s and the like can only be
transitory in their meliorating effect; and to pursue the attack on the
autocrats of industry by the road of wages alone is to attack them where
they are impregnable, and where, seeming to give way, they are all the
while really losing nothing, and are only fixing the wage system more
permanently on those who attack them. There are fiery spirits among the
proletarians who hope that militant labor will at last bring about the
social revolution, taking the earthly paradise by violence. They believe
that if every worker dropped his tools and absolutely refused to work
under the old system, it would be impossible to continue it. That is
true, but those who advocate this policy slur over many difficulties,
and the relative power of endurance of both parties. They do not, I
think, take into account the immense power in the hands of those who
uphold the present system. Those who might be expected to strike are
not--at least in Ireland--a majority of the population. They would have
far fewer material resources to fall back on than those others whose
interests would lead them to preserve the present social order. It
is clear, too, when we analyze the forces at the command of labor
and capital, that the latter has attached to itself by the bonds of
self-interest the scientific men--engineers, inventors, chemists,
bacteriologists, designers, organizers, all the intellect of
industry--without which, in alliance with itself, revolting labor would
be unable to continue production as before. Labor so revolting might
indeed for a time bring the work of the nation to a standstill; but
unless it could by some means attract to itself men of the class
described, it would not be able to take the helm of the ship of industry
and guide it with knowledge as the holders of economic power have done
in the past. A policy of emancipation should provide labor with a
means of attracting to itself that kind of knowledge which is gained in
universities, laboratories, colleges of science, and, above all, in
the actual guidance of great industrial enterprises. In any trial of
endurance those who start with the greatest intellectual, moral, and
material resources will win.

I do not deny that the strike is a powerful weapon in the hand of labor,
but it is one with which it is difficult to imagine labor dealing a
knock-out blow to the present social order. I believe in an orderly
evolution of society, at least in Ireland, and do