the doctrine of class warfare is repugnant, and yet whose industrial
experience has never resulted in making them industrially conscious.
They feel no particular call to show more than average interest in
their job.

Peace, efficiency, production in industry, can come only as Group 2
increases. To recruit from Group 1 will always be difficult. Once
labor feels itself hostile to the employer and his interests, which is
another way of saying, once the employing group by its tactics
succeeds in making labor conclude that "the working class and the
employing class have nothing in common," the building up of a spirit
of co-operation is difficult indeed. Class consciousness is poor soil
in which to plant any seeds of industrial enthusiasm.

Would you, then, asks a dismayed unionist, build up your so-called
industrially conscious group at the expense of organized labor? The
answer is a purely pragmatic one, based on the condition of things as
they are, not as idealists would have them. Rightly or wrongly, the
American employing group long ago decided that the organized-labor
movement was harmful to American industry. The fact that the labor
movement was born of the necessity of the workers, and in the main
always flourished because of the continued need of the workers, was
never taken into account. Every conceivable argument was and is used
against organized labor. Many of those arguments are based on half
truths; or no truths at all. The fact remains that probably the
majority of the American public believes the organized-labor movement
to be against our social, civic, and industrial welfare. However
right or wrong such a deduction is, it is safe to say that for the
great part those who hold that belief do so in absolute good faith.

The result is that the American labor movement has developed ever in
an atmosphere so hostile that the effect on the growth of the movement
has been that which hostile environment always exerts on any growing
thing. It has warped the movement. It has emphasized everything
hostile within the movement itself. No wonder a fighting spirit has
ever been in evidence. No wonder only the fighting type of labor
leader has emerged. The movement has had little or no opportunity for
construction. Always the struggle for existence itself has been
uppermost. No wonder the conclusion can justly be drawn that the
American labor movement has not always played a highly productive role
in American industry.