A dozen towns have been amazed and indignant that they must submit to a prying invasion from the Government, from politicians, and an army of outside investigators. This enlargement and intensifying of popular sympathy is the first capital fact which no wise employer or owner will in future ignore. The spread of this sympathy will compel business management in all conspicuous business to revalue the whole human side of its problem. I do not mean that it should be friendlier or more philanthropic. I mean that the fatal note of arbitrariness and priggish aloofness has got to go. Labor, with its powers of collective bargaining, must be met in a spirit that is strictly coöperative—coöperative in the sense of some recognized equality between the status of labor and that of capital. Business must put as high ability into the human side as into the financial. It has got to drop a good deal of its pride, secrecy, and airs of superiority.
Whether it has to face the trade union, the Socialists, or the more revolutionary I. W. W., they must one and all be met naturally and, above all, humanly. In the strict sense, they have got to be "recognized" and openly dealt with for the sole reason that the human side of business can in no other way be wisely dealt with.
In all that I have been able to ascertain about outbreaks in thirteen Eastern and Western communities, the I. W. W. got its grip where trade unionism had been beaten, or had no existence, or had been so weakened as to offer little resistance. Trade unions as powerful as those in Germany, where they are in
