The American Federation of Labor
I
THE American Federation of Labor is a loose, voluntary federation of 109 national and international unions, each sovereign in its own field. (The international unions have members in Canada.) Its dues-paying membership, as announced in October, was 2,860,000. The headquarters is at Washington, where an executive council of seventeen carries on between the annual conventions, held in October and attended by several hundred delegates.
As a league of sovereign unions, the Federation is organized much like the thirteen original colonies under the Articles of Confederation. Jealous of their ‘jurisdictions,’as outlined in the charters of organization granted them by the A. F. of L., the national and international unions accord the Federation extremely limited powers. Each autonomous union has sole discipline over its own members. These members are represented in the Federation only through their national or international union. With the exception to be noted later, each union member is a citizen of his national union.
A charter issued to a national union is a precious scroll and symbol about which many battles have been fought. The charter of the miners’ union gives it the right to organize all workers ‘in and about the mines.’ In the early days of this union the machinists’ and firemen’s unions sought to enlist as members operatives in their crafts who worked in the mines, but they were defeated in this purpose by the miners. Although the Federation has the power, through its annual convention, to suspend or revoke a charter of a national or international union, it seldom takes such drastic action, primarily because that would lead to two unions in the same field. ‘Dual’ unionism is anathema to the Federation.
The Federation serves as the sounding board for the general policies of organized labor; it aims also to ‘aid and encourage the sale of union label goods and to secure legislation in the interest of the working people,’ and to ‘influence public opinion, by peaceful and legal methods, in favor of organized labor.’ The national unions existed before the A. F. of L. Joining together to form the Federation, — ‘a rope of sand,’Samuel Gompers, its president for forty years, called it, — the large units limited the Federation to the chartering of new international unions and to defining their jurisdiction.
Chartering a new union is like admitting a new state to the United States; its boundaries have to be defined, but it maintains the right to secede. The Federation reserves the right to charter a new union in a field covered by an expelled union or by one that has voluntarily withdrawn from the Federation. Thus there are two national unions of government employees, one which withdrew from the Federation several years ago and another chartered subsequently. Each national or international union charters local unions, and limits their powers. It may abolish or combine local unions, and accord or withhold the right to strike. It disciplines a recalcitrant local union, and compels it to abide by the rulings of the national union, its constitution and by-laws and convention edicts.
Offices are coveted prizes, yet the same men seem to be selected year after year. When they grow old and their efficiency decreases, a loyalty for ‘the old man’ often holds them in office to the detriment of the union’s work. Unions need retirement systems, but only a few have them. In every shop or place of employment there is a shop chairman or steward, usually unpaid except for time lost on union business. He collects dues and handles grievances, reporting to the union members at stated meetings and to the union officers.
The election of officers, a political process, demonstrates that there is politics in unions, as in chambers of commerce, lodges, clubs, or business corporations. In unions, as in stock corporations or in political elections, many persons are not interested enough to vote. Occasionally strong-arm tactics are used by officers to maintain themselves in power. In these cases there is constant turmoil within the unions. Eventually there is a change of officers. Sometimes the change of officers is so slow in coming that the fortunes of the unions are adversely affected. Most officers have to be elected either by conventions or by referendum vote of the members.
The men selected reflect both the needs and the wishes of the members. To outsiders a belligerent business agent seems to be undesirable. But while a union is fighting for its existence, and employers refuse to deal with it, its members demand fighting leaders. Hostile employers, ever on the alert to put down incipient labor organization, are met with equally hostile union agents intent on furthering union organization. The inevitable occurs — strikes, lockouts, clashes between pickets and strikebreakers and law officers.
Balance of power at A. F. of L. conventions gravitates toward the larger unions. At national union conventions it rests with the larger local unions. Until the 1934 convention of the Federation, the balance on the Executive Council was adjusted between large and small unions with such nicety that there resulted an administration machine which was usually able to reelect its ticket year after year. But this arrangement was disturbed last year at San Francisco when seven new vice presidents were added to the Council. The larger unions now have such outright control that the smaller ones profess to be helpless.
The Council meets four times a year. In between its meetings the work of the Federation is carried on by the president, the secretary, the treasurer, and their staffs.
