efficacious. Beside affording effective relief to actual sufferers, it would also reduce such suffering to the minimum; for when it must all be paid for in full, then it will be found cheaper to employ every safeguard. The equities of this matter are thus summarized by the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in their official address of 1908: "So far as greed makes such things possible the Master whom we serve demands from us the protest of his Church and for the sufferers the tenderest sympathy. The love we Owe our brother man warrants and compels us to plead for greater protection against accident and greater mercy and justice, even to care in old age, for the wounded and crippled from the industrial battlefield." Here, as everywhere, the fear that it will cost too much to do right, is a fear as foolish as it is wicked. The one cost which can be afforded under no circumstances is the present cost in life and limb. injustice to no one. justice to employers. pensation would be shifted from the employers to society at large. Like any other expense common to all who are conducting a given industry, this expense also enters into the costs of production and is finally paid by the public as an element in price. In other words, it is Justice to labor involves There would be no in- essentially an indirect tax to be paid by the consumer. Yet even to the public at large, workingmen's compensation would cost little or nothing in the end. For the immediate expense would be ultimately balanced by several economies. First of all, a large proportion of the present number of injuries, illnesses, and deaths would then be averted by improved preventive measures. In consequence of this happy result there would follow ultimately a great reduction in present expenses of liabilityinsurance and damage-suits, with immediate saving to industry and ultimate saving to the public. Furthermore, public charities would be relieved of enormous charges made upon them for the support of the thousands now reduced to dependency through our dangerous and unsanitary industries. In Chicago it was ascertained that 109 out of 1000 cases of destitution were due in whole or in part to some kind of industrial accident. Again, the industrial efficiency and social worth of thousands would become an increasing asset to society through coming generations as the result of the abolition of the woman-labor, childlabor, dependency and delinquency of which our present system of non-compensation is a prolific source. Nor is there any grave danger that such laws may drive away industries from the states which enact them to others which do not. As we have just seen, industry would thus be put to little, if any, net expense. Furthermore, actual experience shows that other labor laws, even when involving much immediate expense, have not driven away industries from the states enacting them.15 In this regard it is hardly less than decisive that the German Empire, subject to strict and comprehensive compensation and insurance laws, has yet been conspicuous in its recent industrial development in spite of the competition of the world. Furthermore, our American states are carefully forestalling the difficulty in question, first, by tentatively regulating the scale of legal compensation with regard to the admitted wastefulness of the present system and the probable economies of the new system; second, by co-operative legislation, framed and enacted after conference of the representatives of the several states, or by directly copying one another's enactments. Christian men of to-day must remember the Priest and the Levite of old who passed by on the other side,-possibly not so much heartless as busy men, probably engaged just then in "church-work." And while these churchmen hurried on unheeding, the great work of 15 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 597. the Church was left to a despised "outsider," who did it well. To-day humanity lies plundered and bleeding by the highway. God forbid that we should pass by on the other side. VI WHAT CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE LABOR UNIONS The most noteworthy criticism of the labor unions ever published is probably the recent work of President Eliot entitled, "The Future of Trade-Unionism and Capitalism in a Democracy.' And yet President Eliot concedes therein that "the efforts which trade-unions have made to improve the conditions of employment in all the chief industries which support civilized society are so commendable that society at large ought to be patient with the false theories or bad practices which have impaired or counteracted their work." And George L. Bolen, a critic no less severe, characterizes unionism as a "great and noble movement for the upliftment of humanity" with "a long array of achievements that proved as beneficial to society as to its own adherents." 2 To enumerate some of the achievements for social welfare which command such commenda 1 Op. cit., p. 51. 2 "Getting a Living," pp. 179, 288. 53 |