Like all aggressive men alive to their own interest, the laborer soon decided that what he really needed was not equal rights, but special opportunities.  He also soon learned that in order to get these special opportunities he must conquer them by main force—­which he proceeded to do with, on the whole, about as much respect for the law as was exhibited by the big capitalists.  In spite of many setbacks the unionizing of industrial labor has been attended with almost as much success as the consolidating of industrial power and wealth; and now that the labor unions have earned the allegiance of their members by certain considerable and indispensable services, they find themselves placed, in the eyes of the law, in precisely the same situation as combinations of corporate wealth.  Both of these attempts at industrial organization are condemned by the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and by certain similar state legislation as conspiracies against the freedom of trade and industry.

The labor unions, consequently, like the big corporations, need legal recognition; and this legal recognition means in their case, also, substantial discrimination by the state in their favor.  Of course, the unionist leaders appeal to public opinion with the usual American cant.  According to their manifestoes they demand nothing but “fair play”; but the demand for fair play is as usual merely the hypocritical exterior of a demand for substantial favoritism.  Just as there can be no effective competition between the huge corporation controlling machinery of production which cannot be duplicated and the small manufacturer in the same line, so there can be no effective competition between the individual laborer and the really efficient labor union.  To recognize the labor union, and to incorporate it into the American legal system, is equivalent to the desertion by the state of the non-union laborer.  It means that in the American political and economic system the organization of labor into unions should be preferred to its disorganized separation into competing individuals.  Complete freedom of competition among laborers, which is often supposed to be for the interest of the individual laborer, can only be preserved as an effective public policy by active discrimination against the unions.

An admission that the recognition of labor unions amounts to a substantial discrimination in their favor would do much to clear up the whole labor question.  So far as we declare that the labor unions ought to be recognized, we declare that they ought to be favored; and so far as we declare that the labor union ought to be favored, we have made a great advance towards the organization of labor in the national interest.  The labor unions deserve to be favored, because they are the most effective machinery which has as yet been forged for the economic and social amelioration of the laboring class.  They have helped to raise the standard of living, to mitigate the rigors of competition