Organized labor is only a small part of labor generally; but organized labor exercises great influence in legislatures. It is thought to hold the balance of power at the polls and has undoubtedly exercised beneficent influence in securing laws to control healthy conditions for work, safety appliances on railroads, limitation upon the hours of labor and a number of other laws that would not have been passed if organized labor had not brought political influence to bear upon members of the legislature. On the other hand, a sense of their power has sometimes given leaders of labor unions a lack of discretion, a truculence and an unreasonable and unjust attitude. Like the employers, they have been dependent upon public opinion and after a time public opinion has controlled them. Probably the greatest evil that stands out from all the good work unions have done, is the dead level to which they seek to bring the wages of skilled manual labor. Organized labor insists on making a class and then having that class receive the same wages, and it does nothing to encourage individual effort by consenting to the payment of higher wages to the man of experience, industry and skill than to the mediocre and lazy. It will in some way have to obviate that difficulty which works against the cause of labor and the interest of society. Moreover, its leaders do not discourage, as they should, lawlessness as a means of achieving their industrial ends. The history of the dynamiters in California and of the civil war in Colorado shows this. On the other hand, we find many in the ranks of labor offering the most effective opposition to the increase in socialism. The leaders of trades-unionism have no sympathy with the I. W. W. The I. W. W., however, led by Haywood and others, serve a useful purpose by furnishing an awful example for the average workingman. When they go around with the signs, "No God, No Country, No Law," creating disgust and conservatism in the ranks of organized labor, they do not know what a good thing they are doing. They act blindly, but they are offering a sample of what may be expected if organized labor is tempted to excesses. We are going to have organized labor for all time, and we ought to have it. While I would go to the fullest extent with courts and even with the army to protect a non-union man in freedom of labor, if I were a workingman myself I would join a labor union because I believe that if such unions can be properly conducted, they are useful to promote the best interests of labor and of society. What trades-unionism needs is leaders to teach its members common sense.