There is a new hospitality to open and fearless discussion of its proposals. A growing number of editors, legislators, scholars, economists, sympathize with the propaganda to the extent, that they welcome and encourage its discussion. As for the "working classes," in centers of industry, as well as in newer agricultural communities of the West, conditions are such that the socialist vote may at any moment record itself in such force as to disturb profoundly our present party politics. We have now to count upon this as something irreducible. We shall neither stop it nor lessen its pace. Our impending question is one of learning so to adjust ourselves to the new fact that some real part is left us in shaping and guiding these new democratic urgencies toward stability rather than toward confusion and disorder.

THE MORE IMMEDIATE DANGER

IN the hope of making more intelligible the general purpose of this study, I wish to connect it with experiences out of which an earlier volume grew-The Social Unrest. The book was at best only the A. B. C. of some economic disorders observable at the time. As in a primer, I tried to interpret those features of the trade union struggle, as it met on one side the resistance of the employer and upon the other an already invading socialism. It seemed to me then, as it seems today, that socialism has no such personal friend as the capitalist possessing power and inclination to crush labor organization. There are other and deeper causes of socialism over which we have little control, but in our relation to labor organization, we can exercise choice and conscious direction. Not all the bulky offences of trade union aggression should obscure the fact that these organizations are among the educational and conservative forces of our time. The trade union expressly recognizes the wage system and tries always, however awkwardly, to make terms with it. Just as expressly, socialism aims to destroy that system as part and parcel of the one "iniquitous despoiler," capitalism; i. e., our present methods of doing business.

Even in theory, if capital once convinces labor that its trade union is futile; that it can have no organic and recognized part with capitalist management, then

labor, if it have a gleam of intelligence, will look elsewhere for succor. It will say, "The capitalist refuses to play fair with us. Real power in the business world has become organic. Its great achievements now come through organization. Knowing this and glorying in it, capital either fights us or palavers. It fights or it seeks diverting substitutes,-anything to prevent that collective efficiency among us which it finds indispensable for itself."

My appeal is not, however, to theory, but to such fact and open illustration as appear in pages that follow.

Before the sullen reactions of the Homestead Strike in Pittsburg had ceased, I asked a man of real power in those great industries, if it were true that he and his friends had determined to wipe out trade union organization. "Yes," he said, "that is our purpose. They seem to exist only to make trouble and we are done with them." Without excitement or braggadocio, he explained to me how this could be done and would be done. "They bother the life out of us, he added. "They keep men at work we do not want; prevent or try to prevent our turning off those for whom we have no further use. They level things toward the meanest worker. We have got on with them only because we were forced to it. They everywhere check product. We are now going to control our own business, and we are going to do it entirely."

1 This employer, like others, did not of course object to a "good trade union"-one that would in no way interfere. But the employer cannot be allowed to define "goodness" in a trade union any more than we can allow labor to define it. The definition above them both is that which public welfare finds workably just and fair for social security.

I knew that in general and in detail, there was a good deal of truth in what this gentlemen said, but I left Pittsburg wondering what the American people would say, and especially what they would continue to say about this question. Quite incontestable is it that to most employers trade unions are a nuisance. But the employer's point of view is neither exclusive nor final. There is also the point of view of twenty-two or -three millions of wage earners. More important still is a point of view above them both; namely, that of the general public. The momentous event in our country is that at last the public is becoming aware of its right and its power as a collective whole. It will alas, be long in learning a wise and temperate use of its power. Because of its ignorance and much blundering, it will frighten many investors; discourage many enterprises; let loose upon us a pest of self-seeking politicians, but none of these unavoidable abuses will stop the growing assertion of public authority over the organized forces at war with each other in the ever widening field of competition. People have learned that if trade unions have bothered capital, so has capital bothered the public. Capitalistic organizations have annoyed the public in ways that are different, but so gravely have they threatened the community, that a large part of governmental energies, federal, state and city, is now devoted to a very desperate struggle with these incorporated forces. We are trying to control tendencies in them that are seen to be anti-social. Most people who retain their sanity, see that these interknitted powers neither can be nor ought to be crushed. That in the common interest,

we must at least try to "regulate" them, is now admitted. This implies the necessity of organization. It also implies its justification. But why should street car systems, express companies, telegraph and mining corporations require organization, while the wage labor connected with them is deprived of it? Capital asks for organization because an unchecked competition raises plain havoc with its undertakings. Organization brings these pillaging disorders under conscious control which helps to steady and maintain price standards. But what of labor at the bottom? Is it less mercilessly beset by competition than is the employer?

With its mobility, with its facilities and habits of moving from place to place, and, above all, with the inpouring of multitudinous immigrants, is it to be held for an instant that labor stands in less urgent need of organization than capital? I have just put this question to an employer tormented by a strike over this very issue. He admits that "in theory perhaps" his men should have what he has and must have, organization. But "practically," he adds, "it is impossible. The men will misuse it. There will be constant and intolerable interference with our management.'

Yes, there would be interference, precisely as society had been forced, in its own defense, to interfere with organized capital. We had a century of interference to create the whole structure of factory legislation, and now again begins another struggle to devise the agencies of regulating lawless propensities in the "trusts." There is not an aspect of our social policy that does not assume the fact and the necessity