for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and without
whining at a nation.

Who that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from, could
know more about human nature than they do? Are they not the men of all
others, all up and down that little strip of Oxford Street, who devote
their entire time to human nature? They are in the daily profession of
knowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like, and
about what people will probably think. They are intimate with their
peccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat; they
have learned their likes and dislikes in human nature; they know what
they will support and what they will defy in human nature, in clerks,
and in stores, and in storekeepers.

And these things that they have learned about human nature (in
themselves and other people) they have learned not by talking about
human nature but by a grim daily doing things with it.

These things being so, it would almost seem that these people and people
like them were qualified to act, and as they happen to be in the one
strategic position, both employers and employees alike, to act and to
act for themselves and act directly and act together, it will not be
very long, probably, before the nation will be very glad to have them do
it.

It is likely to be seen very soon (at least by all skilled Labour and
all skilled Capital) that running out into the street and crying "Help!"
and calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that can
be better settled by being faced and thought out in private, is an
inefficient and incompetent thing to do.

And for the most part it is going to be only in the more superficial,
inefficient, thoughtless industry that men, either employers or
employed, will be inclined to leave their daily work, run out wildly and
drag in a House of Commons to help them to do right.

I am only speaking for myself but certainly if I were an employer or an
employee, I would not want to wait for an election a year away or to
wait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member of
Parliament by my one vote to act for me.

Perhaps workingmen in England and America are deceived about the value
of voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possibly
women are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the
conditions of working women.

Possibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a store
than