setback during a period of hard times. From any comprehensive
point of view union and not non-union labor represents the independence
of the laborer, because under existing conditions such independence must
be bought by association. Worthy individuals will sometimes be
sacrificed by this process of association; but every process of
industrial organization or change, even one in a constructive direction,
necessarily involves individual cases of injustice.

Hence it is that the policy of so-called impartiality is both
impracticable and inexpedient. The politician who solemnly declares that
he believes in the right of the laboring man to organize, and that labor
unions are deserving of approval, but that he also believes in the right
of the individual laborer to eschew unionism whenever it suits his
individual purpose or lack of purpose,--such familiar declarations
constitute merely one more illustration of our traditional habit of
"having it both ways." It is always possible to have it both ways, in
case the two ways do not come into conflict; but where they do conflict
in fact and in theory, the sensible man must make his choice. The labor
question will never be advanced towards solution by proclaiming it to be
a matter of antagonistic individual rights. It involves a fundamental
public interest--the interest which a democracy must necessarily take in
the economic welfare of its own citizens; and this interest demands that
a decisive preference be shown for labor organization. The labor unions
are perfectly right in believing that all who are not for them are
against them, and that a state which was really "impartial" would be
adopting a hypocritical method of retarding the laborer from improving
his condition. The unions deserve frank and loyal support; and until
they obtain it, they will remain, as they are at present, merely a class
organization for the purpose of extorting from the political and
economic authorities the maximum of their special interests.

The labor unions should be granted their justifiable demand for
recognition, partly because only by means of recognition can an
effective fight be made against their unjustifiable demands. The large
American employer of labor, and the whole official politico-economic
system, is placed upon the defensive by a refusal frankly to prefer
unionism. Union labor is allowed to conquer at the sword's point a
preferential treatment which should never have been refused; and