Business. The Label the Reverse of the Boycott. The Union Label an American Invention. The White, Red, and Blue Labels. The Union Label and the Sweated Trades. Growth of the Label. Counterfeiting the Label. Legal Protection. The Label Organizes Workmen as Consumers. The Future Possibilities of the Label.

THE right to boycott, like the right to strike or lock-out, the right to

vote, the right to bear arms, the liberty of speech, or the right to devise one's property as one will, is subject to misuse. There can be no personal liberty that does not, at some time or other, lead to abuse and cause individual hardship. There is no justification, however, for the widespread sweeping denunciation of the boycott, so lightly uttered.

The boycott presents one of the most difficult problems in labor disputes. It would be as foolish and wrong to defend all the various manifestations and instances of boycotts as it is for the critics of trade unions to attack them in a body. There are many instances of boycotts not only defensible but wholly praiseworthy, and there are other cases in which the boycott may be unjustifiable, mean, and cowardly.

It is not to be supposed that the boycott is a weapon merely of trade unionists, or even of working people. Every class in society and every society itself constantly makes use of this device. Speaking generally, the boycott is nothing more than an expression of moral disapproval, a method of social ostracism. A boycott, like a strike, is a means of compulsion, but it is not necessarily an unjustifiable means. Whenever a group in society, be it a church or a trade union, a temperance party, or a consumers' league,

believes that it is necessary to discriminate against persons committing certain actions, a boycott exists. In political, industrial, and social life men are being constantly boycotted, because of their failure or refusal to attain to certain ideals.

Perhaps the most effective use of the boycott has been made by employers. Manufacturers have been boycotted by other manufacturers and by jobbers and by retailers, and these latter have been boycotted by manufacturers or associations of manufacturers. Individual firms have been

boycotted by banks, and banks have been boycotted by the general business community. Railroads have been boycotted and, in turn, have boycotted, as they have specially favored, particular shippers in violation of the law. In the business world men of all classes and all occupations are boycotted for all reasons. A manufacturer may be boycotted by other manufacturers, simply because of his having made reasonable terms with labor. When in one of the early anthracite strikes a number of operators desired to submit to the demands of the striking miners, they were prevented from so doing by the railroads exorbitantly raising their freight rates, and thus shutting out of the market the coal mined under union conditions. As a matter of fact, during the last anthracite strike, one of the so-called “independent" operators personally told me that he would readily grant the demands of the union but for the fact that by doing so he would be discriminated against by the railroad companies, and consequently forced into bankruptcy.

The boycott of the union may be levied against a person or a thing. An anti-union employer or a non-union workman may be boycotted either in business or socially; a product may be boycotted either by a refusal to buy it or a refusal to work on it or with it.

The legal right of workingmen to boycott should not be called into question. Workingmen in boycotting one of their fellow-craftsmen are simply doing together what they have a perfect right to do separately. A man has a legal right to refuse to deal at a certain establishment, to give or withhold patronage, to buy where he sees fit; and what one may do a

hundred or a thousand should have the right to do. No one can compel John Smith to buy goods from John Brown, and no one can compel him to enter the same car, to sit in the same church, or to eat at the same table. The workingmen should not only have the right to boycott a person or a thing, but they should also have the right to present to the public in a fair and temperate manner a statement of their position, in order that the public may have the opportunity of judging and, in its discretion, of aiding or refusing to aid in the boycott. There are many cases of boycotts by organized workmen, in which other rights are involved than those of the laboring classes themselves. The occasional tyranny of unscrupulous employers over shop girls, amounting in many cases to a violation of the most fundamental laws of morals and decency, should be restrained by a boycott where legal redress is not possible. In many trades in which women, suffering under the double burden of their sex and their dependent position, or immigrants, pliant, ignorant, and unresisting, are exploited in the foulest dens of a foul tenement, the unions should have the right to appeal to the public by the boycott or the label to secure protection to these undefended I creatures. The boycott should not be issued secretly, and the person or the owner of the thing boycotted should have the right to be heard before a boycott is imposed. The same rules that apply to a strike should apply to a boycott; it should be enforced only when a real necessity exists and under conditions which will promote the welfare of the working classes and of society in general. The morality as well as the efficiency of a boycott can be secured only by limiting its application to important cases and by preventing its abuse.

There is a great danger in the tendency of certain courts to adopt an attitude antagonistic to the boycott. If an attempt is made to render the boycott illegal, as has already been done, the result will merely be that the boycott or the concerted refusal to purchase goods at a certain place will become secret instead of open. The only safeguard against the occasional abuses of the boycott is openness and publicity; and if the law forces the boycott to become irregular and secret, it will undoubtedly be used to serve