The Labor Policy of the Free Society
7. Trade Unions in the Free Society
Marvellous are the conclusions men reach when once they desert the simple principle that each man should be allowed to pursue the objects of life, restrained only by the limits which the similar pursuits of their objects by other men impose. A generation ago we heard loud assertions of “the right to labor,” that is, the right to have labor provided; and there are still not a few who think the community bound to find work for each person. Compare this with the doctrine current in France at the time when the monarchical power culminated; namely, that “the right of working is a royal right which the prince can sell and the subjects must buy.” This contrast is startling enough; but a contrast still more startling is being provided for us. We now see a resuscitation of the despotic doctrine, differing only by the substitution of trade-unions for kings. For now that trade-unions are becoming universal, and each artisan has to pay prescribed monies to one or another of them, with the alternative of being a non-unionist to whom work is denied by force, it has come to this: that the right to labor is a trade-union right, which the trade-union can sell and the individual worker must buy!
—Herbert Spencer
Trade unions in a free society embody the right of working men, shared with every other member of the society, to join together in the pursuit of common interests. As a private association of men, the trade union enjoys a status no different from that occupied by any other private association. The free society has no less, and no more, interest in the existence or activity of a trade union than it has in the existence or activity of a religious group, a commercial association, a voters’ league, a business corporation, or a combination whose mission it is to prove white superiority or inferiority. In some cases the job may be more difficult than in others; but in each instance society demands of the private association only that it refrain from advancing the interests of its members by antisocial means. Violent, coercive, or fraudulent acts, in the theory of the free society, are as vicious and antisocial when performed by trade unions as they are when committed by the Ku Klux Klan.
The free society can no more survive if private associations take on the compulsory characteristics of the state than it can if the state emulates private associations. Trade unions misconceive their role if they assume either that they must or that they may legitimately utilize compulsion. Only the state must and may use compulsion or coercion; and the state itself should compel and coerce only in order to establish and maintain the conditions necessary to the freedom of its members. Trade unions achieve their own corruption if they coerce and compel; they tend to expend their energies in activities they do not perform very well, neglecting those more appropriate to their character as voluntary private associations; and they add substantially to the forces constantly at work in the continuous struggle against the free society by the totalitarian spirit.
The British have extricated themselves from bad situations before; they have a talent for avoiding the ultimate evil. But things may be different in the United States. We can and do accomplish more; we are a far more complex, integrated, and productive economy than the world has ever seen before. But these attributes may make it very difficult for us to check or reverse undesirable developments. It is still true that the bigger they are the harder they fall.
Notwithstanding the insights of a few great union leaders in this country, unions daily continue to take action tending toward the disintegration of the basic principles of the free society. And some union leaders reinforce their antisocial conduct with a doctrinaire propaganda which may have an even greater influence. The combination of words and deeds may make it impossible in the future for trade unions and their leaders to concur in the measures necessary to preserve the free society. The momentum of forces now in motion could become such that we or our children might one day have to watch the free society slide over the precipice toward which it always has a tendency to wander.
What the Theory Suggests
The theory of the free society only prohibits to men in trade unions the invasion of the property rights of other members of society. Beyond that there are no limitations; labor organizations are free to try to do for their members all the good or bad things that the members or their leaders can agree upon. If men wish to form or join a union, they are free to do so. If, having combined in order to promote their own economic and other interests, they decide to withhold their labor in concert, they are free to do that, too, so long as they do not invade the property rights of others by their concerted action. They are free, in short, to regulate thir own conduct in any way they see fit. The free society declares to trade unions only that they may not regulate the conduct or impair the rights of others.
Everyone must now be aware that the well-being of every member of society depends ultimately upon its productivity. However, the nature of the relationship between trade-union action and social productivity does not seem to be widely understood. Some think that trade unions necessarily reduce productivity; some that they necessarily increase productivity; some that the “nonmaterial” goals of workers are more important than the material goals and that the latter must, if necessary, be sacrificed to achieve the former.
