system; or
because, starting out with the ambitions and rosy expectations of the
early pioneer, he found his hopes thwarted by a capitalistic preemptor
of the bounty of nature, who dooms to a wage-earner's position all who
came too late. In either case he is animated by a genuine passion for
revolution, a passion which admits no compromise. Yet his numbers are
too few to threaten the existing order.

In conclusion, American trade unionism, no matter whether the American
Federation of Labor keeps its old leaders or replaces them by
"progressives" or socialists, seems in a fair way to continue its
conservative function--so long as no overpowering open-shop movement or
"trustification" will break up the trade unions or render them sterile.
The hope of American Bolshevism will, therefore, continue to rest with
the will of employers to rule as autocrats.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Though writers and public speakers of either extreme have often
overlooked the fundamental consideration of where the preponderance of
social power lies in their prognostications of revolutions, this has not
escaped the leaders of the American labor movement. The vehemence with
which the leaders of the American Federation of Labor have denounced
Sovietism and Bolshevism, and which has of late been brought to a high
pitch by a fear lest a shift to radicalism should break up the
organization, is doubtless sincere. But one cannot help feeling that in
part at least it aimed to reassure the great American middle class on
the score of labor's intentions. The great majority of organized labor
realize that, though at times they may risk engaging in unpopular
strikes, it will never do to permit their enemies to tar them with the
pitch of subversionism in the eyes of the great American majority--a
majority which remains wedded to the regime of private property and
individual enterprise despite the many recognized shortcomings of the
institution.

[111] Notably in Germany since the end of the World War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The first seven chapters of the present work are based on the _History
of Labour in the United States_ by John R. Commons and Associates,[112]
published in 1918 in two volumes by the Macmillan Company, New York. The
major portion of the latter was in turn based on _A Documentary History
of the American Industrial Society_, edited by Professor Commons and
published in 1910 in ten volumes by Clark and Company, Cleveland. In
preparing chap