and more. Even when they were
well paid and well treated they grumbled. No matter how much they got,
they felt they weren't getting their dues. They knew that labor elected
the management; and they knew human nature. Putting these two premises
together, they drew the conclusion that labor was probably getting more
than its share, and capital less. President Hairy, of the Steel Co.,
explained to them this couldn't be true, because the market for capital
was a free and open market. He quoted a great many economic laws that
proved it, and all the professors of economy said he was right. But the
capitalists wouldn't believe in these laws, because they weren't on
their side, nor would they read any of the volumes the professors
composed. They would read only a book that an old German capitalist
wrote--a radical book which turned economics all upside-down and said
that capital ought to start a class war and govern the world.

Discontent breeds agitation. Agitation breeds professional agitators. A
few unruly loud-voiced capitalists climbed up on soap-boxes and began to
harangue their quiet comrades, just to stir up needless trouble. When
arrested, they invoked (as they put it) the right of free speech. The
labor men replied by invoking things like law and order. Everybody
became morally indignant at something. The press invoked the Fathers of
the Republic, Magna Charta, and Justice. Excited and bewildered by this
crossfire, the police one evening raided a Fifth avenue club, where a
capitalist named M. R. Goldman was talking in an incendiary way to his
friends. "All honest law-abiding capitalists will applaud this raid,"
said the papers. But they didn't. They began to feel persecuted. And
presently some capitalists formed what they called a union.

It was only a small union, that first one, but it had courage. One
afternoon President Hairy looked up from his desk to find four stout,
red-faced capitalists pushing each other nervously into his office. He
asked them their business. They huskily demanded that every capitalist
on that company's books be paid at least a half per cent more for his
money. The president refused to treat with them except as individuals.
They then called a strike.

The results of this first strike were profoundly discouraging. The
leaders were tried for conspiracy, those who walked out at their call
were blacklisted, and the victorious labor men soon secured other
capitalists in plenty, a private car-lo