The most important feature of the National Agreement unquestionably is the provision according to the club members the privilege of reserving a stated number of players. No other club of any Association under the Agreement dares engage any player so reserved. To this rule, more than any other thing, does base-ball as a business owe its present substantial standing. By preserving intact the strength of a team from year to year; it places the business of baseball on a permanent basis and thus offers security to the investment of capital. The greatest evil with which the business has of recent years had to contend is the unscrupulous methods of some of its "managers." Knowing no such thing as professional honor, these men are ever ready to benefit themselves, regardless of the cost to an associate club. The reserve rule itself is a usurpation of the players' rights, but it is, perhaps, made necessary by the peculiar nature of the base-ball business, and the player is indirectly compensated by the improved standing of the game. I quote in this connection Mr. A. G. Mills, ex-President of the League, and the originator of the National Agreement: "It has been popular in days gone by to ascribe the decay and disrepute into which the game had fallen to degeneracy on the part of the players, and to blame them primarily for revolving and other misconduct. Nothing could be more unjust. I have been identified with the game more than twenty-five years--for several seasons as a player--and I know that, with rare exceptions, those faults were directly traceable to those who controlled the clubs. Professional players have never sought the club manager; the club manager has invariably sought--and often tempted--the player. The reserve rule takes the club manager by the throat and compels him to keep his hands off his neighbor's enterprise." It was not to be expected that club managers of the stamp above referred to would exhibit much consideration for the rights of players. As long as a player continued valuable he had little difficulty, but when, for any reason, his period of usefulness to a club had passed, he was likely to find, by sad experience, that base-ball laws were not construed for his protection; he discovered that in base-ball, as in other affairs, might often makes right, and it is not to be wondered at that he turned to combination as a means of protection. In the fall of 1885 the members of the New York team met and appointed a committee to draft a Constitution and By-laws for an organization of players, and during the season of 1886 the different "Chapters" of the "National Brotherhood of Ball-Players" were instituted by the mother New York Chapter. The objects of this Brotherhood as set forth by the Constitution are: "To protect and benefit its members collectively and individually; "To promote a high standard of professional conduct; "To foster and encourage the interests of 'The National Game.'"