ore I started. Could I help knowing at least a bit
more? I do know more--I know that I know more!

And yet again I feel constrained to call attention to the fact that
six jobs, even if the results of each experience were the very richest
possible, are but an infinitesimal drop in what must be a full bucket
of industrial education before a person should feel qualified to speak
with authority on the subject of labor. Certain lessons were learned,
certain tentative conclusions arrived at. They are given here for what
they may be worth and in a very humble spirit. Indeed, I am much more
humble in the matter of my ideas concerning labor than before I took
my first job.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson learned was that a deep distrust of
generalizations has been acquired, to last, I hope, the rest of life.
It is so easy, so comfortable, to make a statement of fact to cover
thousands of cases. Nowhere does the temptation seem to be greater
than in a discussion of labor. "Labor wants this and that!" "Labor
thinks thus and so!" "Labor does this and the other thing!" Thus
speaks the labor propagandist, feeling the thrill of solid millions
behind him; thus speaks the "capitalist," feeling the antagonism of
solid millions against him.

And all this time, how many hearts really beat as one in the labor
world?

Indeed, the situation would clear up with more rapidity if we went to
the other extreme and thought of labor always as thirty million
separate individuals. We would be nearer the truth than to consider
them as this one great like-minded mass, all yearning for the same
spiritual freedom; all eager for the downfall of capitalism.

What can one individual know of the hopes and desires of thirty
millions? Indeed, it is a rare situation where one person can speak
honestly and intelligently for one hundred others. Most of us know
precious little about ourselves. We understand still less concerning
anyone else. In a very general way, everyone in the nation wants the
same things. That is a good point to remember, for those who would
exaggerate group distinctions. In a particular way, no two people
function exactly alike, have the same ambitions, same capacities.

There is, indeed, no great like-minded mass of laborers. Instead we
have millions of workers split into countless small groups, whose
group interests in the great majority of cases loom larger on the
horizon than any hold the labor movement, as such, might have on the