Read Conscience of a Conservative for Free Online Page B

Graft and corruption are symptoms of the illness that besets the labor movement, not the cause of it. The cause is the enormous economic and political power now concentrated in the hands of union leaders.
    Such power hurts the nation's economy by forcing on employers contract terms that encourage inefficiency, lower production and high prices—all of which result in a lower standard of living for the American people.
    It corrupts the nation's political life by exerting undue influence on the selection of public officials.
    It gravely compromises the freedom of millions of individual workers who are able to register a dissent against the practice of union leaders only at the risk of losing their jobs.
    All of us have heard the charge that to thus criticize the power of Big Labor is to be anti-labor and anti-union. This is an argument that serves the interest of union leaders, but it does not usually fit the facts, and it certainly does not do justice to my views. I believe that unionism, kept within its proper and natural bounds, accomplishes a positive good for the country. Unions can be an instrument for achieving economic justice for the working man. Moreover, they are an alternative to, and thus discourage State Socialism. Most important of all, they are an expression of freedom. Trade unions, properly conceived, are an expression of man's inalienable right to associate with other men for the achievement of legitimate objectives.
    The natural function of a trade union and the one for which it was historically conceived is to represent those employees who want collective representation in bargaining with their employers over terms of employment. But note that this function is perverted the moment a union claims the right to represent employees who do not want representation, or conducts activities that have nothing to do with terms of employment (e.g. political activities), or tries to deal with an industry as a whole instead of with individual employers.
    As America turned increasingly, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, from an agricultural nation into an industrial one, and as the size of business enterprises expanded, individual wage earners found themselves at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with their employers over terms of employment. The economic power of the large enterprises, as compared with that of the individual employee, was such that wages and conditions of employment were pretty much what the employer decided they would be. Under these conditions, as a means of increasing their economic power, many employees chose to band together and create a common agent for negotiating with their employers.
    As time went on, we found that the working man's right to bargain through a collective agent needed legal protection; accordingly Congress enacted laws—notably certain provisions of the Clayton Act, the Norris LaGuardia Act and the Wagner Act—to make sure that employees would be able to bargain collectively.
    This is not the place to examine those laws in detail. It is clear, however, that they have over -accomplished their purpose. Thanks to some unwise provisions and to the absence of others that should have been included, the delicate balance of power we sought to achieve between labor and management has shifted, in avalanche proportions, to labor's advantage. Or, more correctly to the advantage of union leaders. This mammoth concentration of power in the hands of a few men is, I repeat, a grave threat to the nation's economic stability, and to the nation's political processes. More important, it has taken from the individual wage earner a large portion of his freedom.
    The time has come, not to abolish unions or deprive them of deserved gains; but to redress the balance—to restore unions to their proper role in a free society.
    We have seen that unions perform their natural function when three conditions are observed: association with the union is voluntary; the union confines its activities