this class or
its interests, then surely they must see to it, as far as they are able,
that members of this class have equal industrial opportunities with
other citizens, and that its children should at least be no longer
compelled to remain members of a class from which, as he expressly
acknowledges, there is at present no escape.

Both Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell have gone to the defense of the
leading anti-Socialist organization in this country, Civic
Federation--and nothing could draw in stronger colors than do their
arguments the complete conflict of the Gompers-Mitchell labor union
policy to that of the Socialists. Mr. Gompers defends the Federation as
worthy of labor's respect on the ground that many of its most active
capitalist members have shown a sustained sincerity, "always having in
mind the rights and interests of labor," which is the very antithesis to
the Socialist claim that nobody will always have in mind the rights and
the interests of labor, except the laborers--and least of all those who
buy labor themselves, or are intimately associated with those who buy
labor.

Mr. Mitchell says that through the Civic Federation many employers have
become convinced that their antagonism to unions was based on prejudice,
and have withdrawn their opposition to the organization of the men in
their plants. No doubt this is strictly true. It shows that the unions
had been presented to the employers as being profitable to them. This,
Socialists would readily admit, might be the case with some labor
organizations as they have been shaped by leaders like Mr. Mitchell and
conferences like those of the Civic Federation. To Socialists
organizations that create this impression of harmony of interests do
exactly what is most dangerous for the workers--that is, they make them
less conscious and assertive of their own interests.

The Civic Federation, composed in large part of prominent capitalists
and conservatives, endeavors to allay the discontent of labor by
intimate association with the officers of the unions. Socialists have
long recognized the tendency of trade-union leaders to be persuaded by
such methods to the capitalist view. Eight years ago at Dresden, August
Bebel had already seen this danger, for he placed in the same class with
the academic "revisionists" those former proletarians who had been
raised into higher positions and were lost to the working classes
through "intercourse with people of the contrary t