The unionist leaders frequently offer verbal homage to the great American principle of equal rights, but what they really demand is the abandonment of that principle.

What they want is an economic and political order which will discriminate in favor of union labor and against non-union labor; and they want it on the ground that the unions have proved to be the most effective agency on behalf of economic and social amelioration of the wage-earner.

The unions, that is, are helping most effectively to accomplish the task, traditionally attributed to the American democratic political system--the task of raising the general standard of living; and the unionists claim that they deserve on this ground recognition by the state and active encouragement.

Obviously, however, such encouragement could not go very far without violating both the Federal and many state constitutions--the result being that there is a profound antagonism between our existing political system and what the unionists consider to be a perfectly fair demand.

Like all good Americans, while verbally asking for nothing but equal rights, they interpret the phrase so that equal rights become equivalent to special rights.
Of all the hard blows which the course of American political and economic development has dealt the traditional system of political ideas and institutions, perhaps the hardest is this demand for discrimination on behalf of union labor.