Chapter XII: PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION--(continued) (3)

That the organization of labor herewith suggested would prove to be any ultimate solution of the labor problem, is wholly improbable. It would constitute, like the proposed system, of corporate regulation, at best a transitional method of reaching some very different method of labor-training, distribution, and compensation; and what that method might be, is at present merely a matter of speculation. The proposed reorganization of labor, like the proposed system of institutional reform, and like the proposed constructive regulation of large industrial corporations, simply takes advantage of those tendencies in our current methods which look in a formative direction; and in so far as these several tendencies prevail, they will severally supplement and strengthen one another. The more independent, responsible, and vigorous political authority will be the readier to seek some formative solution of the problem of the distribution of wealth and that of the organization of labor. Just in so far as the combination of capital continues to be economically necessary, it is bound to be accompanied by the completer unionizing of labor. Just in so far as capital continues to combine, the state is bound to appropriate the fruits of its monopoly for public purposes. Just in so far as the corporations become the lessees of special franchises from the state, pressure can be brought to bear in favor of the more systematic and more stimulating organization of labor; and finally, just in so far as labor was systematically organized, public opinion would demand a vigorous and responsible concentration of political and economic power, in order to maintain a proper balance. An organic unity binds the three aspects of the system together; and in so far as a constructive tendency becomes powerful in any one region, it will tend by its own force to introduce constructive methods of organization into the other divisions of the economic, political, and social body.

Such are the outlines of a national policy which seeks to do away with existing political and economic abuses, not by "purification" or purging, but by substituting for them a more positive mode of action and a more edifying habit of thought. The policy seeks to make headway towards the most far-reaching and thorough-going democratic ideals by the taking advantage of real conditions and using realistic methods. The result may wear to advanced social reformers the appearance of a weak compromise. The extreme socialist democrat will find a discrepancy between the magnificent end and the paltry means. "Why seek to justify," he will ask, "a series of proposals for economic and institutional reform most of which have already been tried in Europe for purely practical reasons, why seek to justify such a humble scheme of reconstruction by such a remote and lofty purpose?" It might remind him of a New Yorker who started for the North Pole, but proposed to get there by the Subway. The justification for the association of such a realistic practical programme with an end which is nothing short of moral and social improvement of mankind, is to be found, however, by the manner in which even the foregoing proposals will be regarded by the average American democrat. He will regard them as in meaning and effect subversive of the established political and economic system of the country; and he would be right. The American people could never adopt the accompanying programme, moderate as it is from the point of view of its ultimate object, without unsettling some of their most settled habits and transforming many of their most cherished ideas. It would mean for the American people the gradual assumption of a new responsibility, the adoption of a new outlook, the beginning of a new life. It would, consequently, be radical and revolutionary in implication, even though it were modest in its expectation of immediate achievement; and the fact that it is revolutionary in implication, but moderate in its practical proposals, is precisely the justification for my description of it as a constructive national programme. It is national just because it seeks to realize the purpose of American national association without undermining or overthrowing the living conditions of American national integrity.