conversations gave way to serious discussions of the conflict of ideas that was going on above the battle of arms. Abstract principles of political and social philosophy were turned into battlecries, a thing crowd psychologists could have proved impossible before the war. The American people in particular were drawn into the war by an ideal rather than driven into it by an insult. And that fact will have an important bearing upon after-the-war thought and action in this country. For to awaken the war spirit of a nation with a catchphrase that vividly expresses popular resentment to some dramatic insult is one thing; to awaken the war spirit of a nation with the lure of some fundamental principle is another thing. The catch-phrase, carried through the battle as a stimulator of morale, is forgotten in the first flush of victory; the fundamental principle has a more sustained vitality, reacting upon popular thought long after the battle and insistently demanding ultimate application. A phrase like "Remember the Maine" does not necessarily produce any after-war effects; but a phrase like "the world must be made safe for democracy" has in it a yeastiness that begins its real fermentation after the nation has had time to catch its breath from the exertions of war. That phrase will haunt the counsels of politics and industry for many years to come.

PLAIN PARALLEL BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

As Americans begin to assess the results of their great adventure in the war and to think out the implications of the principles they helped to vindicate, a plain parallel between international and industrial relations will be recognized. Men who have had this world debate on right as the basis of human association, the moral law in public affairs, and the safeguarding of the weak against the strong, tossed back and forth over their heads as they fought in the trenches will quite naturally ask whether these principles, after being adjudged the guiding principles of international relations, should not assume similar primacy in industrial

relations. When this sense of parallel really grips the popular mind, industrial statesmanship will find itself genuinely challenged. The brevity of our part in the war may have spared us many of the depressions and robbed us of many of the disciplines of war, but the examination and discussion of the principles for which the war was fought went to greater lengths in the United States, before the war's challenge was accepted, than in any of the belligerent countries. When, therefore, Americans begin to apply to industry the political principles for which they fought, the scope and insistence of the demand for application may be greater here than in Europe, although our industrial unrest may be less dramatic and emotional.

THE BREAKDOWN OF A BALANCE OF POWER SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

As a flash of lightning illuminates a landscape, the war revealed the existing systems of international and industrial relations for what they are, throwing into clear relief their essential inadequacies. Before the war many leaders both in the camp of capital and the camp of labor, from whom we had the right to expect constructive leadership, gave the problem of industrial relations but fractional consideration. They busied themselves now with this problem of wages and then with that problem of hours, but did not subject to critical examination the system of industrial relations itself. But the war has altered the attitude and widened the scope of industrial thought both in business and labor circles. And just as most statesmen have frankly acknowledged the breakdown of the old system of a balance of power and conflict of controls between nations, and asserted the necessity for a fresh ordering of international relations based upon the greatest practicable degree of coöperation, so the best brains of business and labor frankly acknowledge that the old system of a balance of power and conflict of controls between capital and labor will no more meet the future demands of peace-time than it met the demands of war-time, and that the time

has come for both capital and labor to bring high conception and courageous execution to the creation of a new order of industrial relations that will materially reduce, if not remove, the social and economic waste of the present system of competing suspicions under which labor brandishes the strike weapon and capital anticipates or parries the blow with the lock-out or the injunction, while the public plays the rôle of the harassed neutral.

THE NEW ATTITUDE OF INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP

THIS new attitude, which outstanding leaders of both capital and labor are taking toward the problem of industrial relations, is marked by certain gratifying features. A fundamental reorganization of the present system of industrial relations is looked upon as an essentially conservative measure, not as a radical experiment proposed by doctrinaires detached from profit and loss responsibility, not as the organized demand of class cupidity; but as one of those normal changes in method to meet changed conditions which intelligent administration always effects. The parallel between international and industrial relations holds good in this particular. A new international order based upon a coöperation of power rather than on a conflict of power is the only way that lies open, to those interested in sanely ordered progress, to control and administer the complicated interdependence of the modern world; it is in that sense a conservative proposal rather than the radical adventure in political knight-errantry that certain statesmen, who persist in looking wistfully over their shoulder at George Washington, contend. In international relations the choice is between clear alternatives, competition and drift or coöperation and control. In industrial relations leadership is confined to a choice between the same alternatives. Political statesmanship must choose between international association and international anarchy. Industrial statesmanship must choose between a fundamental reorganization of industrial relations upon a more democratic basis

and an intensified class struggle, with revolution as a probability to be reckoned with. The former means for society economy and conservative progress, the latter means costly radical

excess.

