the public welfare demanded. The sentiment against overtime and Sunday work was in part philanthropic, the men believing that the union requirement divided the work to be done among more men. In part also it was shrewdly practical. When the employers had to run nights and Sundays, their own earnings were high. Their capital, as one printer pointed out to me, is employed more hours. Their rents and interest are not increased, and there is but little more superintendence needed when work is heavy than when it is light. Therefore they can afford to pay more at such times. The main consideration, however, was the exhaustion caused by overwork. "After night work and Sunday work," said this workman, "we get to feeling like wooden men." His union charged time and a half after six o'clock, and double time after twelve o'clock and on Sundays. One result of such regulations was that they forced employers to reduce overtime and Sunday work to the minimum, and to give the men consecutive work at union hours, instead of alternating and alike injurious-overwork and no work.

The religious motive for the prohibition of Sunday work was disappointingly absent, so far as my limited conversations on the subject went, but as I had previously observed in New York-the least religious of trades-unionists were insistent upon a free Sunday, and not merely upon one free day in seven. It seems somewhat singular, but at the very time that opposition to Sunday labor is relaxing among well-to-do Christians it is gaining strength among organized work ingmen.

It is in the building trades that the union The Cigar-makers' movement centers, but it Union and was not here that I found President the best exponent of tradesunionism. Early in my work, with a card from one of the residents at Hull House, I called on President George W. Perkins, of the Cigar-makers' International Union, and the two hours' talk with him was so profitable that I took the liberty of returning to him again before I left the city. Here was a man whom any professor of political economy in the country might with advantage call to his chair to give his students a week's course upon tradesunionism. There was no rhetoric, no exaggeration, no claim that trades-union

ists represented all that was reasonable or employers all that was the reverse. His talk was a calm, clear statement of the organization, methods, aims, defeats, and successes of the Cigar-makers' Union. From my observation in New York I had supposed that this trade was largely in the hands of immigrants, but I found that President Perkins was not only of American birth, but of American ancestry since 1640. Four-fifths of the organized cigarmakers in the country, he said, were of American birth. When I asked how the proportion stood among the non-union cigar-makers, he said that the difference would be slight, taking the country as a whole, because the 20,000 cigar-makers in Pennsylvania were almost all Americanborn and unorganized. Outside of Pennsylvania, however, unionism was stronger among native-born than among immigrant workmen. The sharp line of cleavage, however, was the sectional one. As I had previously learned about the iron trades, so here in the cigar trade the West was well organized, the East badly. Of the 20,000 cigar-makers in New York City only 7,000 were members of the union; of the 20,000 in Pennsylvania practically none were members; but of the 30,000 cigar-makers in the rest of the country over 20,000 were in the unions. The small towns-and this, too, is fairly typical-were better organized than the large, and "more attentive to the union label." This President Perkins accounted for on the ground that the "neighborly feeling" is stronger in the smaller towns, and therefore organization is easier.

The union label"

The question of the union label focused the whole philosophy of tradesunionism. What the union label stands for is precisely what the building trades alliance stands for when it orders sympathetic strikes to secure the exclusive employment of union men. The sympathetic strike is the real weapon of the building trades unions to secure their demands, and the union label may in the near future give a similar weapon to all trades-unions. In the labor world the "union label" expresses the same sentiment that "consumers' leagues" express among the well-to-do. It is the moral sense that the old duty to treat our own employees well involves the new duty to patronize others who treat their

employees well. This feeling is keen among organized workmen ; and their test as to whether firms treat their hands well is whether they grant the conditions demanded by the unions. They believe in the exclusive employment of union labor, said President Perkins, not merely be cause the non-unionists pay no dues, and therefore are not entitled to the benefits of union action, but also because nonunionists seem to them the tools of the enemies of the labor movement. They believe that the unions are fighting the battle for the entire working class, and their consciences as well as their interests support their discriminations against nonunion men. Through the union label all unionists were able to help each other. The "blue label" of the Cigar-makers' Union, he said, was now so uniformly demanded by trades-unionists in the West that many manufacturers could not afford to be without it. When I referred to the current gibes of New York unionists as to the quality of "blue-label " cigars, he said that the time was long since past in Chicago when a "blue-label smoke" was a poor smoke. Union labor, he said, was employed in making the best cigars, and "blue-label " cigars were now to be had at the swellest cigar-shops in Chicago. He was ready to admit that where the union label was new and only a few firms had it, these firms might sometimes take advantage of those determined to have the label; but where the use of the label was well established he thought that patrons obtained the best quality of work at reasonable prices. President Perkins was in no sense a visionary man, and what he said about the growth of popular sentiment in favor of union-label goods convinced me that this, too, was one of the economic forces soon to be reckoned with. To be sure, it is purely moral in its character, since self-interest and indifference will always prompt the unionist to buy the cheapest and most convenient things, regardless of how they have been made. But if the conscience of all unionists, as well as that of philanthropists, once accepts the commandment, "Thou shalt not buy goods which any one has been wronged in making," it will prove a powerful factor in diverting trade to firms whose employees believe themselves to be well treated.

