It has been everybody's fault, if we are searching for a resting place
for the blame of it all. Which gets us no place.

The point is, looked at without the tinted glasses of either capital
or labor, that the psychology of the American employer for the past,
assuredly the present, and at least the near future, has been, and is,
and will be, so inimical to organized labor that the movement would
not be allowed to function as a constructive industrial force. Too
much of its energies must go to fighting. At the same time, too much
of the energies of the employer go to fighting it. The public pays
the price, and it is enormous. The spiritual cost of bitterness of
spirit far outweighs any monetary loss to industry, tremendous as that
is.

Why is not the present, then, a wise time in which to encourage an
alternative movement, one that has not the effect of a red rag to a
bull? Labor can shout its loudest; the fact remains that in this
country labor is very far from controlling the industrial situation.
Therefore, the employer must still be taken into account in any
program of industrial reform. That being so, it might be saner to try
some scheme the employer will at least listen to than stubbornly
continue to fight the issue out along the old lines of organized labor
alone, at the very mention of which the average employer grows red in
the face.

It is not, indeed, that we would do away with the organized-labor
movement, if we could. The condition is far too precarious for that.
Labor too often needs the support of unionism to keep from being
crushed. The individual too often needs the educational influence
organization exerts. Organized labor, despite the handicaps within and
without, has too much of construction to its credit. The point is,
further growth in the organized-labor movement, considering the
development forced upon the movement by its own past and the ever
antagonistic attitude of business, will not, for the present and
immediate future, necessarily spell peace, efficiency, production.
Rather, continued, if not increased, bitterness.

What is the development, at least for the present and immediate
future, which will improve the situation?

The first move--and by that we mean the thing to start doing
_to-day_--is to begin converting the non-industrially conscious group
into the industrially conscious group. Group 3 is peaceful--they call
no attention to themselves by any unrest or demands or threats. But