ployment at best only assures continuity of production
through just wages, hours and profits. It does not approach the problem
from the point of view of upbuilding a relation in industry that will,
if successful, not only eliminate strikes and lockouts, but make
constructively for greater production and cheaper costs.

The economic repercussions from such regulation do not all lie in favor
of either capital or labor. To curtail the activities in one is not
necessarily a favor to the other.

I am sure you would, upon consideration, view the entry of the
Government on a nation-wide scale into the determination of fair wage
and fair profit in industry, even if it could be accomplished without
force, with great apprehension. There are some things worse in the
development of democracy than strikes and lockouts, and whether by
legislative repression we do not set up economic and social
repercussions of worse character is by no means determined. They have
also the deficiency in that they undermine the real development of
self-government in industry and that, to me, is part of the growth of
democracy itself. Courts and litigation are necessary to the
preservation of life and property, but they are less stimulus to
improved relations among men than are discussion and disposal of their
own differences.

The whole world is groping for solution to this problem. If we cannot
solve it progressively, our civilization will go back to chaos. We
cannot stand still with the economic and social forces that surround us.
There has never been a complete panacea to all human relationships so
far in this world. The best we can do is to take short steps forward, to
align each step to the tried ideals that have carried us thus far. The
Conference has endeavored to find a plan for systematic organization of
the forces that are making for better relationships, to encourage the
growing acceptance of collective bargaining by providing a method that
should enable it to meet the objections of its critics and to aggregate
around this the forces of conciliation and arbitration now in such wide
use. It has sought to do this without legal repression but with the
organized pressure of public opinion.

To me there is no question that we should try the experiment of the
perhaps longer road proposed by the Industrial Conference for the
development of mutuality of relationship between employer and employee,
rather than to enter upon summary action of court