TRADES UNIONS AND PUCLIC DUTY I 45 1
undertake? Scenes of disorder and violence are enacted because trades unions are not equipped to accomplish what they are undertaking. The state alone could accomplish it without dis- order. The public shirks its duty, and then holds a grievance toward the men who undertake the performance of that duty. It blames the union men for the disaster which arises from the fact that the movement is a partial one.
The public is forced to one of two alternatives : that the state should not attempt to ameliorate the lot of workingmen by regulating hours, etc. — and this in spite of the recent deci- sion of the United States Supreme Court in sustaining the eight- hour law — or that the trades unions, unassisted, are doing that for which we are all responsible, and which we all ought to under- take.
What, then, is this labor movement, which, when it incor- porates its doctrine into legal measures, becomes orderly and smooth-working, and, when it undertakes to enforce them, itself becomes violent and difficult ?
We are prone to interpret the significance of any living insti- tution, not by its creed and its declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but b}' its actual manifestations when it attempts to make over the truth thus stated into direct expressions of free living. We judge it by its blundering efforts to apply its principles to actual conditions ; by the oft-time failure of its representatives, when the individual finds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action. To judge an organiza- tion fairly by these blundering manifestations requires care, and cannot be done easily.
The very existence of failure and blunder may only confuse us as to the moral significance we are striving to apprehend. If we may use a historic instance, we shall doubtless find that two bodies of men developed the doctrine of the Christian church. On one side were the scholars, the bishops, and dignitaries who met in ecumenical councils and determined creeds and definitions. On the other side were the great body of Christians who had to do with the world, who were grappling with the conditions in German forests and on the plains of Spain and Lombardy, and
