b.

But there is another way, even more impressive, in which the union
asserts the preeminence of principles over immediate self-interest. When
the foreigner from Southern Europe is inducted into the union, then for
the first time does he get the idea that his job belongs to him by
virtue of a right to work, and not as the personal favor or whim of a
boss. These people are utterly obsequious before their foremen or
bosses, and it is notorious that nearly always they pay for the
privilege of getting and keeping a job. This bribery of bosses, as well
as the padrone system, proceed from the deep-seated conviction that
despotism is the natural social relation, and that therefore they must
make terms with the influential superior who is so fortunate as to have
favor with the powers that be.

The anthracite coal operators represented such men, prior to joining the
union, as disciplined and docile workmen, but in doing so they
disregarded the fact that outside the field where they were obsequious
they were most violent, treacherous, and factional. Before the
organization of the union in the coal fields these foreigners were given
over to the most bitter and often murderous feuds among the ten or
fifteen nationalities and the two or three factions within each
nationality. The Polish worshippers of a given saint would organize a
night attack on the Polish worshippers of another saint; the Italians
from one province would have a knife for the Italians of another
province, and so on. When the union was organized the antagonisms of
race, religion, and faction were eliminated. The immigrants came down to
an economic basis and turned their forces against their bosses. "We
fellows killed this country," said a Polish striker to Father Curran,
"and now we are going to make it." The sense of a common cause, and,
more than all else, the sense of individual rights as men, have come to
these people through the organization of their labor unions, and it
could come in no other way, for the union appeals to their necessities,
while other forces appeal to their prejudices. They are even yet far
from ideal Americans, but those who have hitherto imported them and
profited by their immigration should be the last to cry out against the
chief influence that has started them on the way to true
Americanism.[141]

=Agricultural Distribution of Immigrants.=--The congestion and colonizing
of immigrants in the cities and their consequent poverty and th