I want to call your attention to the significance of that explanation,
that is, that the trade union movement of Great Britain was represented
at these former conferences, but at this conference the importance
of Labor was regarded as so insignificant that everybody took it for
granted that it was perfectly all right to have the credential card read
'Inter-Allied Socialist Conference' and with the omission of this more
important term, 'Labor.'" *

* "American Federationist," January, 1919, pp. 40-41.

As one looks back upon the history of the workingman, one finds
something impressive, even majestic, in the rise of the fourth estate
from a humble place to one of power in this democratic nation. In this
rise of fortune the laborer's union has unquestionably been a moving
force, perhaps even the leading cause. At least this homogeneous mass of
workingmen, guided by self-developed leadership, has aroused society to
safeguard more carefully the individual needs of all its parts. Labor
has awakened the state to a sense of responsibility for its great sins
of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties. Labor, like
other elements of society, has often been selfish, narrow, vindictive;
but it has also shown itself earnest and constructive. The conservative
trades union, at the hour of this writing, stands as a bulwark between
that amorphous, inefficient, irresponsible Socialism which has made
Russia a lurid warning and Prussia a word of scorn, and that rational
social ideal which is founded upon the conviction that society is
ultimately an organic spiritual unity, the blending of a thousand
diverse interests whose justly combined labors and harmonized talents
create civilization and develop culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

While there is a vast amount of writing on the labor problem, there
are very few works on the history of labor organizations in the United
States. The main reliance for the earlier period, in the foregoing
pages, has been the "Documentary History of American Industrial
Society", edited by John R. Commons, 10 vols. (1910). The "History of
Labour in the United States," 2 vols. (1918), which he published with
associates, is the most convenient and complete compilation that has yet
appeared and contains a large mass of historical material on the labor
question.

The following works are devoted to discussions of various phases of the
history of American labor and industry:

T. S. A