privileges and protection.
These articles are an agreement between the League and American
Association, party of the first part, and the minor leagues as party of
the second part.

The most important feature of the National Agreement unquestionably is
the provision according to the club members the privilege of reserving a
stated number of players. No other club of any Association under the
Agreement dares engage any player so reserved. To this rule, more than
any other thing, does base-ball as a business owe its present
substantial standing. By preserving intact the strength of a team from
year to year; it places the business of baseball on a permanent basis
and thus offers security to the investment of capital. The greatest evil
with which the business has of recent years had to contend is the
unscrupulous methods of some of its "managers." Knowing no such thing as
professional honor, these men are ever ready to benefit themselves,
regardless of the cost to an associate club. The reserve rule itself is
a usurpation of the players' rights, but it is, perhaps, made necessary
by the peculiar nature of the base-ball business, and the player is
indirectly compensated by the improved standing of the game. I quote in
this connection Mr. A. G. Mills, ex-President of the League, and the
originator of the National Agreement: "It has been popular in days gone
by to ascribe the decay and disrepute into which the game had fallen to
degeneracy on the part of the players, and to blame them primarily for
revolving and other misconduct. Nothing could be more unjust. I have
been identified with the game more than twenty-five years--for several
seasons as a player--and I know that, with rare exceptions, those faults
were directly traceable to those who controlled the clubs. Professional
players have never sought the club manager; the club manager has
invariably sought--and often tempted--the player. The reserve rule takes
the club manager by the throat and compels him to keep his hands off his
neighbor's enterprise."

It was not to be expected that club managers of the stamp above referred
to would exhibit much consideration for the rights of players. As long
as a player continued valuable he had little difficulty, but when, for
any reason, his period of usefulness to a club had passed, he was likely
to find, by sad experience, that base-ball laws were not construed for
his protection; he discovered that in base-ball, as in other affa