emes use as an argument and as an
appeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes
will be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the
stockholders will be increased. However praiseworthy this appeal may be
in motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory
deserves the failure it so often meets with in practice. In the clash
which follows a strike, the employees are accused of an ingratitude,
when there was no legitimate reason to expect gratitude; and useless
bitterness, which has really a factitious basis, may be developed on
both sides.

Indeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of
misunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and
employees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so
far as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual
code of ethics.

There is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from
the standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked
industrial significance. Failing, as they do, however, to touch the
question of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of
trades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when
they urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation
existing between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance
of strikes and other trades-union tactics. The men have individually
accepted the kindness of the employers as it was individually offered,
but quite as the latter urges his inability to increase wages unless he
has the cooeperation of his competitors, so the men state that they are
bound to the trades-union struggle for an increase in wages because it
can only be undertaken by combinations of labor.

Even the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the
profits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of
their wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact
that the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit
shall accrue.

Both individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and
individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most
useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and
employer may in time be legally compelled to conform. Progress must
always come through the individual who varies from the type and has
sufficient energy to express