til
the first quarter of the nineteenth century combinations of workmen,
even to respectfully ask an increase of wages or a bettering of work
conditions in lessening of hours and in sanitary and moral provisions
in work-places, was legally a "conspiracy," and liable to harsh
punishments, we must be glad that at any temporary cost the main army
of laborers has been organized from a mob of oppressed individual
workers. But what a cost to the family has been often paid! Mothers
already overworked and under-nourished still further starved by the
"strike relief" that only serves to maintain wretchedness, not to
abolish it. The sufferings of children who miss even the meagre family
comfort which the too small pay of the father when at work was able to
supply. The greater suffering of children shunned and ill-treated by
school mates when the father is called a "scab." The deeper tragedy of
experience of men who take work that their labor comrades have refused
because of the claim of wife and children, and are abused, both in
body and in denial of sympathy and respect, because they are thought
to be traitors to their striking fellows. What is hinted at in these
few words could be made into one of the great dramas of the ages if
only the social imagination could take into understanding and show
without partiality both sides of the picture. The time may come when
it will be seen that in all wars some heroes fall on the side that is
called wrong and have right to meed of deferred praise. When that time
comes, the history of labor conflicts will show that in the struggle
between the father's duty to his children and the wife who shares his
service to them, and his duty toward the democratizing of labor by
force of battle for justice and a fair chance for all his class,
heroes and martyrs have fallen on both sides of the line. Meanwhile,
the encouraging thing is that Labor Commissions and permanent Boards
of Investigation and Arbitration and many government devices for
securing a more even justice all around the circle of wage-earning
activity are increasing in evidence as a sign that we are on the way
to bring the common need for peace and order in industry to bear upon
its warring elements. It only needs that the great consuming public,
the final and the worst sufferer when labor wars are waged, shall
understand and use its overmastering social power to bring order out
of the chaos of opposing interests.

=Women's Trade Unions.=-