s to take his stand on conduct and not on class. There are
good and bad wage-workers just as there are good and bad employers, and
good and bad men of small means and of large means alike.

But a willingness to do equal and exact justice to all citizens,
irrespective of race, creed, section or economic interest and position,
does not imply a failure to recognize the enormous economic, political
and moral possibilities of the trade union. Just as democratic
government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes
committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be
condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders.
The problem lies deeper. While we must repress all illegalities and
discourage all immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of
corporations, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organization of
labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent,
and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment of a true
industrial, as well as a true political, democracy in the United States.

This is a fact which many well-intentioned people even to-day do not
understand. They do not understand that the labor problem is a human
and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an
increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale
moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of
human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of
hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social
uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day
who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of
these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, in
mill and in the dark places under the earth. They fail to see that all
these men have the right and the duty to combine to protect themselves
and their families from want and degradation. They fail to see that
the Nation and the Government, within the range of fair play and a just
administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who
have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for
a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely
fighting for larger profits and an autocratic control of big business.
Each man should have all he earns, whether by brain or body; and
the director, the great industrial leader,