Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/322

 for the irritation caused by strikes is visited on the direct and apparent cause, that is, the strikers themselves; it is visited, too, on the official head of the local government, who is supposed to be able some-*how to put a stop to such things. The general or mass intelligence will not as yet go much deeper than the superfices of the problem, or seek to understand the causes of economic unrest and disorder; it still thinks in old sequences and puts its trust in the weapons of the flesh.

I think I shall never forget the first call I had from a delegation of manufacturers during the early days of those strikes. They came in not too friendly spirit, but rather in their capacity of "citizens and tax-payers," standing on their rights, as they understood them, though they in common with most of us and with the law as well, had only the most hazy notions as to what those rights were, and perhaps still hazier notions as to their duties. "We come," said the spokesman, "representing two millions of dollars' worth of property."

They could not have put their case more frankly. But I, as I was able to recall in that moment, represented two hundred thousand people, themselves among them of course. And here at the very outset was the old conflict in its simplest terms, of man against property. Now, in that old struggle, while I had made no sacrifices in the cause and have been of no especial service in it, I had nevertheless given intellectual assent to the general propositions advanced in favor of the human side, the side of man.