Excerpt from Labor and the Common Welfare The men and women who work for wages will largely shape the fortunes of America during the next generation. No other one fact stands out so sharply in the aftermath of the world war. According to the point of view, it is an outlook of menace or of confidence. There is apprehension in many minds that this vast emergence of labor, like the rising of a new continent out of the sea, means the sinking of civilization all about it under a wave of revolution and anarchy. On the other hand, there is a growing perception among people who think carefully and see far, that there are foundations under this new continent, that tremendous stabilizing forces have been at work. Perhaps we have only half believed that the welfare of mankind really is most secure when the pyramid rests broadly upon its base instead of balancing on its apex; that the safest thing in human society, ultimately the only thing that is safe, is freedom, under the self-control of democracy. The growth of just this saving power of self-control, right in heart of the labor problem itself, is what most reassures those who see the future of democracy mainly as an industrial issue. That the trade union has been and is a great training school in every-day working democracy, whatever else may be said of it, is at last dawning on the general consciousness. Through a hundred years of fierce controversy, against the bitter hostility of most of the community instead of with its help, workingmen have been learning in their own way the one thing which in 1919, this crucial day of reconstruction, has come to stand between civilization and anarchy - the settled habit of self-government. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.