The presidency and secretaryship of the A. F. of L. are full-time positions paying $12,000 and $10,000 respectively. The vice presidents are paid by their respective unions. Salaries of union officers vary with the size of the organizations. The musicians, stage employees, and teamsters pay their presidents $20,000 a year; the heads of the stationary engineers and iron workers get $15,000; presidents of the elevator constructors and mine workers get $12,000; bricklayers, electrical workers, lathers, plumbers, railway clerks, and commercial telegraphers pay their chief officers $10,000. These labor chieftains are responsible for the welfare of from 20,000 to 300,000 union members, whose incomes range from $1500 to $3000 a year. In contrast to these, two of the largest organizations, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, pay their presidents approximately $7500 a year, and $4000 to $8000 is the average for the remainder of union presidents. Since the depression, many of the officers have taken considerable salary cuts.
The financial reports of the Federation and of some of its affiliates are probably more revealing than most reports of corporations to stockholders. The latest report of the American Federation of Labor shows: —
Balance on hand August 31, 1933. $402,132.80
Receipts. 1,070,432.80
Grand total. $1,472,505.60
There are eleven items under receipts. The chief one is $385,816.93, representing a per capita tax paid into the Federation by the national unions at the rate of one cent a month per member.
The American Federationist, a monthly magazine, turned in to the treasury $239,747.96. Local trade and federal unions paid $133,615.31 to the defense fund. Initiation fees amounted to $248,757.79, and the remainder came from reinstatement fees, supplies, interest, and miscellaneous items. After deducting expenses of $906,859.24, the balance on hand was $565,706.36. Expense items included the salaries of organizers, together with organizing expenses, which amounted to $323,874.67. Salaries of organizers are $50 to $75 a week, with expense allowances of $8.00 a day when away from home. Office employees received $184,092.91; the American Federationist cost $135,459.18; legal expenses were $2634.
Besides vice presidents, the unions employ organizers, managers, and business agents, all elected, their pay range from $50 to $100 a week. They have suffered drastic cuts in the last four years, and in many cases the shrunken treasuries have compelled unions to place their officers on part time and to dispense with some offices.
II
Unions conceive it to be their task to organize workers into powerful, compact units, so that they may attain collectively a parity of bargaining power with their employers which they do not possess as unorganized individuals. Recognizing that cutthroat competition menaces fair profits and decent wage scales, they are seeking to organize the wage market, in order that all employers may compete on service and quality rather than on the basis of a low wage standard. To carry on this work, money is necessary. Money is also required to carry on the work of collective bargaining. The union is in competition with the employer who pays the expenses of employee representatives chosen under the employee representation plan and who also engages ‘outsiders’ in the form of personnel directors to advise on employee relations. Expenditures are enormous. Viewed in the aggregate, the labor organizations are engaged in ‘big business.’ And no wonder, for they have set themselves the stupendous task of gathering into unions a majority of workers in each line.
Their reasoning is simple. Take, for example, the miners’ union, which had for many years an agreement with bituminous coal operators in the form of an interstate compact covering collieries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Separate contracts existed, modeled after the one in the ‘central competitive field,’for outlying states such as Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Colorado, and those in the Far West.
In West Virginia, rich virgin outcroppings were being worked by the newest machinery, financed by new capital. The union had been unable to obtain a foothold in that state. Wages were low compared with those of the Northern fields; sales prices were low, and output was high. Apparently the West Virginia operators would soon win a large share of the market at the expense of the Northern operators and their employees.
The union threw organizers into West Virginia year after year, hardboiled men determined to bring the wage rates of these miners closer to those of the North in order to equalize competition. The Southern operators resisted unionization. Miners and operators fought pitched battles. Something like civil war reigned in southern West Virginia in 1920. They called Mingo County ‘bloody Mingo,’ and operators referred to McDowell County as ‘the Free State of McDowell,’ in defiance of the union. Federal troops were called out to stop an armed march of mine workers. Operators mounted machine guns on their tipples. They were fighting to retain their markets; the union was fighting for a higher allround wage scale, and hours and working conditions comparable with those in the North. Miners who struck were evicted from their homes; the union had to maintain them. Barracks were built, and for several winters union funds provided doles for strikers’ families. The union bought food by the trainload. Children were born in these barracks; the union paid the doctors’ and nurses’ bills.
