and limiting the length of trains.  This does not imply a peculiarly selfish attitude on the part of organized labor.  Action together in any social group always develops in men their loyalty and spirit of cooeperation without always making them more considerate to those outside of their group.  Indeed, often men acting through their chosen officials, private or public, are more selfish collectively than they are individually.  The leaders of any group of men, whether of wage workers, merchants, manufacturers, or political constituents, find it necessary to show that the interest of their supporters rather than a broader “sentimentality” is uppermost in their thought.  And further, the jealousy of any limitation of their power is as powerful a motive in one group of men as in another.  All are made of the same human clay.  But the stronger and more successful a labor organization is, the more vigorously do its leaders resist any legislation that limits the functions and field of action of the labor leaders, or that settles labor troubles in a way that makes the voluntary labor organization less necessary to the individual worker.  Of course self-help, as a spirit and as a policy, is a virtue, if it does not sacrifice the rights of others.  But if the facts above suggested are borne in mind they will help to explain the otherwise often puzzling attitudes of organized labor toward different measures of social legislation.

Sec. 14. #Organized labor’s opposition to compulsory arbitration.# Organized labor in America has attained to a highly influential position.  On the whole it constitutes an “aristocracy of labor,” consisting largely of skilled workers that obtain a wage exceeding that of unskilled workers to a degree not seen anywhere else in the world.  In this they have been favored by a combination of conditions which it is not possible to describe briefly; suffice it here to say that organization is itself not the whole explanation, but only a small part of it.  That organized labor, officially, is strongly opposed to compulsory arbitration in America, is thus perhaps sufficiently to be understood on the principle of “Let well enough alone.”  When in August, 1916, a strike on the entire railroad system was threatened by the four railroad brotherhoods, and some action was proposed in the form of the Canadian act, the trade-union officials issued a statement containing these words:  “Since the abolition of slavery no more effectual means has been devised for insuring the bondage of the workingman than the passage of compulsory investigation acts of the character of the Canadian Industrial Disputes Act.”  Within less than a week the brotherhoods called off the strike after Congress had passed an act giving the men immediately the eight-hour day—­a substantial part of what they had asked—­and providing for investigation, by a commission, of the effects of the rule.  This is compulsory upon the railroads but it is not compulsory upon the men to accept these terms.