ith
fairness and honesty on the part of the employer, is apt to result in a
disintegration of the Union. It has been a frequent experience of
organized labor that, even after a strike has been won, men drop out of
the Union and leave the burden of Union obligation to the loyal minority,
who, weakened in numbers, face not only a loss of what the strike has
gained, but a retrogression of those Union standards that have been the
result of past struggles and sacrifices.

By the preferential Union plan, when an employer obliges himself to
prefer Union to non-union men, a Union man in good standing, that is, a
Union man who has paid his dues and met his Union obligations, is
insured employment to a limited extent, and the dues represent a premium
paid by him for such employment.

It was not an easy task to secure assent to this idea from the
manufacturers, for Mr. Brandeis made it clear that, while the plan did
not oblige the manufacturers to coerce men into joining the Union, it
clearly placed them on record in favor of a trade-union, and obliged them
to do nothing, directly or indirectly, to injure the Union, and
positively to do everything in their power, outside of coercion, to
strengthen the Union.

In Mr. Brandeis' appeal to the Union representatives he referred to the
history of the Cloak Makers' Union as a telling illustration of the
futility of their past policy. He pointed out that the membership of the
Union during a strike was no test of its strength--a Union's solidity
rested upon its membership in time of peace. Were they not justified in
assuming that what had occurred in the past of the Cloak Makers' Union
would occur in the future, and that its membership would dwindle to a
small number of the faithful? How could their organization be permanently
strengthened?

Cloak making, as a seasonal trade, offered a fair field for proving the
efficiency of the preferential plan, for in the slack season the
manufacturers must, by its terms, prefer Union men. The industrial
situation provided a test of this good faith. The Union leaders could
then effectively show the non-union worker the advantage of the union
membership.

The final formation of the preferential union shop as presented to both
sides by Mr. Brandeis, Mr. London, and Mr. Cohen, in the Brandeis
conference, was this: "The manufacturers can and will declare in
appropriate terms their sympathy with the Union, their desire to aid and
strengthen the Union