Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/119

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THE CHALLENGE OF FACTS

he is coerced, he is wronged. He, in his turn, then, will defend his interests to the utmost.

The two chief extensions of the strike which have been made in the way of perfecting the methods of industrial war are the more intense organization and discipline of the employees and the boycott. The former has produced a conflict of organized with unorganized labor, and would, if it could be carried out, outlaw any employee who should choose to preserve his independence and liberty. The employees, while denouncing monopoly, have here employed the monopoly principle in its most outrageous form, and they seek to raise wages by crushing any one who will not come into the close combination which they regard as essential to the coercion they hope to exercise. In reaching about for means of this coercion, they have employed the strike to compel the employer to become their ally and discharge any one who stays out of their organization.

The boycott is a further attempt to find a point of reaction for the coercive apparatus. The original case of boycotting, from which the device got its name, was very generally approved, or at least not condemned, because it was set in operation against an Irish landlord. It was plain in that case, however, what the device was, and how monstrous an innovation it was in a civilized society. If, without process of law, a man can be so extruded from human society that he cannot buy or sell, hire, let, beg, borrow, lend, employ, or be employed, what becomes of the security of life, liberty, or property? Of course no such result could be brought about unless the boycotters could bring terrorism to bear on the whole community, including, at last, jurors, judges, and witnesses, to force people who are not parties to the quarrel to depart from the legal and peaceful enjoyment of their