274 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
and labor sentiment crystallized, it became evident that in many quarters labor regarded the recent changes as, in part at least, a " legitimate development and natural concentration of industry." The object of the present paper is to set forth certain facts which may throw light on this complex situation, and which perhaps warrant more definite conclusions concerning the mutual relations of trusts and trade unions.
It is sometimes maintained that the growth of trusts has fostered that of trade unions ; this view does not seem to be warranted by the facts, which point in the opposite direction. For while the strength of the trade unions has acted as a contributory cause in the federation of employers, the trust once organized has been little inclined to permit the spread of unionism into new fields under its management.
In certain cases, however, very friendly relations have existed between trusts and their organized employees. The National Glass Company has been a notable example of this condition. It is an undoubted advantage to employers to be able to count upon a common level of wages which may serve as a fixed basis for prices. It is a further advantage for them to be able to bargain for the use of all the skilled labor in the industry, thereby saving themselves from competing concerns in a very effective way. The unions on their side find it convenient to deal with a single corporation rather than with a score. Among the tin-plate workers, about 95 per cent, of whom are organized, the movement toward consoli- dation was thoroughly approved ; and in the railroad world the brotherhoods appear, on the whole, to approve of consolidation, while the companies, on their side, generally regard the brotherhoods with approval.
There are industries, however, where these friendly relations between trust and trade union give place to indifference or open hostility, as in the well- known conflict between the tobacco trust and the Tobacco Workers' International Union. It is thus apparent that conditions are not uniform throughout the indus- trial world. And in seeking to explain the differences noted, it should be observed that the strength of the trade union is the most important factor in the situation. In seeking what determines the relative strength or weakness of the union, we find that there is commonly one all-important factor, the skill of the workers. It is only the more skilled, and therefore the less numerous, workmen who can effectively organize their trades, and maintain their advantage through apprentice- ship regulations.
In the case of the other group of trusts which are indifferent or hostile to organized labor, the labor employed is of a lower grade. Unskilled labor implies a weak union, and the trust is not slow to take advantage of its position to draw labor from other sources. Where the organization of the trust antedates that of its employees, the former is apt to crush out any attempt at the introduction of unionism into its works.
It would seem that two distinct dangers lurk in the present trust-trade-union situation. The first, in the case of the strong unions of skilled laborers, is that trust and union will join hands in a monopoly of the industry and its output, to the detriment of the consumer, a condition which may call for legislative regula- tion of apprenticeship rules and other matters. The second danger is present in the power of the trusts employing unskilled, unorganized labor, to impose unfair conditions upon workmen who are increasingly dependent on the will of the trust which employs them. In both cases the movement toward greater public interference with industry will be strengthened. MABEL ATKINSON, in Yale Review, May, 1004.
E. B. W.
Anti-Trust Remedies under the Northern Securities Decision. The impor- tance of the Northern Securities decision is in its constitutional aspect. It decides two constitutional questions of wide bearing: first, that the constitutional right of any person to buy and hold any piece of property does not enable one corporation to purchase a controlling interest in the stock of another against the will of the sovereignty by whose permission the latter conducts its operations ; and, second, that the jurisdiction of the nation over interstate and foreign com-
