SHOULD TRADE UNIONS BE INCORPORATED?' BY EUGENE WAMBAUGH. IN answer to the question whether trade unions should be incorporated, the in stinct of most people seems to be to say, "Why not?" The present attitude toward corporations is not, to be sure, thoroughly friendly. No, it resembles the view of some savages as to the Evil One—an institution not to be loved, but to be feared, respected, propitiated, imitated, and, though possibly by and by to be regulated or destroyed, for the present to be considered inevitable and normal. Yet, although this is the contem porary attitude of the public, and although corporations, large and small, are now so very common as to encourage the impression that they are the most natural things in the world, the truth is that corporations are merely artificial, that they are nothing but creatures of the legislature, and that they should not be created unless their existence is for the public welfare. Consequently, to the question whether trade unions should be incorporated the proper counter-question is not "Why not?" but "Why?" In the present instance the presumption against incorporation is stronger than usual. Incorporation is a privilege, giving among other advantages concentration, permanence, and partial exemption from losses; but in corporation is apparently urged upon trade unions by capitalists, and capitalists have re cently contended that organizations of work men ought to be ignored and if practicable abolished. Doubtless it is possible at one time to believe in dealing with workmen one by one and at another time to believe in dealing with workmen in a body; but the change from one of these be liefs to the other, and especially the change from belief in no organization at all to be1 A paper read before the American Social Science Association, at Boston, May 14, 1903.
lief in the most consolidated form of associa tion possible, is a change so radical that it must be expected to be made slowly and to be accompanied with careful explanation. In this instance, however, the change of front has been made with such suddenness and (with such slight explanation as to inspire doubt whether it is wise. Again, the change has been made in a time of excitement; and, although it is ppssible for excited persons to be safe advisers, the probability is the other way. Obviously, the suggested incorpora tion of trade unions should be examined with unusual care, both by workmen and by the general public. The one reason urged for the incorpora tion of trade unions is that thus there would be an increase in workmen's responsibility. The word "responsibility" has an embarrass ing number of meanings, and several of these meanings are germane to the present discus sion. The word is sometimes used in the legal sense; and then a person is said to be responsible whenever a remedy against him is given by fhe law. Thus, if workmen com bine to threaten persons taking the place of strikers the workmen combining are said to be legally responsible. Again "responsibility" is sometimes used in simply a business sense; and then no man is called responsible unless he has property so large and so accessible that the holder of a judgment can procure satisfaction. In this business sense it may happen that those same workmen are not responsible. Still again, "responsibility" is used in another sense somewhat similar to the business sense just now pointed out, but distinctly disgraceful; for, in an instance where a wrongdoer, whether a natural person or a corporation, is believed to be so influen tial that—although in the legal sense there is responsibility and although in the business
