willing connivance of the employer, who has acted merely as agent or intermediary, to dictate to society what particular price his type of services should receive. In individual crafts he has established monopolies, repugnant to both economic and common law, and has maintained this combination in restraint of competition by every old device of boycott, intimidation, and social ostracism, and by the newer methods of the strike, collective bargaining, picketing, etc.

Monopoly either of capital or of labor is directly opposed to social justice. It is necessarily anti-social in every regard. The only exceptions practically necessary are those where competition involves a wasteful and disadvantageous duplication, and in such cases the monopoly must be fully controlled to avoid the development of its innate evils. Merely because a monopoly is established by those who are least fitted to serve society, and therefore receive the lowest rate of return for their efforts, does not alter the case nor justify sympathetic consideration. It should never be in the power of an individual or a group to enforce demands for any specific return for its services or products. Free competition should be maintained by law, and any combination which by its extent or its methods leaves the buyer no alternative but to submit to dictation, should be destroyed by energetic prosecution.

In the days when political power was in the hands of the court favorites it was they who were permitted to exercise monopolies at the expense of the public. Today, when the political power is in the hands of the masses, it is the common workingman who gains the power to create a monopoly undisturbed by law or truckling lawgivers.

The trades-union movement has performed a real service to society in correcting to a large extent the evils of unrestricted competition among workmen. Conditions of work, involving the safety, health and general welfare of the worker have been much improved, and the shortening of hours has been for the most part a real social benefit. Prevention of unfair and destructive competition among themselves is a legitimate field for combinations and associations of both labor and capital, for such competition is never advantageous to society and can best be

prevented from within. Individual workmen cannot effectively resist bad working conditions or excessive working hours, for such conditions would be found nearly uniform and universal. And it can do no good to permit overwork even if it is voluntary on the part of the worker. All such practices are certain to result in injury to the race. The lamentable factory conditions in England in the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries are doubtless to blame for the present defective physique and constitution of England's labor class.

But while such limitations upon competition from within are advantageous and logical, they should never be allowed where they control or affect the price. Price or wage agreements, either direct or indirect, should be prohibited both for labor and capital.

Nothing is more certain than that the organization of industry will not remain in the condition in which it now finds itself. The development of the situation must follow one of two courses.

If, as many think, trades-unionism has come to stay, we may expect continued progress toward complete unionization of all workers. Then we would see the "white collar" men organizing and the gradual development of a complete system of caste in industry. The spread of unionization in England has already served notice of this eventuality. With the more or less complete organization of workers into crafts there would again be seen a more accurate grading of the scale of wages among all classes. This would not result from the free and natural adjustment of the scale as among all classes, through competition among workers for the most desirable positions, and through the rough selection by society of the fittest for each place, which occurs under conditions of free competition. Rather, the pay of each grade or group would depend upon the essential nature of the industry it was engaged in and the consequent vulnerability to strike methods, and upon the more arbitrary and artificial conscious valuation of the different kinds of work. But the result would be a return to conditions nearly identical with those prevailing before the power of unionism had made itself felt. The share of each would be more nearly equitable than it is now. The size of each share would be larger than before by the amount

of increased product resulting from the mechanization of industry. But it would be smaller than it would otherwise be because of the inefficiency resulting from absence of competition and from the caste system.

The other possibility is that history will repeat itself, and that the fate of the guilds, the organizations of the masters in mediæval Europe, will now be the fate of the unions, the organizations of the journeymen of modern times. Thus, when the unions had become too powerful, and therefore too autocratic and too inefficient, they would gradually be eliminated through public repression and through independent competition.

In my opinion, the probability is that the latter development will be the outcome. It is possible that the turning point has already been reached. Signs are not lacking of loss of public sympathy, of governmental repression, and of successful competition by the "open shop". But in any case, when the organized and unorganized workers find that they as consumers are not gaining but are actually losing by the unionizing process; and when insurgents perceive the extraordinary opportunity for profit both to the worker and to the owner that exists in the high labor cost established under union conditions; then both repression and competition may be expected to do their work.

