unions and associations and to
facilitate the settlement of industrial disputes by conciliation and
arbitration." By the amendment of 1898 the words, "to encourage the
formation of industrial unions and associations," were left out. Thus
the law ceased to be directly helpful to the very unions which had done
so much to bring it about and are the only means employees possess to
make the law serve them instead of becoming a new weapon for employers.

An early decision of the Arbitration Court in 1896 had declared that
preference should be given to the unionists. "Since the employer was the
judge of the qualifications of his employees, the unionists did not gain
much by this decision," say Le Rossignol and Stewart. "In later awards
it was usually specified that preference was granted only when the union
was not a closed guild, but practically open to every person of good
character who desired to join." These later decisions brought it about
that the so-called preference of unionists became no preference at all.
"The Arbitration Court, except in a few minor cases, has refused to
grant unconditional preference and the unionists, realizing that
preference to an open union is no preference at all, now look to
Parliament for redress and demand statutory unconditional preference to
unionists."

In 1905 strikes and lockouts were made statutory offenses, and a single
judge was given the power practically to force the individual worker to
labor. After ten years of trial the law had become almost
unrecognizable from the workingman's standpoint, and from this moment on
the resistance to it has grown steadily. In a decision rendered in 1906,
the Chief Justice said: "The right of a workman to make a contract is
exceedingly limited. The right of free contract is taken away from the
worker, and he has been placed in a condition of servitude or status,
and the employee must conform to that condition." Not only do judges
have this power, but they have the option of applying or not applying it
as they see fit, for the amendment of 1908 "expressly permits the court
to refuse to make an award if for any reason it considers it desirable
to do so." With a law, then, that in no way aids the unions, as
such--however beneficial it may be at times to the individual
workingman--and which leaves an arbitrary power in the hands of the
judge elected by an agricultural majority, what has been the _concrete_
result? Especially, what principles have been