It should be clearly understood that the public interest demanded, on the one hand, a standard of living for the laborer as high as the industrial conditions would permit, and on the other a standard of labor-efficiency equivalent to the cost of labor and an opportunity for the exceptional individual laborer to improve on that standard in his own interest.  The whole purpose of such an organization would be the attempt to develop efficient labor and prosperous laboring men, whereas the tendency of the existing organization is to associate the prosperity of the laboring man with the inefficiency of labor.  The employers are usually fighting not for the purpose of developing good labor, but for the purpose of taking advantage of poor, weak, and dependent laborers.

How far the central, state, and municipal governments could go in aiding such a method of organization, is a question that can only be indefinitely answered.  The legislatures of many American states and municipalities have already shown a disposition to aid the labor unions in certain indirect ways.  They seek by the passage of eight-hour and prevailing rate-of-wages laws to give an official sanction to the claims of the unions, and they do so without making any attempt to promote the parallel public interest in an increasing efficiency of labor.  But these eight-hour and other similar laws are frequently being declared unconstitutional by the state courts, and for the supposed benefit of individual liberty.  Without venturing on the disputed ground as to whether such decisions are legitimate or illegitimate interpretations of constitutional provisions, it need only be said in this, as in other instances, that the courts are as much influenced in such decisions by a political theory as they are by any fidelity to the fundamental law, and that if they continue indefinitely in the same course, they are likely to get into trouble.  I shall, however, as usual, merely evade constitutional obstacles, the full seriousness of which none but an expert lawyer is competent to appraise.  Both the state and the municipal governments ought, just in so far as they have the power, to give preference to union labor, but wherever possible they should also not hesitate to discriminate between “good” and “bad” unions.  Such a discrimination would be beyond the courage of existing governments, but a mild hope may be entertained that it would not be beyond the courage of the regenerated governments.  The adoption of some such attitude by the municipal and state authorities might encourage employers to make the fight along the same lines; and wherever an employer did make the fight along those lines, he should, in his turn, receive all possible support.  In the long run the state could hardly impose by law such a method of labor organization upon the industrial fabric.  Unless the employers themselves came to realize just what they could fight for with some chance of success, and with the best general results if successful, the