Proper understanding of the operation of a free society teaches, however, that there are deficiencies in all these views. It teaches, in the first place, that any distinction between the material and nonmaterial goals of men is unsound, and that action based upon such a distinction leads to undesirable social consequences. It teaches, furthermore, that whether or not trade unions contribute to the achievement of the material and nonmaterial goals of men depends entirely upon whether or not they act, or are made to act, consistently with the rules and principles of the free society. If reflection upon the nature of man and society teaches anything, it teaches that freedom, well-being, and security are reciprocal phases of a single concept; and that the operating principles of the free society, private property and freedom of contract, are the indispensable means to the achievement of the spiritual and material desiderata which make up the goal of men in society.
As a matter of fact, union protagonists are basically more concerned with the “material” than with the “nonmaterial” role of unions. We may agree with the contention that unions have great potentialities for the achievement of “nonmaterial” goals; but unionists themselves put most emphasis on their material accomplishments. One commonly hears today that if it were not for the aggressive action of trade unions, the real wages of all workers in the United States would be considerably less than they are. As it happens, average wages are much higher than they were fifty, thirty, fifteen, or even five years ago. Hours of work, too, are much shorter on the whole. Tasks in industry are much less burdensome than they used to be. All these improvements, it is argued, are the product of unionization.
Other evidence suggests the same conclusion. The trade unions of the United States are by no means the strongest trade unions in the world. In fact, a greater proportion of workers belongs to trade unions in Great Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, and Germany, to mention only a few. Notwithstanding this fact, average real wages in the United States are higher—in most cases a great deal higher—than in any other country in the world.
One who contends that trade unionism is essentially responsible for the relatively high wages of American workers can certainly draw no support from these facts. If trade unionism basically accounts for high wages, then the wages of American workers should be lower—not higher—than the wages of workers in countries where a greater proportion of workers is organized. The fact that workers in the United States enjoy the highest real wages in the world again suggests that some factor other than trade unionism must be at work.
In the search for this other factor, certain things stand out very prominently. One of the most striking features of the economy of the United States, as compared with other economies, is the amount of capital invested per worker. The figures vary from one firm or industry to another; some have more capital invested per worker than others. But, for the economy as a whole, estimates of $10,000 of capital investment per worker are considered conservative. And this conservative estimate of the ratio of capital to workers in the United States, it need hardly be added, is very much greater than the most optimistic estimate of the ratio prevailing in any other country. No economist today questions the inference that the amount of capital invested per worker in this country is one of the important factors in the higher wage structure of American workers. All agree with Ludwig von Mises in saying that:
Other nations of the world are larger and more populous than the United States. Other nations and other areas are as richly endowed with natural resources as the United States, and some are quite possibly more richly endowed. But no nation of the world, and no area of the world, has ever enjoyed a free-trade area the equal of ours; and none has enjoyed uninterruptedly for so long a time the unqualified operation of the principles of private property and freedom of contract.
In seeking an explanation of the extraordinary well-being of the workers of the United States, these facts cannot be overlooked. Trade unions, it is clear, have had very little, if anything, to do with improving the American standard of living; and even our great capital investment is no more than the immediate cause. The underlying explanation, I suggest, lies in the fact that we have enjoyed as unassailable constitutional principles, for so long, free trade, private property, and freedom of contract.
There can be little doubt that the express constitutional sanctioning of domestic free trade has had a great deal to do with creating the elaborate, complex division of labor which characterizes the United States. And there can be even less doubt that the extraordinary capital formation and productivity of the economy of the United States owe much to the continental free trade we have enjoyed. Had there been no interstate free trade here, we should probably have been in about the same position as the nation-states of Europe from which most Americans have come. Some of our states (the ones which respected most diligently the principles of private property and freedom of contract) would have been better off than others. But if goods, capital, and labor could not travel freely to the areas where they were most in demand, we should all certainly be much worse off. Some states would have surpluses, others would have deficits, of capital, labor, and commodities; in all probability, autarchy would have produced here about the same results observable in Europe today.
