nvelope, though that had seemed so
impossible before. Jock, by himself, is weak, and at his employer's
mercy. But Jock, leagued with all the other men in the works, has
power.

Now, I hear a lot of talk from employers that sounds fine but is no
better, when you come to pick it to pieces, than the talk of the
agitators. Oh, I'll believe you if you tell me they're sincere, and
believe what they say! But that does not mak' it richt for me to
believe them, too!

Here's your employer who won't deal with a union.

"Every man in my shop can come to my office at any time and talk to
me," he'll say. "He needs no union delegate to speak for him. I'll
talk to the men any time, and do everything I can to adjust any
legitimate grievance they may have. But I won't deal with men who
presume to speak for them--with union delegates and leaders."

But can he no see, or wull he no see, that it's only when all the men
in his shop bind themselves together that they can talk to him as man
to man, as equal to equal? He's stronger than any one or twa of them,
but when the lot of them are leagued together they are his match.
That's what's meant by collective bargaining, and the employer who
won't recognize that right is behind the times, and is just inviting
trouble for himself and all the rest of us.

Let me tell you a story I heard in America on my last tour. I was away
oot on the Pacific coast. It was when America was beginning her great
effort in the war, and she was trying to build airplanes fast enough
to win the mastery of the air frae the Hun. She needed spruce for
them--and to supply us and France and Italy, as well. That spruce grew
in great, damp forests in the States of Oregon and Washington--one
great tree, that was suitable for making aircraft, to an acre, maybe.
It was a great task to select those trees and hew them doon, and split
and cut them up.

And in those forests lumbermen had been working for years. It was
hard, punishing work; work for strong, rough men. And those who owned
the forests and employed the men were strong, hard men themselves, as
they had need to be. But they could not see that the men they employed
had any richt to organize themselves. So always they fought, when a
union appeared in the forests, and they had beaten them all.

The men were weak, dealing, each by himself, with his employer. The
employers were strong. But presently a new sort of union came--the I.
W. W. It did as it pleased. It cheate