to introduce labor legislation in their own country
accepted this naive philosophy of the German people, which had been so
skilfully developed by Prussian statesmen, without appreciating that
its result was enervating. Our prevailing political philosophy,
however, that workers and capitalists understand their own interests
and are more capable than the state of looking after them, stood in
the way of adopting on grounds of statesmanship the German methods.

The American working man has never been convinced that he can get odds
of material advantage from the state. His method is to get all he
can through "pull," good luck or his superior wits. He could find
no satisfaction like his German brothers in surrendering concrete
interests for some abstract idea of a state. He could find no greater
pleasure in being exploited by the state than he now finds in
exploitation by private business. The average American values life for
what he can get out of it, or for what he can put into it. He has
no sentimental value of service, nor is service anywhere with us an
institutionalized ideal. We judge it on its merits, detached perhaps,
but still for what it actually renders in values.

In conformity with American ideals, wage earners look to their own
movements and not to the state for protection. Their movements require
infinite sacrifice, but they supply them with an interest and an
opportunity for initiative which their job lacks. The most important
antidote for the workers to factory and business methods is not
shorter hours or well calculated rest periods or even change-off from
one kind of routine work to another. As important as these may be,
reform in labor hours does not compensate the worker for his exclusion
from the directing end of the enterprise of which he is a part and
from a position where he can understand the purpose of his work The
trade union interference with the business of wealth production is in
part an attempt to establish a cooerdination of the worker which is
destroyed in the prosecution of business and factory organization. The
interference of the union is an attempt to bridge the gulf between
the routine of service and the administration, and direction of the
service which the worker gives.

I do not intend to imply that the labor movement is a conscious
attempt at such cooerdination. It is not. The conscious purpose is the
direct and simple desire to resist specific acts of domination and
to increase