XI 
INTRODUCTION 1 
Like all social movements which excite the hopes and 
fears of men, trade unionism has more often been the object 
of passionate denunciation or defense than of scientific in 
quiry. It is not simply that unionism counts some three 
million adherents in the United States alone and directly 
affects the wages and working conditions of perhaps an 
equal number who stand outside its official membership ; 
nor simply that it interferes with the profits of employers 
and with their assumed right to manage business enterprises 
in their own way; it touches intimately the life and work 
of millions of families; it is able to create profound dis 
turbances in that intricate web of economic relationships 
wherein the tissue of business life consists, amounting upon 
occasion to a dramatic interruption in the flow of goods 
and services without which no modern community can sub 
sist; more than all else, it calls in question some of the 
most fundamental presuppositions of present day law and 
order. For ours is, in great part, a business man’s govern 
ment, and our codes of law embody the business man’s 
rules of the game. The business man’s right to employ or 
discharge whom he will, to fix the rate and mode of pay 
ment and the hours and conditions of work at his own dis 
cretion, to set industry in motion or break off the produc 
tive process whenever he sees his own advantage in so do- 
mg, and without responsibility for the livelihood of the in 
dustrial population—these rights are involved in the legal 
1 The extent of the writer’s indebtedness to Professors Hoxie 
and Veblen, in respect to general standpoint and even phrase 
ology, will be obvious to all.