ing to their manifestoes they demand nothing but "fair play"; but
the demand for fair play is as usual merely the hypocritical exterior of
a demand for substantial favoritism. Just as there can be no effective
competition between the huge corporation controlling machinery of
production which cannot be duplicated and the small manufacturer in the
same line, so there can be no effective competition between the
individual laborer and the really efficient labor union. To recognize
the labor union, and to incorporate it into the American legal system,
is equivalent to the desertion by the state of the non-union laborer. It
means that in the American political and economic system the
organization of labor into unions should be preferred to its
disorganized separation into competing individuals. Complete freedom of
competition among laborers, which is often supposed to be for the
interest of the individual laborer, can only be preserved as an
effective public policy by active discrimination against the unions.

An admission that the recognition of labor unions amounts to a
substantial discrimination in their favor would do much to clear up the
whole labor question. So far as we declare that the labor unions ought
to be recognized, we declare that they ought to be favored; and so far
as we declare that the labor union ought to be favored, we have made a
great advance towards the organization of labor in the national
interest. The labor unions deserve to be favored, because they are the
most effective machinery which has as yet been forged for the economic
and social amelioration of the laboring class. They have helped to raise
the standard of living, to mitigate the rigors of competition among
individual laborers, and in this way to secure for labor a larger share
of the total industrial product. A democratic government has little or
less reason to interfere on behalf of the non-union laborer than it has
to interfere in favor of the small producer. As a type the non-union
laborer is a species of industrial derelict. He is the laborer who has
gone astray and who either from apathy, unintelligence, incompetence, or
some immediately pressing need prefers his own individual interest to
the joint interests of himself and his fellow-laborers. From the point
of view of a constructive national policy he does not deserve any
special protection. In fact, I am willing to go farther and assert that
the non-union industrial laborer should, i