Not one of these could hold its own against the hated competitive system. Not one of them could retain the most enterprising and virile of its youth. Not one of them could match in the slightest the stimulating opportunities for larger and a richer life which a capitalistic society, in spite of its sins, still offers.
In another series of reforms, the disappointment has been less final, but very real. For half a century heroic groups have gathered about "arbitration," "conciliation," "profit sharing," "sliding scales," and "bonus systems," and these have paid their way, some of them richly. Each has left its increment of good which a wiser future will put to use and learn to integrate with other agencies. But these tiny deposits to our assets bear but a ghostly likeness to those first high-hearted hopes.[1] The older literature of arbitration and profit-sharing is fired with confident anticipation that a "solution" has been found; an open way along which capital and labor, arm in arm, may pass to early and permanent peace. After a generation of "voluntary arbitration" had shown with chilling proof that some of the deepest difficulties in the wage relation were beyond the reach of this contrivance, then New Zealand appeared with her famous bill adding "compulsion." By good luck, it came in days of rising prosperity when labor had its fairest chances. It was then that one of the most fearless and gallant of our citizens, Henry D. Lloyd, brought back his story of "A Country Without Strikes." It was an
- ↑ In a Bulletin of the Department of Labor for January, 1912, is an admirable summary of the results of arbitration.
