relations between capital and labour, there is a sphere of conflict in which the contestants very easily step over the line from legal to illegal conflict. Under these conditions it is inevitable that contesting parties should be impatient with the finespun legal distinctions by which the line is drawn which may interfere with their accomplishment of their purpose. Because there is no absolute, objective standard of justice, and no agreement on a workable standard, respect for law as the instrument of justice has been on the wane.

The projection of industrial rivalry and conflict into the political sphere is probably a more important cause of the decreasing traditional subservience to law than any other. While it is difficult to describe in one paragraph the political aspect of the industrial conflict, it may be summarized as follows: Labour unions have distrusted attempts by governments to better conditions of labour because of their belief that governments were controlled by the employing classes. Yet they have avoided making the labour movement a political movement because of the apparent hopelessness of organizing and uniting all labour in one political labour party. Employers have hesitated to use their full power of governmental control against labour because they were afraid labour would in that case abandon the employer-controlled political parties and form one of its own, and thus eventually come to control the government. But, in spite of these conditions that have deferred the development of the political phase of the labour movement, industrial conflict is projecting itself more and more into politics for these reasons: (1) with the increasing intensity of the industrial struggle, employers, in a crisis, more and more yield to the temptation to use the government ruthlessly against labour; (2) labour unions, therefore, learn that they will have to win political control in order to protect their right to collective bargaining and to the strike, which, with the government in the hands of employers, are the only available means which labour has for its defence and its immediate betterment ;25 (3) but employers prefer even governmental fixing of wages and other conditions of labour, to collective bargaining, because they now have the dominant influence over governments; (4) because control of government gives the ultimate advantage in the labour struggle, the most progressive labour organizations are advocating the development of a labour party.

The obstacles to the development of a labour party are: (1) there is a lack of efficient leadership owing to the fact that the more in25 Babson, Religion and Business, 42.

telligent individuals in the community are bent on a career, and, even if in sympathy with the labour movement, do not care to jeopardize a business or professional or academic or ecclesiastical career by taking --a prominent part in aiding the formation of a labour party; (2) the public, because of its predilection for social order and dislike of the inconvenience caused by conflict, and for other reasons above given, ,favours the employing class which also desires the maintenance of things as they are, and opposes the idea of a labour party; (3) the mass of labour has traditionally acknowledged the right of the propertied classes to political control, and, because it is conventionallyminded, and also because it distrusts the intelligence of its own numbers, as well as the soundness of the views of those who would have labour seize the political control, is slow to drift into a labour party.

. Because of this lack of leadership, of the support of public opinion, and of the enthusiasm of labour itself for a labour party, the obstacles seem well nigh unsurmountable to those labour groups which are most enthusiastic for political resistance. Hence the rise of the revolutionary labour movement, which, impatient with the slow processes of political action, counsels direct action by large bodies of workmen, that is, sympathetic strikes, whether strikes have been declared illegal or not.26 To meet these tendencies to impulsive social action, labour organizations advocate an education which shall train workmen to co-operate politically,27 and which shall train the public to decide impartially political issues that affect labour, thus removing the obstacle to a successful labour party that most exasperates labour leadersthe predilection of an ignorant public for the attitudes and opinions of employers.

Largely owing to this industrial struggle, the decreasing respect for law seems, for the time being, inevitable, for law is now passing through a period of transition. Law is no longer a command set by a dominant class to subjects whose economic condition is unchanging. Subjects are organizing into groups and classes of distinct economic interests, and law is the determination, reached as a result of compromise between those classes, of the recognition that shall be accorded their claims by the state. Law as compromise inevitably compels less implicit obedience than law as the expressed will of a dominant class. The law is now framed to invoke, rather than compel

26 Cannon, The Story of Alex Howat, The Liberator, Apr., 1921, 25-26. 27 See the chapter entitled, The New Attitude of Labour.

obedience. That is, its appeal is more to intelligence and common sense, less to abject submission.

Obviously the development of law on this new basis requires jurists who are above the influence of any class. The conventional jurist, who emphasizes legal tradition, will have a bias for propertied classes, which classes determined the development of legal tradition as long as class grievances were inaudible. Judges of this type differ from the rare sympathetic and intellectual type, which distrusts broad general principles and analyses the particular case in the light of social and economic conditions. The decision of such a judge is not merely a compromise between clashing rights and conflicting classes; rather he takes advantage of the conflict presented for adjudication to advance as far as possible the welfare of the whole.28

In the last analysis the problem of the adjustment of class conflicts resolves itself into a political problem, that is, the problem of getting elected or appointed to office law-makers who will be guided by a rational social purpose, and of getting effective endorsement of their action. While law-making will probably continue to be more largely the business of lawyers than of any other class, and while training in the law does tend to make a man deductively-minded and conservative, nevertheless, there are lawyers not thus affected, and these progressive lawyers should become the judges. But the propertied classes ordinarily exercise a predominant influence in determining nomination or appointment to judicial office. The lawyers who have the influential backing for judicial office are those whose dispositions have made them the effective servants of corporations or of party organizations and who, in the course of a career in which it was their business to serve those interests, developed those attitudes that would cause them, as judges, to take the attitude of those interests to juristic problems that would be presented for their decision. Judicial attitudes are essential in determining how a judge will decide a case. The question is, has his attitude been formed in the course of a life-long attempt sympathetically and intellectually to comprehend the lines of social progress; or has it been formed in the course of a life-long attempt to satisfy his rivalrous disposition-to reach a position of superiority in his profession and in his party, to win which his beliefs and behaviour must commend him to the political and propertied interests on which promotion depends. As soon as a way has been found to ad28 Williams, op. cit., Chs. XIV-XV.

vance the former instead of the latter type of lawyer in public life, then the way to win superiority will cease to be the service of proper,tied or party interests, and will become service for the progressive welfare of the whole people.29

29 Ibid. Ch. XVI.

T

CHAPTER XIII

THE RIVALRY OF PARTY ORGANIZATIONS

HE nucleus of a party organization consists of politicians who make politics their business. They enlist voluntary workers

and make use of every social agency possible for the success of the party, but they themselves work primarily for political profits -offices and money. Party organizations in the United States have from the first reflected the motives of business enterprise. In the first century of American development conditions stimulated the profitseeking attitude to an extreme degree, both in business and in politics. Land and other natural resources were rising in value, railroads and manufactures were developing, speculation was rampant in business, and this affected political behaviour. It gave rise to the spoils system which made political activity an affair of adventure. Any position might lead anywhere, and that quickly; removal was constantly impending; government service was speculative.1 Just as the business man was impatient with every attempt to restrain his impulse for profits by governmental regulation, so was the politician impatient with every effort to restrain his impulse for the political profits by governmental regulation of the conditions of office-holding and of raising and disbursing campaign contributions. This individualistic profit-seeking attitude in politics has continued strong to the present day.

If the party organization is to make profits, if it is to win offices and large campaign contributions, it must beat the rival party in the struggle for political control. Consequently the essential aim of a party organization is to defeat the opposing organization. The politician studies carefully the trend of public sentiment, the opinions of men of influence and of representatives of economic interests, and policies and platforms are framed that will appeal to men and organizations of influence, that will get the support of newspapers and magazines and, at the same time, will not alienate the financial interests that make the campaign contributions.

1 Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage, Chs. IV-V.