the facts which will help generous and genial industrial leaders to promote the common welfare, and especially the welfare of those who are employed by them, and over whom their commanding position as leaders has given great power.
It is perfectly legitimate for the scholar to collect and use the testimony of great captains of industry to correct the unsupported assertions of other captains of industry. For example, in respect to the usefulness of trades unions, Mr. Dyer quotes the language of an employer: "As an employer in one of the great staple trades, I have always held that we owe much of our prosperity in the manufacturing industries to trade combinations." This citation of an individual judgment is followed by a clear summary of the actual achievements of the unions: the friendly and material help in hard times; the care of the sick; the agencies of education; the regulation of prices and production. "The cupidity and selfishness of some would have made it difficult even for just and generous employers to do right."[1]
In arranging the programme for the "Congress of Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration" it was difficult to secure the participation of employers. The responses to the Civic Federation indicated a profound skepticism in the United States as to the value of such methods. And yet men of affairs and experience were found who were willing to look for better methods of deciding disputes. Here again Mr. Lyman J. Gage, surely no visionary, said: "In the business world of today, questions involving thousands, nay, millions, are thus quietly and peacefully composed. Cannot methods so benign in their character, so healthful in their influences, find a place in the industrial relationships which now so intimately enter into the warp and woof of our modern life."
In the same Congress Mr. William H. Sayward spoke for the National Association of Builders, and claimed that he represented an industry which "comprehends an interest as large in amount as that of any other single industry." He denied that his association was working for philanthrophic ends, and yet contended that they were serving the public. So far from trusting merely
- ↑ The Evolution of Industry, pp. 110–111.
