tinue to work those forces in the old arbitrary spirit. If they insist upon this at the points (as in public utilities) directly and sensitively touching the general welfare, such managers will create their own trouble, and every day they will more and more create it. They will themselves be responsible for it, because they insist upon a method and, above all, upon a spirit that is outgrown. At these more developed stages in the wage system, there is from now on not a step toward security or progress, unless labor (as well as the public) is allowed some voice in management. This is the lesson which every industrial autocrat has to learn. Strictly on this issue, the side of the striker is as sacred as any struggling reform in human history. It has long been as sacred as at present, but the practically eventful fact now is that millions of wage earners have become sensitively conscious of the situation. They need no more evidence that the old wage method arbitrarily enforced shuts them too sharply out of privileges and rights that should be theirs. They are so convinced of this, and the army of them has grown so great, as to constitute a problem that no advanced society will safely ignore.
Hundreds of employers in the world, and a few great ones, are admitting all this and doing their best to act upon it. They are creating organs through which labor may have its representation in management. This frankly assumes that in highly organized industries, arbitrary wage systems have had their day. It is popularly seen that our age is supremely the age of industrial organization. If it is that, why should labor be excluded from its benefits? But of more
