some reference to
what labor produces and what employers can pay, and not, therefore,
without the action of a principle which makes, in a powerful way, for
justice. Any method, however, which involves many strikes and lockouts,
is bad economically and worse morally. The contests are always costly,
and they easily run into violent warfare; but underneath all these
struggles and the hates and horrors that result, there is working, if
we will see it, a law that makes for peace founded on justice. It tends
in the direction of a fair division of products between employers and
employed, and if it could work entirely without hindrances, would
actually give to every laborer substantially what he produces. In the
midst of all prevalent abuses this basic law asserts itself like a law
of gravitation, and so long as monopoly is excluded and competition is
free,--so long as both labor and capital can move without hindrance to
the points at which they can create the largest products and get the
largest rewards--its action cannot be stopped, while that of the forces
that disturb it can be so. In this is the most inspiriting fact for the
social reformer. If there are "inspiration points" on the mountain-tops
of science, as well as on those of nature, this is one of them, and it
is reached whenever a man discovers that in a highly imperfect society
the fundamental law makes for justice, that it is impossible to prevent
it from working and that it is entirely possible to remove the
hindrances it encounters and let it have the first play. Nature is
behind the reformer, often unseen, always efficient, and, in the end,
resistless. To get a glimpse of what it can do and what man can help it
do is to get a vision of the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of
them--a glory that may come from a moral redemption of the economic
system. It is a redemption that man and nature can together bring about
if only man himself is worthy of this alliance.

Differences of mere interest between the various social classes are
inevitable. There will never be a time when, in the division of any
common property, the mere bald interests of the claimants are alike.
When two fishermen own one boat and fish together, each one is
interested in taking the whole catch. They divide, however, by a fair
rule and live in peace. Any similar division may proceed in harmony if
what the parties want is justice. Till recently American workmen have
lived with their employers w