lowers the capital given for the services. Trades-unionism in the
higher classes consists in jobbery. There is a great deal of it in the
professions. I once heard a group of lawyers of high standing sneer at
an executor who hoped to get a large estate through probate without
allowing any lawyers to get big fees out of it. They all approved of
steps which had been taken to force a contest, which steps had forced
the executor to retain two or three lawyers. No one of the speakers had
been retained.

Trades-unions need development, correction, and perfection. They ought,
however, to get this from the men themselves. If the men do not feel
any need of such institutions, the patronage of other persons who come
to them and give them these institutions will do harm and not good.
Especially trades-unions ought to be perfected so as to undertake a
great range of improvement duties for which we now rely on Government
inspection, which never gives what we need. The safety of workmen from
machinery, the ventilation and sanitary arrangements required by
factories, the special precautions of certain processes, the hours of
labor of women and children, the schooling of children, the limits of
age for employed children, Sunday work, hours of labor--these and other
like matters ought to be controlled by the men themselves through their
organizations. The laborers about whom we are talking are free men in a
free state. If they want to be protected they must protect themselves.
They ought to protect their own women and children. Their own class
opinion ought to secure the education of the children of their class.
If an individual workman is not bold enough to protest against a wrong
to laborers, the agent of a trades-union might with propriety do it on
behalf of the body of workmen. Here is a great and important need, and,
instead of applying suitable and adequate means to supply it, we have
demagogues declaiming, trades-union officers resolving, and Government