eme struggle gives to men often
what no other experience so far accomplishes, namely, a feeling of
spiritual union with all other men who also struggle for what they
believe to be right. In labor wars; in the strife between employer and
employed, that sense of race unity even when struggling against a
national enemy, that which gives what Professor James well called the
"mystic element in militarism," is lacking. It is a fight between men
who have and those who have not and feel themselves defrauded of just
due. Hence, although the fight may be bitter even unto death, and the
sacrifices of immediate comfort for ultimate ends beyond measure
heroic and even wise, there can be little of the pomp and circumstance
that accompany national and international warfare. The Decoration Days
when heroes of past conflicts are praised and receive from all the
reverence which patriotism pays to those believed to have saved some
precious inheritance from harm do not yet, perhaps will never, include
heroes of labor struggles for equal right and mutual justice. Yet the
history of industrial changes shows beyond cavil or doubt that in this
field, as in others, he who would be free himself must win his
freedom. The basic principle of the Trade Union, the right and
usefulness of collective bargaining, inheres in the conditions of
machine-dominated and capitalized industry. In this form of labor
organization the individual worker cannot bargain individually; his
place in the factory is too infinitesimal and his power measured by
that of his employer too invisible for such personal alignment. This
fact is now not questioned by any but those so enamoured of old
methods of control of the worker by those who hire him that they
cannot see what has really happened both to the employer and the
employed. The labor struggle had to come. The right of workers to
combine and to work together for what seems to them their best
interests is as inherent a part of modern democratic ideals as is the
right of all citizens to vote. And since modern industry has given
enormous power to a few master leaders and requires so many
wage-earners to carry out its enterprises the struggle has necessarily
been hard and long. No one can justly place all good behavior on one
or the other side in this conflict. No one can fail to see that power
attained by the Trade Unions has at times been used as selfishly as
the power of the employers has been. But when we remember that un