All these things occur and should be repressed. But the same
critic of the trade union might find equal causes of complaint against
individual employers of labor, or even against great associations of
manufacturers. He might find many instances of an unwarranted cutting of
wages, of flagrant violations of factory laws and tenement house laws,
of the deliberate and systematic cheating of employees by means of truck
stores, of the speeding up of work to a point which is fatal to the
health of the workman, of the sweating of foreign-born workers, of
the drafting of feeble little children into dusty workshops, of
black-listing, of putting spies into union meetings and of the
employment in strike times of vicious and desperate ruffians, who
are neither better nor worse than are the thugs who are occasionally
employed by unions under the sinister name, "entertainment committees."
I believe that the overwhelming majority, both of workmen and of
employers, are law-abiding peaceful, and honorable citizens, and I do
not think that it is just to lay up the errors and wrongs of individuals
to the entire group to which they belong. I also think--and this is
a belief which has been borne upon me through many years of practical
experience--that the trade union is growing constantly in wisdom as well
as in power, and is becoming one of the most efficient agencies toward
the solution of our industrial problems, the elimination of poverty and
of industrial disease and accidents, the lessening of unemployment,
the achievement of industrial democracy and the attainment of a larger
measure of social and industrial justice.
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