There would be no such things as the nation-wide markets we know in all the commodities, the production of which may be standardized. Without national markets the economies associated with large-scale production would never have been discovered. Capital aggregates there would certainly be. But they would have been much smaller and much less efficient than they have been under the reign of continental free trade.
Our nation-wide free market, based on private property and freedom of contract, is the institution which most clearly distinguishes the United States from other societies. Trade unions in this country are both relatively newer and relatively smaller than in other nations. For a factual explanation of the steadily improving and relatively better economic position of the American worker, therefore, the evidence clearly tends to suggest that free trade, leading to extensive and efficient capital formation—not unionization—has been the critical causative factor.
The same conclusion is indicated by theoretical analysis. Some trade unionists advance the theory that “purchasing power” is the key to economic progress and improvement of the material position of workers. Now there is a realistic sense, as we shall see, in which it is proper to speak of purchasing power as the key to economic progress. The trouble is, however, that trade unionists do not think of purchasing power in that sense.
By purchasing power they mean the money income or wages of workers; economic problems are solved simply by giving workers greater and greater money incomes. If the wages of workers are raised, the trade unionists say, they can buy more of the products of industry. Industry is then induced to produce more and more all the time. And in the end the society has more and more goods, and everyone is better off.
The trade-union version of the purchasing-power theory is unsound in every sense. One may note in the first place that if the trade unionists are correct, we ought to raise by law the minimum-wage standard from the present $1.00 per hour to some substantially higher level—say $20.00 per hour at least. Indeed, one is at a loss to understand why unionists have been contending recently that the minimum wage should be raised to only $1.25 per hour, if they take their own version of the purchasing-power theory seriously. Under their own theory, workers now receiving $1.00 per hour would be twenty times better off if their wages were raised to $20.00 per hour.
The fact is, of course, that trade unionists are too intelligent to take their own theory seriously. They know that such a rise in the minimum wage would immediately bankrupt a great many enterprises and create almost universal unemployment. Over the economy as a whole, the wages of workingmen make up about two-thirds of the costs of production. Raising wages by 2000 per cent would involve raising costs by something like 1400 per cent. The price rise necessary to reflect this increase in costs would be something like 1000 per cent. But the demand for any product whose price rises at such a rate must virtually disappear—imagine what would happen to the sales of refrigerators if the price were to rise from $300 to $3000!
If the money income of every single person in the society could be increased by exactly 2000 per cent, the result might be different. To speak more accurately, as a theoretical matter there would be no result worth noting at all within the economy. However, the effect upon our international trade would of course be fatal; we should not be able to sell anything to foreign customers. And that would indirectly affect all of the citizens of the United States to some degree.
One should not take seriously the project just described. It is simply impossible to raise the money income of every person equally by any percentage. Merely finding all the persons whose incomes should be increased would be an endless job. Then there are people who at any given time have no income at all, and raising their income by 2000 per cent—involving the multiplication of zero by 2000—results in an income of zero for them. There are also the great numbers who do not have fixed incomes—the professional people, the businessmen, the intermittent workers, the investors, the old persons who are supported by their children. And why should we bother to raise all money incomes by 2000 per cent, or by any other amount, anyway? Goods and services are important, not mere money incomes.
The whole idea of money wage-increases as the key to well-being is, it would appear, absurd. The way to improvement of living standards is through increasing productivity. And the way for any particular person to improve his personal living standard is to increase his own productivity. In a free society at a relatively primitive stage, each person lives better the more competent he becomes and the harder he works. At a more advanced stage, such as the stage in which we find ourselves, material productivity is a function of the quantity, the quality, and the arrangement of the factors of production—machines, land, and men.
The purchasing-power theory makes sense if it is anchored in the reality of production and productivity. Income is, properly speaking, production. The man who produces more has more income; his production is his purchasing power. If he increases his production, he increases his purchasing power. When he increases his purchasing power in this realistic sense, he is in fact “better off,” in that he can command the disposition and consumption of more goods and services, either his own or those produced by others who wish to exchange their production for his. But merely giving men more money is meaningless if there are no more goods or services to satisfy the desires of the members of society. In such circumstances the increase in money can only create price increases. It cannot create more goods. In all probability, on the contrary, it will result in the production of less goods and services, because it will bankrupt some enterprises and therefore create unemployment of some men, capital, and natural resources.