Strikers and deputy sheriffs were killed and wounded. Thousands of the unionists were arrested; their families were clothed and sheltered by the union. Frequent injunctions prevented union activity in the vicinity of the coal camps. Congress investigated, and a Federal Commission made a voluminous and admirable report. Organizations adopted resolutions. The man in the street murmured, ‘Why does n’t somebody do something?’
But nothing was done. The union in West Virginia was smashed; the Northern operators lost out. To meet the sharpening competition they cut wages, and so did the West Virginia operators. Both wages and prices spiraled downward until the depression sent the structure of the industry crashing so fast that wages in the South dropped in some cases to an actual starvation level. Two years ago wages in some of the Southern coal communities were down to the 1890 level, coal was being thrown on the market at ruinous prices, and some coal operators joined miners on the relief rolls and in the bread lines.
Hardly had Section 7(a) been written into the National Recovery Act on June 16, 1933, when the miners’ union again sent its organizers into West Virginia. This time the operators offered no resistance. Shopkeepers in the coal camps hailed the union organizers with an almost evangelical fervor, supplied them with gasoline for their shabby cars, and gave them a lift in the work of organization. The ‘gospel of higher wages,’ increased purchasing power, and the lifting of these levels through the NRA and union organization had had their effect on this sick industry, and on those who depended upon it.
In October 1933, I was present at a Washington meeting in which John L. Lewis, president of the miners’ union, sat at one end of a table with his associates, and J. D. A. Morrow and coal operators from Northern and Southern fields sat at the other end. They signed a document which was drawn up to place coal production as near wage parity as possible in all the markets of the land. Some of these operators had sworn several years ago that they would never deal with the union. Now they were recognizing it as a stabilizing factor in their industry. To-day the operators tell me they would not consider giving up their union contracts and returning to the former dog-eatdog basis of wage competition.
III
Labor unions are of necessity missionary bodies. They carry on organizing campaigns in the hope that they may equalize competition among all craft and industrial units in a given field. Their organizers may work openly from the beginning, conducting mass meetings at mill gates, preaching the gospel of unionism, and enrolling as many members as possible before serving demands on employers. Sometimes they may slip secretly into a town, living with the workers and holding conferences with a trusted few, gradually widening their circle of influence until they are able to meet openly with enrolled members, make their demands, and, if necessary, call a strike.
Strikes may be called by local unions which have local autonomy; in some cases national unions insist on being consulted before a strike call is issued. In compact industries such as the needle trades, where a considerable number of local unions are to be found in the same city, the strike is decided upon by a joint board, with delegates from the affiliated local units. If they approve the walkout, they fix the date, and appoint committees to arrange for picketing, relief, and so forth.
A strike is rough business for employer and employee. It calls for a union agent who can get results from an employer resisting union organization, or, as he usually considers it, union ‘domination.’ When a union is recognized by the employer, however, and negotiations between him and the union officers and committees have been commenced, the work of the union leader becomes primarily business dealing and bargaining with employers. From this time on, the quiet, businesslike, and gentlemanly negotiator is more successful in getting results for union members than the fighting kind. In a sense, the attitude of the employer determines the type of union leader the men select and send to him. The businesslike officers of the railroad brotherhoods and shop craft unions, the heads of the printing unions, coal miners, men’s and women’s clothing unions, are types of the successful negotiating group. These unions, which have a long history of continuous negotiations with employers, have leaders who combine the attributes of a skillful trader and business executive with those of a belligerent leader ready to compel employers regarded as unreasonable to make concessions.
Strikes are generally called by unions as a last resort. As a rule they are the result of a failure to obtain recognition of certain demands. Strikes called without the permission of the national union, in those cases where such permission is required, may result in drastic action by the parent union against the outlaw strikers. There are cases on record where local unions, refusing to obey the edict of the international union, have been deprived of their charters and reorganized, and the international officers sent in union men from other cities to work in the place of the strikers. Such action has also been taken in cases where local unions have broken agreements with employers.
The Federation is officially opposed to sympathetic strikes. Desiring to build up a pattern of negotiation and agreement, the leading officers strongly oppose the breaking of contracts, for that is what the sympathetic strike means. The San Francisco general strike last July was denounced by Mr. Green as a move that would alienate public sympathy from the unions. The sympathetic strike is not formulated as a part of an initial plan. In the case of the West Coast longshoremen, the unions believed that all organized labor on the Pacific Coast was fighting for its life. They stampeded a meeting of the central labor council, and the delegates of the other unions approved the resolution for a general strike; the walkout was ordered in this instance on the theory that, contract or no contract, self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Veteran unionists hesitate before resorting to the strike. ‘You must not test your strength too often,’ is the caution of the successful leader. Only the inexperienced, eager to prove their economic weapon and not yet skilled in trade-union tactics, are likely to want action quickly.
