Of course, the unionist leaders appeal to public opinion with the usual American cant.
According to their manifestoes they demand nothing but "fair play"; but the demand for fair play is as usual merely the hypocritical exterior of a demand for substantial favoritism.

Just as there can be no effective competition between the huge corporation controlling machinery of production which cannot be duplicated and the small manufacturer in the same line, so there can be no effective competition between the individual laborer and the really efficient labor union.

To recognize the labor union, and to incorporate it into the American legal system, is equivalent to the desertion by the state of the non-union laborer.

It means that in the American political and economic system the organization of labor into unions should be preferred to its disorganized separation into competing individuals.

Complete freedom of competition among laborers, which is often supposed to be for the interest of the individual laborer, can only be preserved as an effective public policy by active discrimination against the unions.
An admission that the recognition of labor unions amounts to a substantial discrimination in their favor would do much to clear up the whole labor question.