articipation in the presidential lists. It bitterly opposed President
Roosevelt when he espoused the open shop in the Government Printing
Office; and in 1908 it openly espoused the Democratic ticket.

In thus maintaining a sort of grand partisan neutrality, the Federation
not only holds in numerous instances the balance of power but it makes
party fealty its slave and avoids the costly luxury of maintaining a
separate national organization of its own. The all-seeing lobby which it
maintains at Washington is a prototype of what one may discern in most
state capitals when the legislature is in session. The legislative
programmes adopted by the various state labor bodies are metamorphosed
into demands, and well organized committees are present to cooperate
with the labor members who sit in the legislature. The unions, through
their steering committee, select with caution the members who are to
introduce the labor bills and watch paternally over every stage in the
progress of a measure.

Most of this legislative output has been strictly protective of union
interests. Labor, like all other interests that aim to use the power of
government, has not been wholly altruistic, in its motives, especially
since in recent years it has found itself matched against such powerful
organizations of employers as the Manufacturers' Association, the
National Erectors' Association, and the Metal Trades Association. In
fact, in nearly every important industry the employers have organized
for defensive and offensive purposes. These organizations match
committee with committee, lobby with lobby, add espionage to open
warfare, and issue effective literature in behalf of their open shop
propaganda.

The voluminous labor codes of such great manufacturing communities as
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, reflect a new and
enlarged conception of the modern State. Labor has generally favored
measures that extend the inquisitional and regulative functions of
the State, excepting where this extension seemed to interfere with the
autonomy of labor itself. Workshops, mines, factories, and other places
of employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary and
safety provisions are enforced. A workman's compensation law removes
from the employee's mind his anxiety for the fate of his family if he
should be disabled. The labor contract, long extolled as the aegis of
economic liberty, is no longer free from state vigilance. Th