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Free Contract Cs. "slavery."

Free Contract Cs. "slavery." image
Parent Issue
Day
26
Month
June
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

So confused and chaotic is the law in relation to conspiracy, monopoly and public policy that each judge is practically his own legislator. Some Courts, including the highest court of New York, have taken advanced and modern ground on the questions growing out of Industrial disputes, while others hark back to the common law in its crudest and most illogical form. One of the essential conditions of peace and harmony between employers and employed is a correct understanding, coupled with a frank recognition, of the rights and correlative duties of each group.

A news item from Boston tells us that a manufacturer has been arrested under an old and almost forgotten law for requiring his employees to sign an agreement binding themselves not to join any trade union, If we apply some judicial logic to the case, the arrest is perfectly natural and the law directing it thoroughly just and "American." In point of fact, the law is probably unconstitutional and the arrest an invasion of the employer's rightful freedom. He had a perfect right to ask or require his employees to sign the agreement in question. He bas a right to dismiss any employee who refuses to sign such an agreement. Whether it would be expedient for him to do so is a totally distinct and separate question, with which courts have nothing to do.

Of course, if the employer has the right to dismiss a man for any reason whatever, or to impose any conditions he sees fit on those seeking employment at his hands, it follows, as Judge Holdom recognizes, that the workman has the right to quit work for any reason whatever, or no reason at all. It also follows, however, that he has a right to refuse to work with non-union men. It is not "slavery" for the workman to propose contracts involving complete unionization of establishments. The organic law rationally construed permits these things, and they are mere deductions from the principle of industrial liberty, the right of free contract.

But neither the right to dismiss nor the right to quit Involves the right to coerce another by force. intimidation threats- In short, aggression of any kind- into doing anything which he has a legal right to refuse to do, or into abstaining from doing anything he has a legal right to do. Stick to first principles. In these alone, provided they are rigorously applied and upheld, lies the safety of our industrial system. The denial of rights leads to state intervention, compulsory arbitration and socialism.- Chicago Post.