nized business. For years its sales department had tried to seek
out the highest grade of talent, and the result was a selling and
distributing organization that was the model and the envy of
competitors. But questions of employment seem to have gone by default,
the general policy being confined to a sincere but vague good-will
toward employees and acceptance of things as they were.

The issues of the strike were issues with which we are all familiar. On
the workers' side, grievances and no workable machinery for redress;
result: organization, concerted group action, force. On the other side,
there was a personal readiness to hear grievances, coupled with
insistence on the ancient right of the employer to conduct his own
business in his own way, without interference from employees or the
public.

After weeks of deadlock the strain of a distressing situation, losses
from the interruption of business, regard for public opinion and the
opinion of friends, combined with their own desire to do the right
thing, induced the employers, probably against their best judgment, to
recede from their position. An agreement was made providing for
increased wages, standardization of piece-work, a preferential shop,
and appointment by the firm of a person to hear grievances and to
cooperate with a representative of the union in securing redress.

The union in this case was fortunate in being represented by a
high-minded man who was a real statesman. The firm selected a trained
economist as labor expert, and he soon had an employment department in
operation. Together these men and their colleagues have kept peace in
the concern and have developed and expanded the machinery for settling
disputes into a model of industrial-relations organization.

Some four years after the strike the business head of the firm
testified in a public hearing that he should scarcely know how to
conduct his business without the organization which now obtains for
dealing collectively with labor. He also in the same hearing expressed
the view that a large employer is a trustee of the public, responsible
for the measure of public welfare in which his business results; and
this man, remember, is not a reformer or even a radical, but just a
successful business man.

In this bit of labor history there were, no doubt, many fortunate but
uncontrollable factors which, otherwise combined, would have brought a
less happy result. But two things stand out: first, the la