That which possessed the greatest imTrades-union mediate interest, however, in insurance President Perkins's talk with me was the report upon the insurance work of his organization. The dues of the Cigar-makers' Union are thirty cents a week, and the dues and assessments together are about seventeen dollars a year. The yearly expenditures for strikes during the past decade have averaged barely one dollar a member. The yearly expenditures for officers' salaries, hall rents, postage, etc., amount to barely four dollars a member. Thirty dollars a week is the maximum salary, and this is paid only to the President, who is at the head of a business aggregating half a million dollars a year. One dollar a member is paid yearly for the union label agitation. The remaining eleven dollars are returned to the members in various insurance benefits. No insurance company, not co-operative, returns to the insured so large a percentage of their payments.

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The death benefits" paid by the Cigar-makers' Union amount to $200 for those who have been members for five consecutive years, and to $550 for those who have been members fifteen consecutive years. These payments aggregate about $70,000 a year, or about $2.50 a member. The "sick benefits" paid by the union furnish a form of insurance that no capitalistic organization could offer without ensuring a vast amount of unnecessary sickness. Union cigar-makers, after one week of sickness, not due to "intemperance or immoral conduct," are entitled to five dollars a week for a maximum of thirteen weeks in one year. The esprit de corps of the union, and the unwillingness of any but the meanest workmen to be suspected of sponging on their fellows, is the chief protection of the order against imposition, but the regulations regarding the visiting of the sick are a rare combination of philanthropy and business caution. The "sick benefits" are more important than those paid in cases of death, and aggregate about $110,000 a year, or nearly four dollars a member. Most important of all, however, during the hard times, have been the "out-of-work benefits." To begin with, the Cigar-makers' Union lends about $30,000 a year to members out of work who wish to travel in search of it. These loans are nearly all repaid by the members in

ten per cent. weekly assessments after work is found, so that this tramping in good faith for work is hardly more burdensome to the union than to society. Besides these loans. however, the union pays to all members in good standing when out of work three dollars a week for as high as eighteen weeks a year. The only restrictions are that no benefits shall be paid during the first week after the member is laid off, none during the midsummer months, when living expenses are light and other work easily obtained, and that members who have received the benefit for six weeks must then go without it for seven weeks. In this way the union ensures that its members shall not lightly leave old jobs or be careless about finding new ones. This form of insurance was begun by the Cigar-makers' Union in 1890, and, until the hard times set in, cost less than one dollar a year per member. With the depression of 1893. however, the out-of-work payments suddenly became the heaviest of all. From $17,000 in 1892 they rose to $174,000 in 1894, fell slightly with the slight business revival in 1895. rose again to $175,000 with the deepened depression of 1896, and fell to $117,000 in 1897, when the present revival began. During all these trying years the Cigar-makers' Union was not compelled to lower the scale of wages to correspond to the fall in prices, like the less organized trades, nor to lose members from its organization because of want of employment, like many of the best organized trades. The out-of-work insurance held all the members together, and while they suffered severely from lack of work, none were pauperized, and their organization came out of the depression stronger than at the beginning. Its reserve fund, indeed, was slightly lowered, but at the close there were $177,000 in the union treasury

Only one thing seemed to President

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This

terms with their workmen or risk the loss of men and business to their rivals. President Perkins told me of cigar firms that had won in the strikes against them, but had found their business gone when they attempted to resume it. At present the cigar-making business is chiefly in the hands of small firms-some of them employing but one or two men. It is, therefore, almost as easy sometimes for the men to find other employers as for employers to find other men. But if the trust which already controls the cigarette business to the utter suppression of unions should enter the cigar-making field, there is trouble for the workmen ahead. sentiment among the cigar-makers had its counterpart in that which prevailed among the carpenters about the contractors' association-though the outlook there was more hopeful.. At first," said one of the carpenters' officials, we Iwanted the employers to organize, as we preferred to have one agreement to a lot of little strikes with single employers. Afterwards they tried to take advantage of their union to force us down, and we broke up their association." "But," I asked, “couldn't they go longer without their profits than you without your wages?"No," was the reply, "because they knew that if they all stopped, the union itself would take contracts." Here, then is a possible outcome for the future. The unions are accumulating reserve funds, and, in spite of immigration, are increasing rapidly in discipline and intelligence. The time is coming when the unions may be business co-operatively. true, in need of moral within, and the restraints of public opinion and even public law from without; but the road to industrial democracy surely lies in the strengthening of the one democratic factor in the control of industry, and not in its threatened overthrow by industrial absolutism. The time is yet coming when historians will look back upon the present-day struggles of tradesunionists as historians to-day look back upon the parish and town meetings of the despised Puritan "levelers" of the seventeenth century. The men may seem commonplace and the measures petty, but it is through just such instrumentalities that the great designs for human advancement are always worked out.

able to manage

They are, it is restraints from