Letters From A Railway Official
holding somebody up that we put on the man the whole burden of making good.
Unionism, like religion, and like love, is the outgrowth of certain feelings and emotions in the human breast that strive to overcome the limitations of mankind; that seek to make an eternity of time, an ideal of an idea, a solid phalanx out of heterogeneous parts. You may win the strike, down the union, hire your men as individuals; but sooner or later, in the Lord’s own good time, in obedience to natural law, they will organize in some form, under some name or other. Only a few will stand out; some from sheer contrariness; more from strong individuality of temperament. The outsiders, from a lack of organization, have little positive influence, simply a negative conservatism.
Since these things are so, why not, to drop into familiar phrase, be governed accordingly? Instead of letting the men organize the road, why not have the road organize the men? The system of collective bargaining, of labor contracts, has come to stay. It is merely a question of how and with whom we shall deal. It is so easy to let out work by contract, to call on the supply dealer to help
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