by
which employees were able to advance their condition. Not only does it
make organization seem less necessary, but it takes the most powerful
weapon of the union, the ability to call a sudden strike. If we add to
this the unfavorable influence on public opinion in case the unions are
not contented with the rewards, and the fact that the law works against
the union shop, which is the basis of some unions, we can understand the
ground of their hostility.

"The Canadian Labour Disputes Investigation Act" is especially
interesting and important because it is serving as a model for a
campaign to introduce legislation along similar lines into the United
States. Already Mr. Victor S. Clark, the author of the study of the
Australian Labour Movement, to which I have referred at the beginning of
the chapter, has been sent by Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft to investigate
into the working of the act. Ex-President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard
has also advocated strenuously and at some length a similar statute, and
it has been made the basis for the campaign in Massachusetts and other
states. Mr. Clark reported: "Under the conditions for which it was
devised, the Canadian law, in spite of some setbacks, is useful
legislation, and it promises more for the future than most
measures--perhaps more than any other measure--for _promoting industrial
peace by government intervention_."

Here is the very keynote to compulsory arbitration, according to its
opponents, whose whole attack is based on the fact that its primary
purpose is not to improve the condition of the working people, but to
promote "industrial peace by government intervention."

Mr. Clark concedes that "possibly workers do sacrifice something of
influence in giving up sudden strikes," though he claims that they gain
in other ways. "After such a law is once on the statute books, however,
it usually remains, and in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada it has
created a new public attitude toward industrial disputes. This attitude
is the result of the idea--readily grasped and generally accepted when
once clearly presented--that the _public_ have an interest in industrial
conflicts quite as immediate and important in its way as that of the
conflicting parties. _If the American people have this truth vividly
brought to their attention by a great strike, the hopeful example of the
Canadian act seems likely, so far as the present experience shows, to
prove a guiding star in their diff