Page:George Soule - The Intellectual and the Labor Movement.djvu/21

 Parties keep large numbers of volunteer workers busy. If one is a Socialist or a Farmer-Laborite, or a Non-Partisan Leaguer, he may find this work in abundance in many sections of the country, and as labor becomes more active in politics such opportunities will increase. There is great need, in labor politics, for newspaper and publicity men, for organizers, for canvassers, for lawyers, speakers, and general utility men and women who can be generous with their time. Here again, however, the intellectual should be careful not to lead away from labor, as embodied either in the official or the rank and file. Ultimately, when a better common ground, and more understanding and trust have been built between the intellectual and the labor movement, there is a possibility here for leadership as well. It is noteworthy that in every country where labor has assumed a substantial political power, many of the political leaders are professional men. Such leaders are found in no one wing of the movement. They extend all the way from Lenin in Russia, through Longuet in France and Ramsay MacDonald in England, to such a conservative Socialist as Sidney Webb. In politics the intellectual has a peculiar opportunity to cooperate with the labor movement and even to lead. We in America must remember, however, that no number of intellectuals can form a labor political movement or even lead it by themselves. Labor itself must first go into politics.

Whether one is to work actively for the labor movement, or is merely to be connected with it in sympathy and by indirect contact, a sound educational basis is indispensable. Those still in college who are interested in the matter have an enviable opportunity to prepare themselves for assisting the new world to come into being, or for understanding the process.

It is, first of all, necessary to understand the method of experimental science. One of the greatest tasks of the next few generations is to give to the human sciences something of the same certainty, something of the same possibility of accumulating tested knowledge, that has marked the natural sciences since their new start made, let us say, by Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum." On this account a knowledge of the methods of the natural sciences, preferably biology,