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formation would have been much slower and healthier. The collapse of a trust, through inherent weakness or rottenness, is not regarded by the people as an argument for laissez-faire ; on the contrary, it is taken as additional evidence of the need of regulation and prevention. The people do not say: "Monopoly is impossible in the long run ; therefore let us ignore these vain efforts to squeeze trade and victimize us." They say : "These trusts are conceived in wildcatism and born in economic iniquity ; they benefit none but the speculative financiers and stock-jobbers, and the government should suppress them and discourage the formation of new ones."
Here, however, a real difficulty must be faced. Discrimina- tion, class legislation in any form, is profoundly repugnant to the American mind. "The equal protection of the law," con- strued by the highest courts to be equivalent to the phrase "the protection of equal laws," is generally insisted on as a bul- wark of social order and harmony. Anti-trust laws from which farmers, stock raisers, and wage-workers were expressly exempted have been pronounced null and void, obnoxious to the four- teenth amendment, and contrary to public policy. If manufac- turers and merchants must compete, and are forbidden to agree upon prices or methods, is it just to allow farmers and work- men to combine for similar purposes ? Is not a trade union a trust ? Collective bargaining is the raison d'etre of the trade union, and what is this but restraint of competition in labor ?
Not many decades ago the common law prohibited unions of wage-workers and punished them as conspiracies in restraint of trade. Gradually the right of workmen to combine, to deter- mine the price of their services, to act in concert even in sus- pending work, was recognized by society, legislation, and the courts. There were good and sound reasons for this change of attitude, and they are still operative. But the anti-trust move- ment puts a new face on the matter. If, as we have seen, the law prohibits even reasonable restraint of trade, how will unions escape the manifest application of this principle to their own particular attempts to eliminate competition? There are those who perceive valid grounds for making an exception of labor
