to-day are going to struggle out
from under the machines, they can only do it by doing all that they can
in labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machines
in this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners.

But probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalness
in machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand or
the employees on the other, but from having the employees in the Trades
Unions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining together
to keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men,
whether directors or employees, who do not work harder than they have
to, and who have not the brains to do their work for something besides
money. The men who are like this will of course be pitied and duly
considered, but they will be kept where they will not have power to
control other men, or where by force of position or by mere majority
they will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do.
Workmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions by
combination with so-called inspired employers--employers who work harder
than they have to, who dote on the great human difficulties of work, who
choose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things, who are
never mechanical themselves, and will not let their men be if they can
help it. I have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires. I
would rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire, because
the more machines an inspired employer can own, the more he can buy and
get away from the uninspired ones, the sooner will the right of labour
and the will of the people be accomplished. When the machines are in
the hands of inspired and strong and spirited men--men of real
competence or genius for business, the machines will be seen on every
hand around us as the engines of war against evil, against slavery, the
whirling weapons of the Spirit.

Even now, in dreams have I stood and watched them--the will of the
people like a flail in their mighty hands--this vast army of
machines--go thundering past, driving the uninspired and mechanical off
the face of the earth.

CHAPTER IV

THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK

When I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I very
much wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly in
all my plans because some men on the docks ha