ne. The great
coal-mining and coal-carrying companies which employed their tens of
thousands could easily dispense with the services of any particular
miner. The miner, on the other hand, however expert, could not dispense
with the companies. He needed a job; his wife and children would starve
if he did not get one.... Individually the miners were impotent when
they sought to enter a wage contract with the great companies; they
could make fair terms only by uniting into trade unions to bargain
collectively." It was of this state of affairs that President Taft spoke
when he favored the modification of the common law "so as to put
employees of little power and means on a level with their employers in
adjusting and agreeing upon their mutual obligations."

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on the side of the great captains of industry,
recognized the same facts. He said: "In the early days of the
development of industry, the employer and capital investor were
frequently one. Daily contact was had between him and his employees, who
were his friends and neighbors.... Because of the proportions which
modern industry has attained, employers and employees are too often
strangers to each other.... Personal relations can be revived only
through adequate representation of the employees. Representation is a
principle which is fundamentally just and vital to the successful
conduct of industry.... It is not consistent for us as Americans to
demand democracy in government and practice autocracy in industry....
With the developments what they are in industry to-day, there is sure to
come a progressive evolution from aristocratic single control, whether
by capital, labor, or the state, to democratic, cooeperative control by
all three."

COOePERATION BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES

=Company Unions.=--The changed economic life described by the three
eminent men just quoted was acknowledged by several great companies and
business concerns. All over the country decided efforts were made to
bridge the gulf which industry and the corporation had created. Among
the devices adopted was that of the "company union." In one of the
Western lumber mills, for example, all the employees were invited to
join a company organization; they held monthly meetings to discuss
matters of common concern; they elected a "shop committee" to confer
with the representatives of the company; and periodically the agents of
the employers attended the conferences of the m