agents, lawyers, and organizers, and is beginning to intimidate
legislators by the strength of its solid vote; and more directly, in

the near future, it will attempt to control legislation by capturing
it bodily through the ballot-box. On the other hand, the capitalist

group, numerically weaker, hires newspapers, universities, and
legislatures, and strives to bend to its need all the forces which

go to mould public opinion.
The only honest morality displayed by either side is white-hot

indignation at the iniquities of the other side. The striking
teamster complacently takes a scab driver into an alley, and with an

iron bar breaks his arms, so that he can drive no more, but cries
out to high Heaven for justice when the capitalist breaks his skull

by means of a club in the hands of a policeman. Nay, the members of
a union will declaim in impassioned rhetoric for the God-given right

of an eight-hour day, and at the time be working their own business
agent seventeen hours out of the twenty-four.

A capitalist such as Collis P. Huntington, and his name is Legion,
after a long life spent in buying the aid of countless legislatures,

will wax virtuously wrathful, and condemn in unmeasured terms "the
dangerous tendency of crying out to the Government for aid" in the

way of labor legislation. Without a quiver, a member of the
capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child-

laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep
maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with

a brick. He will drive a "compulsory" free contract with an
unorganized laborer on the basis of a starvation wage, saying, "Take

it or leave it," knowing that to leave it means to die of hunger,
and in the next breath, when the organizer entices that laborer into

a union, will storm patriotically about the inalienable right of all
men to work. In short, the chief moral concern of either side is

with the morals of the other side. They are not in the business for
their moral welfare, but to achieve the enviable position of the

non-scab who gets more than he gives.
But there is more to the question than has yet been discussed. The

labor scab is no more detestable to his brother laborers than is the
capitalist scab to his brother capitalists. A capitalist may get

most for least in dealing with his laborers, and in so far be a non-
scab; but at the same time, in his dealings with his fellow-

capitalists, he may give most for least and be the very worst kind
of scab. The most heinous crime an employer of labor can commit is

to scab on his fellow-employers of labor. Just as the individual
laborers have organized into groups to protect themselves from the

peril of the scab laborer, so have the employers organized into
groups to protect themselves from the peril of the scab employer.

The employers' federations, associations, and trusts are nothing
more nor less than unions. They are organized to destroy scabbing

amongst themselves and to encourage scabbing amongst others. For
this reason they pool interests, determine prices, and present an

unbroken and aggressive front to the labor group.
As has been said before, nobody likes to play the compulsorily

generous role of scab. It is a bad business proposition on the face
of it. And it is patent that there would be no capitalist scabs if

there were not more capital than there is work for capital to do.
When there are enough factories in existence to supply, with

occasional stoppages, a certain commodity, the building of new
factories by a rival concern, for the production of that commodity,

is plain advertisement that that capital is out of a job. The first
act of this new aggregation of capital will be to cut prices, to

give more for less,--in short to scab, to strike at the very
existence of the less generous aggregation of capital the work of

which it is trying to do.
No scab capitalist strives to give more for less for any other

reason than that he hopes, by undercutting a competitor and driving
that competitor out of the market, to get that market and its

profits for himself. His ambition is to achieve the day when he
shall stand alone in the field both as buyer and seller,--when he

will be the royal non-scab, buying most for least, selling least for
most, and reducing all about him, the small buyers and sellers, (the

consumers and the laborers), to a general condition of scabdom.
This, for example, has been the history of Mr. Rockefeller and the

Standard Oil Company. Through all the sordid villanies of scabdom
he has passed, until today he is a most regal non-scab. However, to

continue in this enviable position, he must be prepared at a
moment's notice to go scabbing again. And he is prepared. Whenever

a competitor arises, Mr. Rockefeller changes about from giving least
for most and gives most for least with such a vengeance as to drive

the competitor out of existence.
The banded capitalists discriminate against a scab capitalist by

refusing him trade advantages, and by combining against him in most
relentless fashion. The banded laborers, discriminating against a

scab laborer in more primitive fashion, with a club, are no more
merciless than the banded capitalists.

Mr. Casson tells of a New York capitalist who withdrew from the
Sugar Union several years ago and became a scab. He was worth

something like twenty millions of dollars. But the Sugar Union,
standing shoulder to shoulder with the Railroad Union and several

other unions, beat him to his knees till he cried, "Enough." So
frightfully did they beat him that he was obliged to turn over to

his creditors his home, his chickens, and his gold watch. In point
of fact, he was as thoroughly bludgeoned by the Federation of

Capitalist Unions as ever scab workman was bludgeoned by a labor
union. The intent in either case is the same,--to destroy the

scab's producing power. The labor scab with concussion of the brain
is put out of business, and so is the capitalist scab who has lost

all his dollars down to his chickens and his watch.
But the role of scab passes beyond the individual. Just as

individuals scab on other individuals, so do groups scab on other
groups. And the principle involved is precisely the same as in the

case of the simple labor scab. A group, in the nature of its
organization, is often compelled to give most for least, and, so

doing, to strike at the life of another group. At the present
moment all Europe is appalled by that colossal scab, the United

States. And Europe is clamorous with agitation for a Federation of
National Unions to protect her from the United States. It may be

remarked, in passing, that in its prime essentials this agitation in
no wise differs from the trade-union agitation among workmen in any

industry. The trouble is caused by the scab who is giving most for
least. The result of the American scab's nefarious actions will be

to strike at the food and shelter of Europe. The way for Europe to
protect herself is to quit bickering among her parts and to form a

union against the scab. And if the union is formed, armies and
navies may be expected to be brought into play in fashion similar to

the bricks and clubs in ordinary labor struggles.
In this connection, and as one of many walking delegates for the

nations, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted French economist, may well be
quoted. In a letter to the Vienna Tageblatt, he advocates an

economic alliance among the Continental nations for the purpose of
barring out American goods, an economic alliance, in his own

language, "WHICH MAY POSSIBLY AND DESIRABLY DEVELOP INTO A POLITICAL
ALLIANCE."

It will be noted, in the utterances of the Continental walking
delegates, that, one and all, they leave England out of the proposed

union. And in England herself the feeling is growing that her days
are numbered if she cannot unite for offence and defence with the

great American scab. As Andrew Carnegie said some time ago, "The
only course for Great Britain seems to be reunion with her

grandchild or sure decline to a secondary place, and then to
comparative insignificance in the future annals of the English-

speaking race."
Cecil Rhodes, speaking of what would have obtained but for the pig-

headedness of George III, and of what will obtain when England and