has come to feel that they are no longer to be kept as the secret speculative tools of finance.
When Woodrow Wilson said that these were public rather than private, he was merely interpreting the growing collective opinion in this country. Until the more masterful holders of these centers of economic power recognize this and enter with some heartiness into more sympathetic coöperation with the new and altered opinion, both political and industrial friction will increase.
Against the spirit of secrecy and absolutism in this more powerful business management, the protest rises. Its warning comes from all those who would "regulate" these forces. It comes from collectivists, from socialists of every shade, and now, with shrill and mocking challenge, from a new "Order" of the I. W. W. It is a dangerous form of dullness merely to sniff at this latest note of protest. It is a part of something far greater than itself. Roughly, the word socialism stands for this larger thing, but especially about the spirit of this movement, foggy misconceptions still cling. A further appeal must be made to the reader's patience in a brief attempt to illustrate what seem to the writer some errors in interpreting the spirit and motive of the socialist protest and still more in all attempts to understand the I. W. W.