As a matter of both theoretical analysis and empirical observation, then, free trade, leading to greater productivity and capital investment, appears to be the explanation of the economic process which creates the high standard of living prevailing in the United States. Analysis and observation coincide in suggesting that trade unions have nothing whatsoever to do with this process. And when trade-union leaders boast of how much they do as regards raising living standards for society as a whole, they are simply taking credit which does not belong to them.
This is not a harsh judgment of union leaders. It is, in fact, too charitable in respect of a good many. For a good many union leaders not only misleadingly take credit for improving general living standards; they are also responsible in many instances for substantial reductions in productivity. With this matter we shall be concerned in the following section of the present chapter. At this point we must take notice of the creative role which unions may play in the operation of a free economy if they concentrate on the social services they are in a good position to provide.
Although there is very little that unions as such may do directly in increasing productivity, there is much of utility that they can do in other ways, and which many unions already do. Experienced, well-trained union personnel of good judgment are in a position to get to know workers intimately. If they are competent and understanding, and if their energies are not absorbed in other ways, they can interpret the free society to the workers. They can convince workers that productivity is the key to the general welfare; that workers and their employers have more common than conflicting interests. Union leaders will not be suspected of bad faith if, going about it in the right way, they explain that hurting one’s employer is not a very intelligent way to improve one’s own position. Many union leaders may be surprised to learn that they will not be voted out of office if they tell workers that loafing on the job and exploiting employers in other ways are not good policy; they may be surprised to learn that the average worker, given a decent chance, will demonstrate as much common sense as any other man.
Union officers need not fear taking such steps, especially if they are constantly vigilant in promoting the legitimate interests of workers and if they develop a proper respect for human dignity. The stupid, ignorant, unfair foreman is one of the real problems of the free society, and of the free-enterprise system. He does not serve the employer; he hurts him. The employer, if he is sane, and most employers are sane, desires few things more than a happy working force, with every worker convinced that he is being treated fairly. He is, if anything, much more interested in achieving these objectives than any single worker. For he knows full well that his business may be destroyed if his workers get sufficiently bitter. Unions are in an excellent position to cooperate with employers in achieving working conditions which seem fair to workers, and then in enforcing fair working rules. They are in an unsurpassed position to check arbitrary and unfair conduct by supervisors. A great many employers recognize this fact and welcome unions. And a good many unions realize that in this area of employer-employee relations lies their greatest opportunity, and their greatest challenge. Unionists are always talking about the dignity and the spiritual goals of workers. More performance and less talk would be welcomed.
There are any number of other ways in which unions can serve both their members and society as a whole. They could provide employees with a great many useful services. They could be of great help to their members in planning savings and investment programs. If they were run well, they could be trusted with pension and welfare plans. They can and do run training and retraining schools for workers who are anxious to improve their productivity. They could serve as a clearing-house as regards employment opportunities. They could, in short, do many things that they are not doing at all now, or doing only rudimentarily and half-heartedly.
The measure of the failure of American trade unions is indeed provided by the fact that they are free in this society to do a great many useful things for workers that they are not now doing. Most of the things mentioned here are being done for workers, but they are not being done for them on any substantial scale by their unions. Too many union leaders in this country have been satisfied, instead, to take credit for services performed by governments or by employers (that is, by taxpayers and consumers). They have little to be proud of when they realize how often workers, asked to evaluate their union, respond that it is “just another racket.”
