Public Regulation of Hours and Wages

A notable experiment was undertaken when the Kansas legislature in January, 1920, established a Court of Indus trial Relations. This court, in addition to the powers pre viously held by the state Public Utilities Commission, was given other regulative powers in respect to wages, hours, and conditions of work in a number of industries affected with a public interest, including coal-mining and all public utili ties. The individual worker is guaranteed freedom of action in making or terminating contracts, but the right to strike is denied in forbidding conspiracy to quit employment. The operation of this act, strongly denounced by organized labor, is watched with great interest by the general public. The plan seems destined to have wider application and a larger development in the not distant future.

§ 14. Organised labor's attitude toward labor legislation. Labor organizations hitherto have been in their legal nature almost entirely private and voluntary. They are seldom incor porated and are rarely even recognized in any way by legisla tures and by courts, which deal merely with the members as individuals.' Their private character, combined with their limited membership as compared with the total population, leaves them without the power to accomplish legally by them selves the results that they desire in their own interest. Hence they are tempted at times to usurp public authority over the field of private rights in In other cases, when they have come to the end of their unaided powers, they invoke the aid of the law to accomplish their objects. But the appeal of organized labor to the law is special and quali fied, being confined to cases where the actions of others are controlled to the advantage of the union, such as regulating the work of women and children, controlling the acts of em ployers in respect to construction of factories, and limiting the length of trains. This does not imply a peculiarly selfish at titude on the part of organized labor. Action together in any social group always develops in men their loyalty and spirit of cooperation without always making them more considerate to those outside of their group. Indeed, often men acting through their chosen officials, private or public, are more selfish collectively than they are individually. The leaders of any group of men, whether of wage workers, merchants, manufacturers, or political constituents, find it necessary to show that the interest of their supporters rather than a broader "sentimentality" is uppermost in their thought.

• The few exceptions to this statement are mostly recent; such as the recognition of the unions in New Zealand in 1894 as parties in the plan of compulsory arbitration, and in Great Britain in 1909 as agencies through which unemployment insurance may be administered.

9 As appeared in ch. 21.

And, further, the jealousy of any limitation of their power is as powerful a motive in one group of men as in another. All are made of the same human clay. But the stronger and more successful a labor organization is, the more vigorously do its leaders resist any legislation that limits the functions and field of action of the labor leaders, or that settles labor troubles in a way that makes the voluntary labor organization less necessary to the individual worker. Of course, self-help, as a spirit and as a policy, is a virtue, if it does not sacrifice the rights of others. But if the facts above suggested are borne in mind they will help to explain the otherwise often puzzling attitudes of organized labor toward different meas ures of social legislation.

§ 15.

Organized labor's opposition to compulsory arbi tration. Organized labor in America has attained to a highly influential position. On the whole, it constitutes an "aris tocracy of labor," consisting largely of skilled workers who obtain a wage exceeding that of unskilled workers to a degree not seen anywhere else in the world. In this they have been favored by a combination of conditions which it is not pos sible to describe briefly ; suffice it here to say that organization is itself not the whole explanation, but only a small part of it. Thit organized labor, officially, is strongly opposed to compulsory arbitration in America is thus perhaps sufficiently to be understood on the principle of "Let well enough alone." When, in August, 1916, a strike on the entire railroad system was threatened by the four railroad brotherhoods, and some action was proposed in the form of the Canadian act, the trade-union officials issued a statement containing these words: "Since the abolition of slavery no more effectual means has been devised for insuring the bondage of the workingman than the passage of compulsory investigation acts of the char acter of the Canadian Industrial Disputes Act." Within less than a week the brotherhoods called off the strike after Con gress had passed the much discussed Adamson Act giving the men the eight-hour day—a substantial part of what they had asked—and providing for investigation, by a commission, of the effects of the rule. The decision was compulsory upon the railroads, but not upon the men to accept the terms.