Scientific methods of grading and measuring work and human methods of stimulating and inspiring the worker will produce so much better results for both consumer and worker that it is hardly any wonder that union leaders see the handwriting on the wall and read the fate of their propaganda in the internal and voluntary reforms in industrial organization.

Scientific management and employment management, with all that these new movements are understood to include, both in purpose and method, will secure as near real social justice for the workers as is humanly possible at our present stage of progress. In spite of its plausible catch words, unionism is anti-social. Collective bargaining and the closed shop are but names for monopoly and price dictation, which affect not the employer but society at large. "Ca' canny" is simply cheating. No good purpose can be achieved by evil means.

C. REINOLD NOYES.

THE NAVY AND ITS OWNERS

BY REAR ADMIRAL CASPAR F. GOODRICH, U. S. NAVY

I

THE United States Navy, as its name implies, belongs to the people of the United States and to no one else. It is not a “Royal Navy" like those of Great Britain and Italy, nor an "Imperial Navy" such as Japan's is and Germany's used to be. It does not belong to any person, party or administration. Especially does it not belong to the President or to the Secretary of the Navy into whose hands its care, maintenance and operation are confided. If anything is wrong with our Navy the fault lies ultimately with its owners, the people of the United States, because they take little or no interest in it. In a happy-go-lucky way, they feel pride in its efficiency and its exploits, taking for granted that all is well with it, but they are wholly lacking in that jealous love the British have for their Royal Navy. Anything and everything which concerns its condition, morale or strength touches their very hearts and is discussed by them in season and out of season, at all times and in all places. This is as it should be, and it results in a navy free from politics and personalities, devoted, under the limelight of publicity and through a nation's intense affection, to the one sole object, the defence of the realm. Nothing of this kind exists on our side of the water. Whether the Navy is too large or too small, well managed or ill, contented or unhappy, efficient or inefficient, the people care not. They cannot be bothered with things which, they hold, are the province of Congress and the Government. They forget, however, that they must eventually foot the bill and suffer the consequence, if unpleasant, occasioned by their indifference. Is this mental attitude well either for the Navy or for its owners?

While it is true that our people as a whole take practically no interest in the Navy, certain sections of them are keenly con

cerned in the local navy yard or naval station and, should this be lacking, they clamor for the establishment of one in their own district. In the generous outpouring of public funds, why not, they ask, receive their share? Hence has arisen an overdevelopment of these shore plants which ought to exist for the benefit of the fleet and for nothing else.

The true province of the navy yard is the repair of ships, something which cannot very well be given over to outside firms on account of the indefiniteness of the task and the probability, if not certainty, that faults, not apparent on the surface, may develop in the course of the work. Moreover, time spent in preparing plans and specifications, advertising for bids and making contracts would detain the vessel at the yard when, possibly, sorely needed at the front, while the cost of her maintenance during this period of waiting would in most cases greatly exceed the money saved. That navy yard work is or can be economical no one in his senses suggests. High wages, leaves of absence on full pay, lack of the personal loyalty to the employer, whether an individual or corporation which exists in private life, combine to forbid any such fond optimism. There is absolutely nothing which the Government can do as cheaply, rapidly and efficiently as can a private party. To this rule the navy yards are no exception.

In the minds of the workmen the "Government" is a vast reservoir of wealth upon which they can draw without stint. Do not forget that it is the private citizen, everybody in short, who has to keep that reservoir filled. In spite of these facts, which the public ignores, ships are not only being built in our yards, but the tendency is to increase the facilities under this head and to build more and more. Now the cost of a ship built outside is known to the very last dollar, but kind Providence only knows that of her sister constructed at a navy yard. The one has to carry all overhead charges, administration, light, heat, power, insurance, interest, taxes, etc., but not the other; yet it is conceded by those in the secret that the former is far cheaper. Inasmuch as we have a wealth of plants fully able to supply the Navy's wants, some of which indeed were induced into being by the expectation of government work, what justifi