OCR Text |
Show CARDINAL GIBBONS ON BOYCOTTING. BOY-COTTING. - In an article contributed to the October Oc-tober number of Putnam's Monthly, Cardinal Gibbons expresses in strong terms his disapproval of the boycott as practised by labor unions, and also urges the workingmen of the country to avoid strikes, and intimidation in any form. The Cardinal says: "I am persuaded that the system ol boycotting, by which members of labor la-bor unions are instructed not to patronize pa-tronize certain obnoxious business houses, is not only disapproved by an impartial public sentiment, but that it does not commend itself to the more thoughtful and conservative portion of the guilds themselves. Every man is free indeed to select the establishment with which he wishes to deal, and in purchasing from one in preference to another he is not violating justice. But the case is altered when, by a mandate of the society, he is debarred from buying from a particular firm. Such a prohibition assails the liberty of the purchaser and the rights of the seller, and is an unwarrantable invasion in-vasion of the commercial privileges guaranteed by the government to business concerns. If such a social ostracism were generally in vogue, a process of retaliation would naturally follow, the current of mercantile intercourse in-tercourse would be checked, every center of population would be divided into hostile camps, and the good feeling feel-ing which ought to prevail in every community would be seriously impaired. im-paired. "Live and let live" is a wise maxim, dictated ajike by the law of trade and by Christian charity. Experience has shown that strikes are a drastic, and at best a very questionable ques-tionable remedy for the redress of the laborers' grievances. They paralyze industry, they often foment fierce passions, pas-sions, and lead to the destruction of property; and above all they result in indicting grievous injury on the laborer labor-er himself by keeping him in enforced idleness, during which time his mind is clouded by discontent while brooding brood-ing over his situation, and his family " . not infrequently suffer from the want f of the necessaries of life. The loss inflicted by strikes on the employers , is not much more than half as great as that which is sustain"' y the employed, em-ployed, who can mud. .. afford to bear it. It would be a vast stride, in the interest of peace, and of the laboring labor-ing classes, if the po'" , of arbitration, arbitra-tion, which is now gaining favor for the settlement of international quarrels, quar-rels, were also availed of for the adjustment ad-justment of disputes between capital and labor. Many blessings would result re-sult from the adoption of this method; meth-od; for while strikes, as the name implies, im-plies, are aggressive and destructive, arbitration is conciliatory and constructive. con-structive. The result in the former case is determined by the weight of the purse, in the latter by the weight of the argument. |