OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 79
mother's son if in the opposing ranks. And who is the blackleg? A fellow-creature seeking work a fellow- creature in all probability more pressed and starved than those who so bitterly denounce him, and often with the hungry pleading faces of wife and child behind him.
And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that trade- guilds and unions do but to impose more restrictions on natural rights; to create "trusts" in labor; to add to privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes ; and to press the weaker closer to the wall ?
I speak without prejudice against trades-unions, of which for years I was an active member. And in point- ing out to your Holiness that their principle is selfish and incapable of large and permanent benefits, and that their methods violate natural rights and work hardship and injustice, I am only saying to you what, both in my books and by word of mouth, I have said over and over again to them. Nor is what I say capable of dispute. Intelligent trades-unionists know it, and the less intelli- gent vaguely feel it. And even those of the classes of wealth and leisure who, as if to head off the demand for natural rights, are preaching trades-unionism to working- men, must needs admit it.
Your Holiness will remember the great London dock strike of two years ago, which, with that of other influ- ential men, received the moral support of that Prince of the Church whom we of the English speech hold higher and dearer than any prelate has been held by us since the blood of Thomas a Becket stained the Canterbury altar.
In a volume called " The Story of the Dockers' Strike," written by Messrs. H. Llewellyn Smith and Vaughan Nash, with an introduction by Sydney Buxton, M.P., which advocates trades-unionism as the solution of the labor question, and of which a large number were sent
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