The officers of the United Textile Workers fought hard at their annual convention last summer to keep the delegates from setting the date of the general textile strike last September. But when the more militant delegates set the date the officers were bound by it. Once the textile strike was called, it became a challenge to the Federation’s ability to carry on a broad campaign to enroll the widely scattered employees in the local unions of the textile industry. The strike got under way despite the skepticism of government officials, employers, and even many trade-unionists.
But this campaign exceeded even the fondest expectations of those conducting it. One of the principal factors in its success was the extraordinary campaign of publicity conducted by the union. Enlisting the services of a labor publicist of imagination, experience, and vigor, the textile union showed for the first time what could be accomplished in the way of enlisting public opinion by the expert mobilization of the press and radio.
IV
Affiliated directly with the Federation, and chartered by it, are the ‘Federal’ labor unions. These local unions are chartered only in those trades which have no national unions. They may ultimately be combined to form national or international unions, or they may be assigned to existing organizations. The principal Federal organizations are in the automobile, aluminum, rubber, cement, furniture, radio, and aircraft industries. They are industrial unions, including all crafts, and are organized separately by plants.
In recent years it has been the practice of the Federation to combine the Federal unions into National Councils, as a step in the direction of forming them into autonomous unions. Last June the eighty or more automobile unions which met in Detroit and discussed their hope of obtaining a national charter were grouped together as the National Council of Automobile Unions. Similar councils exist in the rubber and aluminum industries. There are now 1788 Federal unions in the Federation, varying in size from a handful to several thousand members.
Although it is generally supposed that craft unions predominate in the Federation, they number about twentyfive out of one hundred and nine national and international unions. Nearly half of the international unions include workers in interrelated crafts. These unions are to be found principally in the metal and machine trades. Approximately twenty-five international unions are of the semi-industrial type, and comprise workers of an industry in all its branches, separate crafts being maintained under the ægis of the parent body. Of the purely industrial or ‘vertical’ unions, the outstanding example is that of the coal miners. Organized on the basis of the entire industry, rather than of its component trades, the miners’ union embraces all who work ‘in or about the mines,’ including day laborers, skilled track layers, mule drivers, carpenters, and electricians. Each colliery has one local union and there are no separate craft or ‘horizontal’ demarcations.
Sometimes a craft union follows the material used by the craftsmen, and becomes an organization of amalgamated crafts. The carpenters, handling wood, followed the material to the mills, and took the mill workers into their own union. The bricklayers, observing the advances in the process of making new materials for walls and floors, pressed for jurisdiction over the men working with these new materials.
The Brewery Workers Union, an industrial union affiliated with the A. F. of L., includes not only all those engaged in brewing, but also the brewery truck drivers and the stationary engineers and firemen employed in the breweries. However, claims of jurisdiction over the teamsters, firemen, and engineers have been made by the respective unions of these trades, and this has been one of the most bitter jurisdictional disputes in the Federation’s history. Last year the brewery union refused to abide by an executive council ruling that it must give up the members of these three trades.
Among the industrial unions are those of the men’s and women’s clothing workers; the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers’ Union; the United Textile Workers; and the Boot and Shoe Makers’ Union. Of these, only the miners’ union includes clerical workers.
The national unions developed along craft lines at a time when industry was largely a small-scale affair, with many independent proprietors. Skilled men were easier to organize than unskilled workers, and although the Federation started out to organize both skilled and unskilled workers, it is to-day largely an organization of the skilled and semiskilled.
When the group which later formed the A. F. of L. broke with the Knights of Labor in 1881, it resolved to profit by the mistakes of the latter in endeavoring to carry out the One Big Union idea. The new Federation therefore made each union self-governing. The Federation did not receive the power to order sympathetic strikes. It stressed ‘pure and simple’ trade-unionism, which meant collective bargaining. Unions might voluntarily coöperate with others, but they could not be compelled to act except by their own choice. As a result, unions in the Federation developed different philosophies — some have confined themselves to collective bargaining, some have socialistic aspirations, and a few, in unworthy hands, became predatory and racketeering.
