and confidence should receive it; but, after all, it is a matter of trust and confidence, and the public must place that confidence wisely or suffer the consequences of error and mistake.

The great evil which seems to me to be the one most deserving of condemnation in connection with railways, as well as with industrial and other corporations, is that of over-capitalization. Many thoughtful men regard with alarm the suppression of competition which they say comes from the multiplication of great companies. I cannot share in their apprehensions. Modern business had its beginnings in the monopolies granted to such corporations as the East India Company. Whatever makes the necessities of life, or the conveniences of life, cheaper and easier to obtain, enures to the benefit of the community. The outcry against system, administrative economy and judicious restriction of expenditure is not unlike the unreasoning clamor against the introduction of machinery in our manufactures and upon our farms. Mankind has found all these labor-saving devices a sort of benefit to the world, a potent factor in the development of civilization. The harm. which is done to men by corporations does not arise from the mere existence of such combinations, nor from their practical operation as unified forces.

While temporary inconvenience may be caused in some instances by the fact that only a few men may be required to do the work which many men were formerly engaged to do, yet the saving of labor and the cutting off of unnecessary industry must, by all the laws of political economy, contribute to increase the prosperity of the world at large. The mischief is done by the unwise expansion of the evidences of debt and of the evidences of interest in the corporate properties. It leads to extortion, to speculation and to ultimate ruin. Let our legislators frame laws not to discourage legitimate combinations, but to restrict their issues of stocks and of obligations within reasonable bounds. They have made attempts to do so, but generally in a feeble and ineffective way, because, I fear, they have often striven to appear to give protection to the public without any real or sincere intention to accomplish that result. Let our reorganizers recognize the fact that the multiplication

of "securities" only leads to renewed insolvency and to the ruin of investors. In recent years they have come to appreciate this truth; and I am glad to say that I believe that the day has gone by when it is thought that the way to rehabilitate a corporate property is to increase the burdens upon it. It seems to be probable that the time will soon come, if it has not come already, when railway reorganizations will be few and far between, and the many pages of treatises and reports devoted to these topics and which now fill our libraries to repletion may soon become as obsolete as those of the quaint old volumes which treat of fines and recoveries, of casual ejectors, and of trials by wager of battle.

There are many other features of railway reorganization which tempt one to wander further over the broad field of discussion, but the temptation, like most other temptations, must be resisted. A young lawyer in Florida once wrote to me asking what books he should read in order to become familiar with what he called "corporation law." corporation law." I told him that he had better read them all. But after mature reflection I am satisfied that, so far as reorganization is concerned, the reading of books and the study of cases is of minor importance as compared with a thorough acquaintance with the methods and the machinery of what is known as "finance." You will not find between those covers of that underdone piecrust color which seems to be sacred to the law so much of value as you will find in the book of human nature, which is open to all, but whose secrets are revealed more fully to the man who has been trained in the school of experience than to one who merely reads as he runs. Those who give their time and their thoughts to the work of readjustment of corporate interests learn that they are most often sailing on an uncharted sea. Precedent vanishes before the iconoclasm of practical judgment. That which is supposed to be firmly established by a long line of judicial utterances is soon discovered to be inapplicable to the state of facts presented when the railway is brought into the forum where the judges control. We can only conjecture what the courts may think of our case. We can only satisfy ourselves fairly that what we are aiming to accomplish is just and reasonable. We may,

however, rest assured that in the fight which has been waged so long and persistently between business necessities and statutory law and the decisions of judges the contest will, in the long run, be decided in favor of "business" as it has always been decided in the past. Until we shall possess the blessings of communism, until property rights shall have become the plaything of popular prejudices, until the rewards of industry and labor shall have been made to be of no value, we may be certain that the common sense and integrity of our courts will, in spite of occasional aberrations due to fortuitous circumstances, render substantial justice to all and give to each and every one that to which he is entitled as a citizen of a country whose government is constitutional and under whose laws the rich man is entitled, in theory at least, to the same rights as those which are accorded to the poor. ADRIAN H. JOLINE.

LABOR'S RIGHT TO PERSUADE.

BY GEORGE W. ALGER,'

OF THE NEW YORK BAR.

The scope of this discussion will be confined to an inquiry concerning the right of labor unions or individuals to use argument or persuasion in industrial disputes. The industrial disputes which will be considered do not include any disputes except those in which action by way of strike or otherwise is taken, not for the purpose of injury to the employer but solely for the purpose of bettering the condition of the employee, and persuasion as it will be used here, is to be understood as meaning the use of peaceable argument and reasoning, including neither directly or indirectly any element of intimidation, threat or force.

It may be said in general that the right to use argument or persuasion is a guaranteed right, falling within the provisions of the constitution of the United States and of most of the states, in which the liberty of speech and the press is enunciated. The liberty of the press is of course well settled in its meaning after centuries of forensic warfare. Freedom of speech has less frequently been the subject of judicial consideration. It seems however as though these two rights were expressions of the same thing; that by the two terms only one great liberty was involved, and that speech and the press were simply two methods of its exercise.

Practically the only modern cases in which freedom of speech is involved, are cases in which injunctive remedies are sought to prevent the use of persuasion in labor troubles. The larger portion of the applications for injunctions against strikers pray for injunctive relief against the use, upon present or prospective employees, of threats, intimidation, force or persuasion. And the persuasion against which injunctive relief is sought is usually at1 Field '95; Counsel to New York Workingmen's State Federation.

tempts to induce employees to leave their work and join the ranks of the strikers or to cause others to refrain from seeking or accepting employment with firms against whom the strikers have real or alleged grievances.

As regards threats, force, and intimidation, there is of course no room for argument. Labor organizations which indulge in violence deserve the punishment, both from law and from public opinion, which they ordinarily receive. To enjoin labor organizations from threatening and intimidating workmen in establishments where a strike is in progress is proper because such acts are in themselves criminal offences and a body of men has no greater rights than an individual.

The case as regards persuasion however in industrial warfare, seems to be upon an entirely different ground. It is not a subject provided for in criminal law making it either mala prohibita or mala in se. There is no civil statute and no rule of morals which should forbid its exercise, yet there are a multitude of decisions in many states by which labor organizations have been enjoined from attempting to persuade employees by peaceable methods to leave their work and coöperate in a strike brought for the purpose of bettering the interests of striking employees.

The rule of law which is usually invoked to sustain such applications for injunctive relief is interesting historically and has a very ancient origin. In the reign of Edward III. after the great plague in England had disorganized industrial conditions to a most remarkable extent, the so-called Statute of Laborers was passed in 1349. At this time the condition of the servant was one bordering closely upon that of a slave. While in many respects he had the nominal attributes of a freeman, the interest which the master had in him was not merely in his services but amounted nearly to a chattel interest in the man himself. Any one who should entice away the servant of a master, under the Statute of Laborers became responsible in damages to the master, much as though he had stolen from the master or committed some other actionable wrong against him. The economic condition which this statute may or may not have met certainly does not exist to-day, yet it was upon this statute that the English