What Is
These harsh charges are not addressed to every union and union officer, for many do not habitually practice coercion; many do an extraordinarily fine job under the most severe handicaps. Moreover, not a line of this book is designed as an attack upon the institution of trade unionism as such. On the contrary, the critique and the proposals to be found here are intended to establish a permanent and creative role for free trade unionism and to ease the lot of those union leaders who are willing to operate within the principles and ideals of the free society. For, as matters now stand, the creative, sincere, able union leader has an inordinately hard time of it. The corrupt, demagogic, antisocial union leader is privileged under the current system to make things very difficult for the union leader who would prefer to work within the principles and the traditions of the free society. In a word, this book proposes the elimination of coercive conduct from labor relations, so that the competition among unions and union leaders may become a competition in performance and excellence, not a competition in coercion.
That is no way for a private association to operate in a civilized society. The consequences are undesirable for everyone concerned, the unions themselves as well as society as a whole. Many of our trade-union leaders are exceptional men. They have, even in circumstances where the temptations to corruption are very great, been decent citizens, faithful to the trust implicit in their office. But, as is well known, other union officers have been guilty of the worst kinds of conduct, ranging from petty thievery to extortion and violence on a grand scale. There has been a curious failure on the part of students of labor relations in this country even to look for the causes of union mismanagement, let alone associate such conduct with its most obvious cause. Literally no one has thought to correlate union organizational methods with the corruption so evident in some unions.
Consider one of the most egregious examples of union corruption in America today, the situation which has prevailed for so long on the docks at the Port of New York. Details need not be given here; everyone knows or ought to know of that affair. I wish only to point out that if unions are given the power to control the hiring process, as has been the case on the New York waterfront, a great deal of corruption must often be expected. For a union, unlike an employer, does not have a functional check upon its hiring powers. The employer who knows his own interests and has the intelligence to follow them properly must be concerned at all times to get the best workers he can. The employer as such is not interested in a man’s racial background, his personal convictions, or even his union membership. The employer is responsible for the efficient, profitable operation of his business. When he has the hiring power, he also has a correlative responsibility to exercise his power in the social interest; for the social interest, too, lies in the efficient, profitable operation of businesses. The employer does not need to be bribed; all he wants is work in return for the wages he pays.
The effect is a general structure of unionization in this country which bears no necessary relationship whatsoever to the desires of individual workingmen. A free market in commercial affairs tends to produce the structure of business enterprise which reflects the wishes of consumers and the most efficient technological methods of serving those wishes. Never having had a free market in labor organization, we have no way of telling whether trade unions are at present organized in the best possible way. What we do know is that organizations built upon coercive devices usually reflect the wishes only of those using the coercion.
The right to strike for higher wages and better working conditions is a fundamental right of working men in a free society, and it must be preserved largely intact if the society is to remain free. Yet, one of the certain indications of a badly run union is that it frequently calls prolonged strikes, only to settle them thereafter largely on the terms offered by the employer in the first place. Satisfactory statistics on this matter are unavailable, but one gets the impression that a large number of strikes are settled pretty much on the terms originally offered by the employer. This fact, too, to the extent that it prevails, is a necessary consequence of a unionism out of touch with its members and with economic realities. It is a sign of stupid, arrogant mismanagement by union officers. It indicates that these men, who insist that they are dedicated to the welfare of workingmen, really care very little about the men over whose lives they have chosen to exert so much authority. And that is to be expected of a unionism built upon coercion.
Each and every time that a union establishes a picket line during a wage dispute in an attempt to obstruct access to employment premises, or uses other coercive, intimidatory, and violent devices, the observer may be sure that the leaders of that union have made one or another kind of an error in judgment. They have misjudged conditions on the labor market or the temper of their own members or both. The businessman who thinks that the price of his product is too low attempts to correct the situation by the peaceful, civilized method of simply raising the price. If the product does not move at the new price, he may seek to increase demand by advertising or by improving quality. Using violence against his purchasers or competitors is simply unthinkable to him. The union leader, however, is not satisfied to proceed in this manner.
The strike itself is a far more drastic and effective method than anything normally available to businessmen. When justified by economic conditions, the strike alone will cause an employer to come to terms. Still, for reasons which should be apparent by now, union leaders have become accustomed to hiding their bad judgment by resorting to methods which are destructive of the basic principles of the free society. There can really be no doubt that the compulsion and coercion built into the structure of unionization are basically responsible for the way in which union leaders operate. Natural selection in such an environment brings to positions of authority in unions men who have neither the innate nor acquired characteristics necessary to intelligent union leadership. The strong-arm man finds an environment cut to his order; the able man of peace often finds the environment unsuited to his qualities.