Another gratifying feature of this new attitude is that its adherents are not wasting their energy and further complicating the situation by abusing either organized capital or organized labor; they are concerned with the using of both in the structure and processes of the new order. That capitalists have in certain instances abused the power of the lock-out and the injunction is granted. That labor leaders have in certain instances abused the power of the strike is granted. But it is beside the mark to try to correct such abuses by bitter arraignment either of the anti-social capitalists or the antisocial labor leaders in question; both are the inevitable and logical product of an anti-social system of industrial relations. And the average American who criticizes them would act exactly the same were he in their position, with their responsibility to their fellows, and their limited choice of instruments of influence under the prevailing system.

WHY HALF-MEASURES WILL FAIL

THE most important thing in the whole intellectual approach, on the part of the leaders of business and labor, to this problem of industrial relations and social unrest is to see that what is at issue is the fundamental reorganization of a system, not the haphazard patching up of an old system. Whether it meets our wishes or not, the time for halfmeasures is past. Half-measures may delay, they cannot prevent, the social revolution toward which the present "armed-cmp" system of industrial relations is inevitably working. The advocate of the half-measure is only a slightly less effective ally of the revolutionary than is the blind reactionary. This holds true even in the case of those willing to go far in the matter of repairs. There are on all hands men who say: "This is a time of unrest. The workers are everywhere becoming

sun.

articulate, demanding their place in the If our businesses are to succeed, we must adjust our methods to this fact, just as we change the weight of our clothing when we go into a milder or more severe climate. We may be obliged to make some rather costly concessions, but it is inevitable, and we might as well be sportsmanlike about it." Such an attitude is a good long step beyond the attitude of the blind reactionary, but its fault is that it is determined upon the basis of concessions instead of frank and courageous reconstruction. Such an attitude ignores the plain fact that it will not be enough simply to bow gracefully to such

industrial readjustments of policy and administration as the war has proved to be of greater economic efficiency, to institute by careful economy of concession such reforms as may prove essential to a smooth return to normal industry, to patch up the patently weak spots which the war has revealed in our economic organization, to speed up the machinery of production, and to effect something of a new deal in the distribution of the increased output, so that all classes will share to some degree. Concession, even when going as far as all this, will fail to meet the situation for certain entirely clear rea

sons.

THE WORKMAN'S STATUS IN THE HANDICRAFT SYSTEM

FOR one thing, such a policy of concession overlooks or affects to ignore the fact that the central significance of the current unrest, with its resultant programs of aspiration, lies not so much in the extent as in the character of the unrest. The one thing that a patchwork of palliatives and concessions does not touch is the one thing that lies at the heart of the modern labor problem and gives to the modern labor movement its sustained and vibrant purpose, and that is the status of the worker in industry. This question of status has been a question of increasing moment ever since the introduction of machine power in production and the rise of the factory system. Before that time industry was a relatively simple affair in the matter of its mechanics and in the matter of its human relations as well. The man who was master of a handicraft produced his wares in his own home, where he associated with himself a few apprentices and journeymen. He and his workmen dined at the same family table. There was little, if any, social cleavage between the two, master and workman. The workman married the master's daughter, and pursued his labor as a scholar pursues a study, looking upon his labor as a process of education that would in time

make him a master and secure for him the civic privilege of a freeman. The master owned his simple tools. He was master of his own profits. His customers were his neighbors,- -a fact that made good work a matter of personal pride and responsibility. The simple regulations of his gild and of his city safeguarded his trade. The men of this era of simple processes and intimate relations lived simply. Even the limited luxuries of the modern poor were unknown to many of the masters of that day. But the simple system had certain compensating advantages which have been lost and which it is the function of industrial statesmanship to restore in modern industry. These advantages, while clearly evident, merit a brief summarization, which it will be valuable to throw into contrast with certain features of the present system of industrial relations, for out of that contrast will arise a clear definition of the ultimate labor issue. In the simpler days of industry, before division of labor came with its farreaching possibilities of blessing and blight, the workman was able to keep his spirit fresh and his eye alight with a creative and personal interest in the article he was producing, he was able to go his way with little of the fear of insecurity or the deadening sense of dependence, and he was lured by hope; the ladder that led from apprenticeship