he spirit and methods of collective bargaining between
the employers and the labor organizations were very much improved. The
consequences of a strike would be extremely serious for both of the
disputants and for the consumers. If disagreements terminating in
strikes and lock-outs remained as numerous as they are at present, there
would result both for the producer and consumer a condition of perilous
and perhaps intolerable uncertitude. But this objection, although
serious, is not unanswerable. The surest way in which a condition of
possible warfare, founded on a genuine conflict of interest, can be
permanently alleviated is to make its consequences increasingly
dangerous. When the risks become very dangerous, reasonable men do not
fight except on grave provocation or for some essential purpose. Such
would be the result in any industry, both the employers and laborers of
which were completely organized. Collective bargaining would, under such
circumstances, assume a serious character; and no open fight would ensue
except under exceptional conditions and in the event of grave and
essential differences of opinion. Moreover, the state could make them
still less likely to happen by a policy of discreet supervision. Through
the passage of a law similar to the one recently enacted in the Dominion
of Canada, it could assure the employers and the public that no strike
would take place until every effort had been made to reach a fair
understanding or a compromise; and in case a strike did result, public
opinion could form a just estimate of the merits of the controversy. In
an atmosphere of discussion and publicity really prudent employers and
labor organizations would fight very rarely, if at all; and this result
would be the more certain, provided a consensus of public opinion
existed as the extent to which the clashing interests of the two
combatants could be fitted into the public interest. It should be
clearly understood that the public interest demanded, on the one hand, a
standard of living for the laborer as high as the industrial conditions
would permit, and on the other a standard of labor-efficiency equivalent
to the cost of labor and an opportunity for the exceptional individual
laborer to improve on that standard in his own interest. The whole
purpose of such an organization would be the attempt to develop
efficient labor and prosperous laboring men, whereas the tendency of the
existing organization is to associate t