Earlier in this book it was said that one of the best ways to the improvement of the material well-being of workers lies in the improvement of the market position of their employers. Efficient, profitable businesses are in a much better position to compensate their employees well than those which are losing ground. Many unions have grasped this point; but, instead of lending their efforts to improving the performance of employers, some unions have created monopolistic situations in which particular employers, and their employees, have profited at the expense of society as a whole. The closed shop is usually the key device in such cases. A union having a monopoly of all work assignments in a particular industry will exercise its power in a way which eliminates all business competition. Protected by such action, the employers will then make higher profits than they otherwise would, and the “take” will be split among them, the union, and the union members, in the form of relatively high wages, elaborate fringe benefits, and “gifts” to union officers. One must not conclude from this that unions thus raise the living standards of all workers. Quite the contrary: some workers (the employees of the employers excluded by the union’s monopolistic practices) are impoverished for the benefit of others.
Compulsion and coercion as normal union methods, therefore, do not exhaust their vicious effects in the corruption and mismanagement of unions alone. They have untoward consequences for all workers and for society as a whole. Such situations as the one just sketched could not exist if unions were unable to monopolize job opportunities. Without the closed shop and other violent, monopolistic methods, no union would be in a position to block off markets; no union could frustrate the continental free trade which the Constitution commands and which has meant so much in the development of this nation.
Yet, the structure of unionization being what it is, union leaders are virtually compelled to take broad-scale action, even though they might prefer not to do so. For one thing, the leader of one big industry-wide union can scarcely agree without a struggle to different wage and other standards for the employees of different companies, even though the economic circumstances may vary considerably from one company to another. Political and other pressures within the union will compel him, against his better judgment in many cases, to insist that all members of the union receive more or less the same wages for similar types of work. But such a wage structure is as unnatural as a rule decreeing equal sizes of families or equal production rates would be. The consequence in many cases must inevitably be the disadvantaging of some firms and employees relative to others. Unemployment, too, must frequently result. Still, while realizing the probability of such undesirable results, union leaders are driven inexorably by the inherent nature of industry-wide unionism to strive for equal wages and working conditions for all their members.
Such unionism puts the union leader in an impossible position also in the sense that it tends to set one big union against all the other equally prominent unions. The railroad unions cannot afford to lag behind the other transport unions. The steelworkers must keep up with the mineworkers. The automobile workers must show that they, too, are up with the others, or ahead of them. Whereas we put pressure upon business leaders to offer high quality at the lowest possible prices, the structure of unionization as we know it creates an irresistible pressure upon union leaders to exact the highest possible wages for the least amount of work.
If wages and working conditions are not established by the interaction between employers, employees, and labor organizations, they must be established by some other process. One or another version of compulsory arbitration is the most likely alternative. But this will involve the substitution of compulsion for agreement in the wage-setting process. Government agents will tell employers what wages they must pay and employees what wages they must accept. If wages are to be fixed in this manner, there can be no doubt that prices, too, will have to be fixed. Once wages and prices are both fixed by governmental decree, it will be idle to think in terms of a free society.
It is not a thesis of this book that the possibilities just sketched are “inevitable.” We can have pretty much the kind of society we wish to have. But if we wish to have a free society, we cannot condone or encourage conduct inconsistent with the basic principles of such a society. If unions are permitted to compel and to coerce, we are already tolerating conduct inconsistent with the free society, and we should not be surprised to find that the end results are inconsistent with those to be expected of the free society. An attempt has been made in this section to demonstrate that violent, coercive, compulsory unionism is the cause of both internal corruption in unions and an external structure of unionism which could, if allowed to continue unchecked, produce gravely antisocial results. It is even possible that the structure of unionism which we know could contribute to the total abandonment of the free society. For it must never be forgotten that there are many other tendencies in the same direction: discriminatory taxation, inflationary governmental policies, special subsidies to almost all powerful pressure groups, tariffs, and the many other similar interventionist measures which have been referred to in the preceding pages. There is no way of telling in advance just when the free society is lost; as David Hume said long ago, “it is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” The only sensible thing to do is to guard against those developments which reason defines as inimical to the free society. When one can say that a society is no longer free, it is too late to do very much about it.
