Of this total rising protest against sources of unnatural inequalities in wealth and opportunity, the I. W. W. is at most a very tiny part. It is yet enough that they are in it, and that they are fully aware of the fact. For the first time they are so consciously related to this spirit of revolt and to the delicate industrial mechanism which gives them power, that only a captious temper will refuse them hearing. Not by any churlish aloofness are they to be educated, nor are we ourselves to be educated. In all our efforts to penetrate these mysteries of social reformation, a common darkness is over us all.
Not in the least are those who most materially profit by the present system to be held in awe as possessors of special and exclusive enlightenment. There is also a "wisdom of the humble" endowed with the high authority of age-long suffering and experience. It is even to such as these that a new power is now passing. It will not be taken from them. It will be used in folly and cruelty, if society is also foolish and cruel.
It is the final condemnation of the old lone-hand, fighting spirit in industry, that it at once creates new and deadlier sources of antagonism. It revives on the spot, not public, but private warfare, with all its contagious treacheries.
The sole cure for these barbaric survivals is the coöperative intention developed into habits of thought and action. This intention need no longer expend itself in vague benevolence. New organs are at hand in which it may be embodied.
If we add to this the final best step of all—the open, declared purpose to admit labor to management first
