On the occasion of a great strike the strikers are
often just as disorderly as they are permitted to be by the local
police. When the police prevent them from resisting the employment of
strike-breakers by force, they apparently believe that the political
system of the country has been pressed into the service of their
enemies; and they begin to wonder whether it will not be necessary for
them to control such an inimical political organization. The average
union laborer, even though he might hesitate himself to assault a
"scab," warmly sympathizes with such assaults, and believes that in the
existing state of industrial warfare they are morally justifiable. In
these and in other respects he places his allegiance to his union and to
his class above his allegiance to his state and to his country. He
becomes in the interests of his organization a bad citizen, and at times
an inhuman animal, who is ready to maim or even to kill another man and
for the supposed benefit of himself and his fellows.
The most serious danger to the American democratic future which may
issue from aggressive and unscrupulous unionism consists in the state of
mind of which mob-violence is only one expression.
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