tive town of
Quincy in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. In those early
communities, poverty was negligible, there was no great contrast between
rich and poor; the artisan, the farmer, the well-to-do merchant met
on terms of mutual self-respect, as man to man; economic class
consciousness was non-existent; education was so widespread that
European travellers wonderingly commented on the fact that we had no
"peasantry"; and with few exceptions every citizen owned a piece of land
and a home. Property, a refuge a man may call his own, and on which
he may express his individuality, is essential to happiness and
self-respect. Today, less than two thirds of our farmers own their land,
while vast numbers of our working men and women possess nothing but the
labour of their hands. The designation of labour as "property" by our
courts only served to tighten the bonds, by obstructing for a time the
movement to decrease the tedious and debilitating hours of contact of
the human organism with the machine,--a menace to the future of the
race, especially in the case of women and children. If labour is
"property," wretches driven by economic necessity have indeed only the
choice of a change of masters. In addition to the manual workers, an
army of clerical workers of both sexes likewise became tenants, and
dependents who knew not the satisfaction of a real home.

Such conditions gradually brought about a profound discontent, a
grouping of classes. Among the comparatively prosperous there was set
up a social competition in luxury that was the bane of large and
small communities. Skilled labour banded itself into unions, employers
organized to oppose them, and the result was a class conflict never
contemplated by the founders of the Republic, repugnant to democracy
which by its very nature depends for its existence on the elimination of
classes. In addition to this, owing to the unprecedented immigration of
ignorant Europeans to supply the labour demand, we acquired a sinister
proletariat of unskilled economic slaves. Before the war labour
discovered its strength; since the war began, especially in the allied
nations with quasi-democratic institutions, it is aware of its power to
exert a leverage capable of paralyzing industry for a period sufficient
to destroy the chances of victory. The probability of the occurrence
of such a calamity depends wholly on whether or not the workman can
be convinced that it is his war, for he will