The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit by Ralph Waldo Trine online

XIV THE WORLD'S BALANCE-WHEEL

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Organised labour has never occupied so high a position as it occupies today. That the rank and file will for an instant have commerce with these agencies, whatever any designing leader here and there may seek to do, is inconceivable. That its organisations will be sought to be used by them is just as probable. Its duty as to vigilance and determination is pronounced. And unless vigilant and determined the set-backs it may get and the losses it may suffer are just as pronounced. The spirit and temper of the American people is such that it will not stand for coersion, lawlessness, or any unfair demands. Public opinion is after all the court of last resort. No strike or no lockout can succeed with us that hasn't that tremendous weapon, public opinion, behind it. The necessity therefore of being fair in all demands and orderly in all procedure, and in view of this it is also well to remember that organised labour represents but eight per cent of the actual working people of this nation.

The gains of organised labour in the past have been very great. It is also true that the demands of organised labour even today are very great. In true candor it must also be said that not only the impulse but the sincere desire of the great bulk of employers is in a conciliatory way to grant all demands of labour that are at all consistent with sound economic management, even in many cases to a great lessening of their own profits, as well as to maintain working conditions as befits their workers as valuable and honoured members of our body politic, as they naturally are and as they so richly deserve.

For their own welfare, however, to say nothing of the welfare of the nation, labour unions must purge themselves of all anarchistic and destructive elements. Force is a two-edged sword, and the force of this nation when once its sense of justice and right is outraged and its temper is aroused, will be found to be infinitely superior to any particular class, whether it be capital or whether it be labour. Organised labour stands in the way to gain much by intelligent and honest work and orderly procedure. And to a degree perhaps never before equalled, does it stand in a position to lose much if through self-deception on its own part or through unworthy leadership, it deceives itself in believing itself superior to the forces of law and order.

In a nation where the people through their chosen representatives and by established systems of procedure determine their own institutions, when agitators get beyond law and reason and lose sight too completely of the law of mutuality, there is a power backed by a force that it is mere madness to defy. The rights as well as the power of all the people will be found to be infinitely superior to those of any one particular group or class--clear-seeing men and women in any democratic form of government realise that the words mutuality and self-interest bear a very close relationship.

The greatest gains in the relations between capital and labour during the coming few years will undoubtedly be along the lines of profit-sharing. Some splendid beginnings are already in successful operation. There is the recognition that capital is entitled initially to a fair return; again that labour is entitled to a good and full living wage--when both these conditions are met then that there be an equal division of the profits that remain, between the capital and the skill and management back of the capital invested on the one hand, and labour on the other. Without the former labour would have no employment in the particular enterprise; without the workers the former could not carry on. Each is essential to the other.

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