Page:George Soule - The Intellectual and the Labor Movement.djvu/9



Now a person of this sort is likely to be discontented with the human scene as it is, ready of imagination and sympathy, experimental, and somewhat contemptuous of the standards immediately about him. He feels the need of a vital and refreshing force in the world which may upset it more or less, which may lead it into regenerative paths. He likes dramatic conflicts and great events. Looking abroad, he searches for an historic current which seems important enough for him to throw himself into. And soon the labor movement, as reflected in strikes, in manifestoes and prophecies, fills his eye. Here are a multitude of people who also feel discontent, who have a worthy cause, whose onward march is massive and continued enough to bear a sort of grandeur, especially in distant perspective which obscures details and confuses colors. For him the immensely complex British Labor Movement becomes the famous and inspiring Nottingham program of the Labor Party. The early speeches of Trotsky or Lenin stand for the gargantuan upheaval in Russia. He is fired with the spirit of words like "comrade" and "brother," and in moments of dramatic imagination pictures himself sacrificing his share of this world's. goods, and perhaps, if need be, life or liberty as well, in the cause of humanity.

Such an attitude is not only creditable, it is also enjoyable and, to a certain extent, useful. Many of the leaders of the trade unions themselves have it at times, and it is one with which everyone may be touched in a crisis such as a war or a strike. But it is not anyone's habitual attitude; assumed too consistently and too long it may become a posture which is cramping and even inhuman. At any rate, the intellectual who has a romantic picture of the labor movement should remember that the rank and file of those who compose it approach it from a different ground and with a somewhat different purpose. To a manual wage-earner the movement may be a spectacle, a drama, but it is also something more immediate and intimate. It is likely to be presently embodied in a trade-union. This union may have won his allegiance on the plea of high aims and brotherly principles,