ompetition.
It might seem that this evil would correct itself--that an increase in
the products of one industry would be offset by an increase in other
industries; that therefore the increased supply in one would not be
forced upon the market at lower prices, but would be exchanged on the
same terms as before for the increased supply in others. This is indeed
the case in prosperous times. All industries advance together, and the
increasing supply of one is merely an increasing demand for others. But
for some reason, industries do not always harmoniously advance together.
And when the disproportion appears, the workers who are blindly but
ambitiously pushing ahead endeavor to overcome, by increasing the
quantity of output, what they lose by reducing the price. There is but
one immediate and practical remedy--the organization of labor to
regulate competition. The method of organization is to do in concert
through self-sacrifice what the non-industrial races do individually for
self-indulgence; namely, refuse to work. Where the one loafs the other
strikes. While the necessities of the workers set the minimum below
which wages cannot fall, and their physical endurance sets the maximum
hours beyond which they cannot work, the labor-union, by means of the
strike or the threat to strike, sets a higher minimum of wages and a
lower maximum of hours, which leaves room for ambition. Eventually the
higher wage and the shorter hours become habitual and become a higher
level of necessities. Gifted individuals may, indeed, rise above the
wage-earning class by their own efforts, but labor organization alone
can raise the class as a whole.

The organization of workmen in labor unions has been more difficult in
this than in other free countries, owing to the competition of races.
Heretofore it has been the easiest possible matter for a manager,
apprehensive of agitators in forming a union, to introduce a new race
and a new language into his works. Indeed, almost the only device and
symptom of originality displayed by American employers in disciplining
their labor force has been that of playing one race against another.
They have, as a rule, been weak in methods of conciliation and feelings
of consideration for their employees, as well as in the means of
safeguarding life and health, but they have been strong with the weapon
"divide and conquer." The number of races they have drawn upon is often
amazing. The anthracite mine workers compri