Inherent in this system are jurisdictional disputes that cannot be settled easily. This is not the result of craft unionism, as many assume, although the breaking up of unions into crafts intensifies the problem. If all unions were industrial or vertical, there would still be disputes between industries, at the frontiers. These disputes, whether those of craft or horizontal unions or of industrial or vertical unions, can be settled only by a higher authority; and the A. F. of L. has no authority higher than the national union.
Agencies have been set up many times to deal with jurisdictional disputes in the building industry. They have all broken down. In essence the struggle has always been between the large building unions and the small ones. For example, the bricklayers, one of the most powerful unions in the building-trades group, see no reason why all unions in the so-called trowel trades should not be organized as one large union. Naturally the plasterers’ union wishes to retain its autonomy; its officers fear the loss of jobs, the wiping out of their prerogatives.
As technology develops new methods, and as invention and science create new materials, rivalry develops among the unions for jurisdiction over the new methods and materials. When the wooden door and window trim gave way to steel, the carpenters’ union maintained that its jurisdiction covered the hanging of doors of whatever material. Carpenters had always hung doors, and they would continue to do so. The sheet-metal workers said: ‘That is all very well, but jurisdiction goes with the material. Your job is to handle wood products. Ours is to work in metal. Therefore we have jurisdiction.’
The National Board of Jurisdictional Awards in the Building Industry, representing employers and employees, heard this dispute and decided that the work should be done by the sheet-metal workers. The carpenters refused to abide by the decision, withdrew from the jurisdictional board, and the machinery collapsed. The fight between these two unions was carried to construction jobs all over the country, and there followed an internecine war which lasted for many years. In this struggle building owners and contractors, the innocent bystanders of jurisdictional disputes, suffered numerous delays on their jobs, with losses running into the millions.
Because of the lack of a supreme court to adjudicate questions promptly, many of the evils within labor organizations tend to perpetuate themselves. As moderator, the president of the Federation must walk lightly, and act with the greatest circumspection in the delicate balancing of issues between unions. He may threaten to have an international union charter suspended or revoked, but he seldom resorts to such drastic action. He must offend as few as possible, he must act aggressively on behalf of every national union on every possible occasion, and must welcome invitations to address their conventions. He must be a ‘good fellow, address rotary clubs, chambers of commerce, and the Elks, supervise the staff of organizers and research workers, present the President with resolutions attacking government officials, handle a voluminous correspondence, write newspaper releases, attend funerals, lay corner stones, and speak on labor’s relation to the Church, to science, art, music, education, and literature.
V
At this moment the Federation is in the midst of a grave crisis which arose directly out of the tenuous authority existing at the top of the trade-union hierarchy. The backbone of the Federation consists of the nineteen unions in the building trades, which are joined as the Building Trades Department. This department is now split in two, a division which may ultimately lead to the break-up of the Federation’s present form.
While stronger unions frequently encroach on the jurisdiction of the weaker ones, the latter have always tried to fight back through controlling the Building Trades Department. In the course of this struggle, three of the most powerful of these building unions — carpenters, electrical workers, and bricklayers — have been in and out of the Building Trades Department. Last June, after these three unions had been out of the Department for a few years, they signed applications for reëntry and paid their fees. They sent delegates to the annual convention of the Department last September. Instead of being admitted, they were confronted with a resolution to ban them from membership and to return their fees. The reason given by the united group of smaller unions was the belief that the larger unions were intent on returning to the fold in order to seize offices and control the new machinery for adjustment of jurisdictional disputes, established under the construction code.
Although President Green of the A. F. of L. condemned this action as illegal and unwarranted, those in control refused to admit the new delegates, reëlected their officers for three years, and adjourned. This dispute was thrown into the convention of the Federation a few days later, and Mr. Green was sustained. He was given forty-five days to mediate the dispute. Mediation failing, he was empowered to call a convention of the Building Trades Department that would seat the ousted unions and carry on the regular convention in a legal manner. The proceedings of the earlier convention of the Department were declared void. Mr. Green announced that mediation was unsuccessful. The twelve smaller unions of the group were bold enough to assert that mediation had not really been offered, as the time limit was ‘a gun at our heads, and all the triple alliance had to do was to wait forty-five days and refuse to give any concessions, secure in the knowledge that a convention would be called at that time.’
