It is hardly necessary to
point out that it was not the intention of government officials who
made the appeal to excite a literal interpretation; they did not
expect to be taken so seriously and up to date they have not been
taken more seriously than they intended by American labor. All they
mean and what they expect to gain, is what employers have meant and
wanted; that is labor's surrender of its assumed right to strike
on the job, its surrender of its organized time standards and its
principle of collective bargaining. But when officials speak in the
name of a government what they mean is unimportant; what it means to
the people to have them speak, and the people's interpretation of what
they say, is the important matter.

These appeals of the governments in this time of war to the working
people have the tendency to clear the environment of the suggestion
that common labor, that is the wage earning class (as distinguished
from salaried people, employers and the profiteers pure and simple)
are incompetent to play a responsible part in the work of wealth
production. A responsible part does not mean merely doing well a
detached and technical job; it means facing the risks and sharing in
the experimental experience of productive enterprise as it serves the
promotion of creative life and the needs of an expanding civilization.
As the appeals of the governments at this time bear the stamp of a
nation's will, its valuation and respect for common labor, there
is the chance, it seems, that they may carry to the workers the
energizing thought that _all_ the members of the industrial group must
assume, actually assume, responsibility for production, if production
is to advance. Equally important in the interest of creative work is
the power of these appeals to shift the motive for production from
the acquisitive to the creative impulse. In the midst of the world's
emergency, driven by the fear of destruction the nations have turned
instinctively to the _unused_ creative force in human and common
labor, that is to the ability of the wage earner to think and plan. If
the response of labor is genuine, if with generous abandon it releases
its full productive energy, it is quite certain as matters now stand
that neither the governments nor the financiers are prepared to accept
the consequence.

If labor in answer to these appeals gains the confidence that it is
competent to carry industrial responsibility, or rather that common