What Can Be
On the level of generalization, the problem of establishing a decent labor policy for the United States is not a very difficult one. Evils existing in American trade-union practice today are serious, even critical, for the free society; but they are also few, prominent, and easy to recognize: compulsion and coercion at the organizing level, violence and monopolistic pressures at the collective-bargaining level. A viable, effective labor policy would need only eliminate from unionism its violent, coercive, monopolistic practices. To put the matter another way, an enduring labor policy need only be oriented in terms of the basic operating principles of the free society—private property and freedom of contract. If this were done, it would not be necessary to engage in extensive, interventionist regulation of the internal affairs of trade unions, any more than it has been necessary extensively to regulate business partnerships and corporations, or any of the multitudinous other voluntary associations of the free society. Again, the collective-bargaining process could be left pretty much alone, with the peaceful interaction of unions, employers, and employees determining wage rates and other conditions of employment, much as the pricing process generally is permitted to proceed in an unhampered way in the free society.
Unions which grow to be large and powerful because of the services they render, rather than because they excel in coercion, need not be disturbed, any more than large business firms need be disturbed. For public opinion in regard to such unions will be as favorable as it is beginning to be in regard to large business aggregates, especially when the public is not induced by demagogic propaganda to fear large aggregates merely because they are large. In short, on the level of principle, with coercion and violence eliminated, unionization may be allowed the natural and free course of development which the intelligently operated free society allows to all private, voluntary associations.
Settling things on the level of principle, however, is not enough. We are interested in establishing an enduring labor policy, not in the abstract, but for the United States as we know it today. Success in such a project depends, among other things, upon familiarity with the particular problems of history, tradition, and law of the United States. The principles of bridge-building must everywhere be the same, but bridges are erected in particular places; and the engineer who hopes to construct a good bridge must know all he can about the site upon which the bridge is to stand. What can he in the labor policy of the United States depends to a great extent upon the way in which our policy has thus far developed. If we should find, for example, that there is absolutely no relationship between the policies suggested by the theory of the free society and the policies which actually have emerged in the United States, we should probably have to conclude that the analysis in the foregoing pages has been a mere intellectual diversion. But if we find that there is an intimate relationship between the theory and the actual evolution, we may be greatly encouraged to hope that the labor policy suggested by the theory of the free society may easily be translated into the labor policy of the United States. And we shall, in such a case, be in a position to make a more practical judgment as to the feasibility of measures suggested by the theory of the free society.
No policy, no code of laws, can be effective unless it enjoys the support not only of the citizenry as a whole but also of the persons to whom it is immediately applicable. Laws are effective only when most people obey them, and this is true no less of labor laws than of other laws. On the other hand, laws are not needed in order to discourage conduct which no one engages in, anyway. Thus, no objection can be made to labor-law proposals merely because they forbid conduct now common among trade unions. Yet, unless at least some trade unions and their leaders are disposed to obey the laws applicable to their activities, the problem of enforcement can become difficult.
These considerations, too, indicate the merit of the policies and laws suggested by the theory of the free society; and they point up the desirability of an examination of the labor policies and laws which have evolved naturally in the history of the United States. For the policies and laws of the free society are few in number and generally applicable in character; as a consequence, even though a majority of trade-union leaders should be reluctant to submit to them, the fact that other members of society on the whole submit to them gives promise that they can be made to work in labor relations, even though the job may be difficult. Experience with the actual evolution of labor policy in the United States must give valuable aid in settling upon the particular rules and methods most likely to achieve success in the future. We turn now to a survey of the experience of the United States in the field of labor policy and law.