So it fell out. The convention was called late in November. The three large unions were joined by the operating engineers, the firemen, the teamsters, and the hod carriers. Seven unions, with the majority of votes in the convention, opposed the other twelve. But the twelve, knowing they were defeated once they entered the convention hall, declined to attend. Mr. Green’s appeal was of no avail. The officers of the still legal Building Trades Department refused to turn their books and records over to the convention. The convention then proceeded to reorganize the Department; officers were elected, and in January a suit was begun in the courts in order to oust the officers of the now outlawed original Department.
Unless influences other than those already invoked—possibly government intervention—succeed in bringing harmony out of this crisis, a series of jurisdictional disputes may jeopardize the nation’s building programme. There is a possibility of a split in the Federation itself, with one group of unions withdrawing from the parent body.
The A. F. of L. is a loose federation, like the League of Nations. The constituent unions may leave the Federation at any time, for any reason. They are jealous of their sovereignty, and sensitive to interference in their internal affairs. The policy of ‘voluntarism’ has been held as a fundamental plank in its platform. It has been argued that it should establish itself as a really powerful central government of labor unions; but if such a change were effected, there would be more than a suspicion that the Federation was a powerful machine monopolizing control of labor unions. Many of the errors charged to the Federation are traceable to the insistence on selfgovernment for the individual unions. But centralization of power in the hierarchy at the top of the A. F. of L. might conceivably lead to graver evils.
VI
The craft unions in the Federation have hesitated before engaging in a campaign for enrolling workers in such mass-production industries as steel and automobiles, where the division of labor has all but banished skills for the majority. While they were hesitating, the employee representation plan, or company union, was introduced as the industries’ method of dealing with employees. While the unions were debating the question of dividing up the workers in the massproduction industries, the employers were appealing to their employees to organize along vertical rather than horizontal lines. They pointed out that a score of unions in one plant, with twenty sets of officials, with twenty negotiation periods and twenty agreements, possibly expiring on different dates, would mean chaos. Such horizontal unions, organized in separate crafts, the employers held, would keep employers and employees so busy in union conferences that they would have no time left for their other duties.
Following the passage of the Recovery Act, the Federation decided to make an attempt to organize the massproduction industries advocated by the employers. The unions were to be vertical or plant unions, with no divisions into crafts. The work of organization went on, and many scores of Federal locals were set up. Many were established in the automobile industry, and in the rubber, cement, furniture, and radio industries.
Confronted by demands for conferences with the new vertical unions, employers had several answers. Either they had already recognized company unions formed under the employee representation plan, or they insisted that the new unions did not represent all their employees. Some of them preferred to stand on the right of each group of employees to be represented for collective-bargaining purposes on a works council, or on shop committees. Each individual or minority group, they maintained, would bargain for the number it represented, the majority for the majority, and all minorities for their respective members; but they would not admit that the majority might make a contract that would cover all the workers, even though all were not compelled to join the union.
Faced by such opposition, the A. F. of L., since the enactment of the Recovery Act in June 1933, has failed to win written agreements in more than two or three small automobile factories, or in more than a few small steel plants. Since the main purpose of a union is to have a signed agreement with the employer, stating the terms and conditions under which the employed members work, the Federation is still on the losing side in the mass-production industries.
If nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails like failure. The Federation as a whole has been unable to overcome the internal and external obstacles in the path of organizing the labor market to equalize competition. Perhaps industry, too, has failed to grasp the opportunity of organizing itself through trade associations. At any rate, the National Industrial Recovery Act, in carrying out the purposes of the codes of fair competition, has fostered the formation and growth of trade bodies for collective action.
Self-organization by labor is not directly encouraged by the government, though labor holds that Section 7(a) was designed for that purpose. Where unions have had power and intelligence, they have strengthened their organizations. Where they have been weak, they have had to rely on labor boards, with indifferent success.
The unions, once strongly opposed to government assistance in obtaining those benefits which might be won by their own economic action, are now turning to the government for help. They are asking that the company union be outlawed, and that governmental labor agencies be strengthened, to the end that organization of the labor market may be advanced and a greater degree of social justice be attained. If the government grants these boons, it will undoubtedly seek to exact a price for them. What will be the price?