greater degree,
become "affected with a public interest." The public becomes an
unwilling party, therefore, in every serious labor controversy.

In order that any kind of labor legislation shall be enacted, it is
necessary (so far as we have a government by public opinion) for a
majority of the public to be convinced that the conditions are such
as call for governmental interference. It becomes so convinced in
two broadly distinguishable classes of cases: one, when the masses of
unorganized workers are too weak to secure for themselves conditions
of work and wages consistent with health and morality; and the other,
when strong bodies of organized workers, in their attempts to win
their ends in an industrial dispute, exceed their private rights and
invade the public welfare.

Sec. 16. #The public and compulsory arbitration#. Where the railways are
owned and operated by the state (as is now the case pretty generally
except in America and Great Britain) the question of the "right to
strike" arises from time to time, in critical forms. The logic of the
situation compels even those officials that are of the labor party or
are most favorable to labor, to maintain an uninterrupted service on
the public railways. The experiences of that nature in France and in
Australasia have been notable. Nowhere in the United States has the
principle of compulsory arbitration been adopted, but at the time of
the great anthracite strike, in 1902, public sentiment grew strong in
favor of it. As a result of the intolerable conditions in the mines of
Colorado was passed the compulsory investigation act of 1915 in that
state. In 1916 the threat of a general railroad strike brought from
many quarters strong expressions of condemnation in principle, of the
strike as a method of settlement of wage disputes on the railroads.
And in the end the organized laborers themselves accepted, apparently
with much satisfaction, a law involving the legal fixation of wages
and the principle of compulsion as applied to the employers.

[Footnote 1: By the Secretary of the American Federation of Labor.]

[Footnote 2: See Vol. I, pp. 458-467.]

[Footnote 3: For example, increase less than 25 per cent per hour in
changing from a 10 hour to an 8 hour day.]

[Footnote 4: See above, ch. 6, sec. 12.]

[Footnote 5: See especially, sec. 8.]

[Footnote 6: At this writing the case, Bunting vs. the State of
Oregon, is still undecided.]

[Footnote 7: Published as