Reviews of Books LABOR PROBLEMS AND WORK MEN‘S COMPENSATION The Trade Union Label. By Ernest R. Spedden, Ph.D., Sometime Instructor in Political Economy in Purdue University. Johns Hopkins University Studies, series 28, no. 2. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. Pp. 100 (index). (81.) Latter-Day Problems. By J. Lawrence Laughlin, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Chicago. Charles Scribner's Sons. N. Y. Pp. 302 (index). (1.50 net.) Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions. By James B. Kennedy, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy in Wells College. Johns Hopkins Univer sity Studies, series 26, nos. 11-12. Johns Hopkins Press. Baltimore. Pp. 128 (index). (50 cts. paper.) Work-Accidents and the Law. By Crystal East man, member and secretary of the New York State Employers’ Liability Commission. Being the fifth volume of the Pittsburgh Survey in six volumes, edited by Paul Underwood Kellogg for the Russell Sage Foundation. Charities Publica tion Committee, New York. Pp. xvi, 220+ twelve appendices 109+ index 11. ($1.50 net; the set 810.) Risks in Modern Industry. Special number of Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science. v. 38, no. 1, July, 1911, Philadelphia. Pp. 278. ($1.)
RITING of “The Trade Union Label,” Ernest R. Spedden says: “The unions have not as a rule attempted to encourage the demand for label goods by making the label a mark of superior
material or workmanship.
The difii
culty in the way of such a plan is obvi
ous;
the union is not organized to
further the interest of any particular
part of the workingmen in the trade, but to establish conditions for the trade as a whole."
The method governing the use of the
union label is typical of the methods of trade unions. The label, originally designed to appeal to trade-unionists to
support other unions and to combat cheap immigrant labor, eventually came
to be used to appeal .to the sympathy of the general public with the union cause. There have fortunately been
some indications to make the label a badge of superior workmanship in cer tain trades, but ordinarily it has been
simply a means of telling the public that workmen were receiving the union scale of wages. Even though the label may not have been a means of boycotting competing non-union goods, it has been a means of combating non-union labor by the characteristic method of solicit
ing support without showing any eco nomic superiority of the trade-union product. As a substitute for the trade-union policy of seeking to dominate the market by other means than those of normal
competition, Professor Laughlin pro poses the competitive principle of pro ductivity or efficiency. To illustrate the advantages of free competition over “bucking" against a threatened over supply of labor, he instances the great
increase of wages for both skilled and unskilled labor during the past fifty or
John Graham Brooks, discussing the
sixty years, which increase has been
union label in 1898, said that in certain
accompanied by a fall in the price of many commodities consumed by the laboring class. Were the unions to adopt this principle of efficiency, "the contest between union and non-union men would
trades "a label that should be con fidently known to stand for definite
improvement in the life of the worker would attract a powerful public sym pathy," and he complained that the rules under which the union labels were
issued gave ordinarily no guarantee of good quality of work or of sanitary con ditions.
no longer be settled by force," because
“the sympathy of the public would be transferred from the non-union, or the unfit, to the union, or fit men. . . .
This policy unmistakeably opens the
