in
law--only that strikes are needless. It is not worth while to create a
multitude of complex criminal responsibilities for acts which can easily
be prevented by a single and simple one. How?

First, I should like to point out that we are hearing a deal too much
about a man's inalienable right to work or play, at his own sovereign
will. In so far as that means--and it is always used to mean--his right
to quit any kind of work at any moment, without notice and regardless of
consequences to others, it is false; there is no such moral right, and
the law should have at least a speaking acquaintance with morality. What
is mischievous should be illegal. The various interests of civilization
are so complex, delicate, intertangled and interdependent that no man,
and no set of men, should have power to throw the entire scheme into
confusion and disorder for pro-motion of a trumpery principle or a class
advantage. In dealing with corporations we recognize that. If for any
selfish purpose the trade union of railway managers had done what their
sacred brakemen and divine firemen did--had decreed that "no wheel
should turn," until Mr. Pullman's men should return to work--they would
have found themselves all in jail the second day. _Their_ right to quit
work was not conceded: they lacked that authenticating credential of
moral and legal irresponsibility, an indurated palm. In a small lockout
affecting a mill or two the offender finds a half-hearted support in
_the_ law if he is willing to pay enough deputy sheriffs; but even
then he is mounted by the hobnailed populace, at its back the daily
newspapers, clamoring and spitting like cats. But let the manager of a
great railway discharge all its men without warning and "kill" its own
engines! Then see what you will see. To commit a wrong so gigantic with
impunity a man must wear overalls.

How prevent anybody from committing it? How break up this _regime_ of
strikes and boycotts and lockouts, more disastrous to others than to
those at whom the blows are aimed--than to those, even, who deliver
them. How make all those concerned in the management and operation
of great industries, about which have grown up tangles of related and
dependent interests, conduct them with some regard to the welfare of
others? Before committing ourselves to the dubious and irretraceable
course of "Government ownership," or to the infectious expedient of a
"pension system," is there anything of promise yet unt