I do
not even deny that the majority of wage-earners, because they have less
property and less industrial security than others and because they do
not own the machinery with which they work (as does the farmer) are
perhaps in greater need of acting together than are other groups in the
community. But I do insist (and I believe that the great majority of
wage-earners take the same view) that employers and employees have
overwhelming interests in common, both as partners in industry and as
citizens of the republic, and that where these interests are apart they
can be adjusted by so altering our laws and their interpretation as to
secure to all members of the community social and industrial justice.
I have always maintained that our worst revolutionaries to-day are those
reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need
for change. Such men seem to believe that the four and a half million
Progressive voters, who in 1912 registered their solemn protest against
our social and industrial injustices, are "anarchists," who are not
willing to let ill enough alone. If these reactionaries had lived at an
earlier time in our history, they would have advocated Sedition Laws,
opposed free speech and free assembly, and voted against free schools,
free access by settlers to the public lands, mechanics' lien laws, the
prohibition of truck stores and the abolition of imprisonment for debt;
and they are the men who to-day oppose minimum wage laws, insurance
of workmen against the ills of industrial life and the reform of
our legislators and our courts, which can alone render such measures
possible.
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