THE OPEN SHOP

(From an unsigned editorial which appeared in The Outlook, July 16, 1904)

Our object in this article is, first, to define the issue joined between the "open shop" and the "closed shop"; and, secondly, to give our judgment on that issue and the reasons upon which it is based.

An open shop is one in which union men and non-union men may work side by side upon equal terms. A closed shop is one from which either union men are excluded by the employer, or non-union men are excluded by the union; but, ordinarily, the term is applied only to those shops which are closed against non-union men by the refusal of union men to work with them. It is in that sense we use the phrase in this article. Are trades-unions justified in insisting upon the closed shop-in insisting, that is, upon the exclusion from the industry in which they are engaged of all workingmen who do not belong to the union?

The arguments for the closed shop deserve careful consideration; they may be briefly stated thus: Workingmen have a right to choose with whom they shall work, as well as under whom they shall work. Sometimes the industry is made extra-hazardous by the employment of an incompetent workingman; often it is made extra-difficult. For this reason a fireman has a right to refuse to work with a green locomotive engineer, or a locomotive engineer with a green fireman. But a workman has a right to protect not only his life, but also his feeling. He has the right to refuse to work in the intimacy of a common employment with a man who is persona non grata; and there is a real reason why the non-union man is persona non grata to the union man. Without sharing the expenses or the obligations of the union, he gets-in improved conditions, better wages, and shorter hours-all the benefits which the union secures from the employer. The union man has a right to refuse to work with a companion who takes all the advantages of the union without sharing its burdens. Moreover, if the shop is open on equal terms to both union men

and non-union men, the employer will be apt gradually to supplant the union men with non-union men because it is easy to increase the hours and reduce the wages where there is no union to interpose organized resistance to such industrial injustice. Finally, the object of the union is not merely to get larger wages, lessened hours, and better conditions. The workingman denies the assumed right of the employer to manage his business as he pleases. He insists that the employer and employed are partners in a common enterprise, and that the employee has a right to be consulted as to the conditions of the work, and to share in its prosperity when it is prosperous, as he is certain to share in its adversity when it is unprosperous. The object of the union is to secure a real co-operation for the workingman with the employer, on something like equal terms. This can be done only by "collective bargaining"; that is, by an agreement entered into by a body of workingmen acting together as a union, with the employer, who is generally a body of capitalists acting together in a corporation. Only thus can democratization of industry be secured and the autocracy of industry be ended; and this result is indispensable in order to bring the industrial organization of America into harmony with its political, educational, and religious organizations.

These considerations seem to us to furnish very good reasons for the organization of labor. But do they also furnish good reasons for compelling workingmen to join organizations of labor against their will? For the real question at issue between the closed shop and the open shop is not, Shall labor organize in order to deal on terms of greater equality with organized capital? but, Shall the laborer be compelled to join such organization in order to get opportunity to labor?

This question is really two questions: Is the closed shop illegal? If not illegal, is it against the public interest, and therefore and to that extent immoral?

2. John Burroughs (1837- ) was born in New York State. He is a lover of nature and a writer of essays, most of

which deal with out-of-door subjects. In a certain sense he may be called the successor of Thoreau.

NATURE IN POETRY

(From Introduction to Songs of Nature, edited by John Burroughs, 1901)

I am surprised at the amount of so-called Nature poetry that has been added to English literature during the past fifty years, but I find only a little of it of permanent worth. The painted, padded, and perfumed Nature of so many of the younger poets I cannot stand at all. I have not knowingly admitted any poem that was not true to my own observations of Nature or that diverged at all from the facts of the case. Thus, a poem that shows the swallow perched upon the barn in October I could not accept, because the swallow leaves us in August; or a poem that makes the chestnut bloom with the lilac-an instance I came across in my reading-would be ruled out on like grounds; or when I find poppies blooming in the corn in an American poem, as I several times have done, I pass by on the other side.

In a bird poem I want the real bird as a basis-not merely a description of it, but its true place in the season and in the landscape, and no liberties taken with the facts of its life history. I must see or feel or hear the live bird in the verses, as one does in Wordsworth's "Cuckoo," or Emerson's "Titmouse," or Trowbridge's "Pewee." Lowell is not quite true to the facts when in one of his poems he makes the male oriole assist at nest building. The male may seem to superintend the work, but he does not actually lend a hand. Give me the real bird first, and then all the poetry that can be evoked from it.

I am aware that there is another class of bird poems, or poems inspired by birds, such as Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," in which there is little or no natural history, not even of the sublimated kind, and yet that take high rank as poems. It is the "waking dream" in these poems, the translation of sensuous impressions into spiritual longings and attractions that is the secret of their power. When

the poet can give us himself, we can well afford to miss the bird.

The one thing that makes a poem anyway is emotion -the emotion of love, of beauty, of sublimity—and these emotions playing about the reality result in the true Nature poetry, as in Wordsworth, Emerson, and Bryant. The poet is not so much to paint Nature as he is to recreate her. He interprets her when he infuses his own love into her.

3. Hamilton Wright Mabie (1845- ) is a delightful essay writer. He is connected with the editorial department of The Outlook.

THE FEELING FOR LITERATURE

(From Books and Culture, Chapter V)

The importance of reading habitually the best books becomes apparent when one remembers that taste depends very largely on the standards with which we are familiar, and that the ability to enjoy the best and only the best is conditioned upon intimate acquaintance with the best. The man who is thrown into constant association with inferior work either revolts against his surroundings or suffers a disintegration of aim and standard, which perceptibly lowers the plane on which he lives. In either case the power of enjoyment from contact with a genuine piece of creative work is sensibly diminished, and may be finally lost. The delicacy of the mind is both precious and perishable; it can be preserved only by associations which confirm and satisfy it. For this reason, among others, the best books are the only books which a man bent on culture should read; inferior books not only waste his time, but they dull the edge of his perception and diminish his capacity for delight.

This delight, born afresh of every new contact of the mind with a real book, furnishes indubitable evidence that the reader has the feeling for literature, a possession much rarer than is commonly supposed. It is no injustice to say that the majority of those who read have no feeling

for literature; their interest is awakened or sustained not by the literary quality of a book, but by some element of brightness or novelty, or by the charm of narrative. Reading which finds its reward in these things is entirely legitimate, but is not the kind of reading which secures culture. It adds largely to one's stock of information, and it refreshes the mind by introducing new objects of interest; but it does not minister directly to the refining and maturing of the nature. The same book may be read in entirely different ways and with entirely different results. One may, for instance, read Shakespeare's historical plays simply for the story element which runs through them, and for the interest which the skilful use of that element excites; and in such a reading there will be distinct gain for the reader. This is the way in which a healthy boy generally reads these plays for the first time. From such a reading one will get information and refreshment; more than one English statesman has confessed that he owed his knowledge of certain periods of English history largely to Shakespeare. On the other hand, one may read these plays for the joy of the art that is in them, and for the enrichment which comes from contact with the deep and tumultuous life which throbs through them; and this is the kind of reading which produces culture, the reading which means enlargement and ripening.

The feeling for literature, like the feeling for art in general, is not only susceptible of cultivation, but very quickly responds to appeals which are made to it by noble or beautiful objects. It is essentially a feeling, but it is a feeling which depends very largely on intelligence; it is strengthened and made sensitive and responsive by constant contact with those objects which call it out. No rules can be laid down for its development save the very simple rule to read only and always those books which are literature. It is impossible to give specific directions for the cultivation of the feeling for Nature. It is not to be gotten out of text-books of any kind; it is not to be found in botanies or geologies or works on zoölogy; it is to be gotten only out of familiarity with Nature herself. Daily