All they
mean and what they expect to gain, is what employers have meant and
wanted; that is labor's surrender of its assumed right to strike
on the job, its surrender of its organized time standards and its
principle of collective bargaining. But when officials speak in the
name of a government what they mean is unimportant; what it means to
the people to have them speak, and the people's interpretation of what
they say, is the important matter.
These appeals of the governments in this time of war to the working
people have the tendency to clear the environment of the suggestion
that common labor, that is the wage earning class (as distinguished
from salaried people, employers and the profiteers pure and simple)
are incompetent to play a responsible part in the work of wealth
production. A responsible part does not mean merely doing well a
detached and technical job; it means facing the risks and sharing in
the experimental experience of productive enterprise as it serves the
promotion of creative life and the needs of an expanding civilization.
As the appeals of the governments at this time bear the stamp of a
nation's will, its valuation and respect for common labor, there
is the chance, it seems, that they may carry to the workers the
energizing thought that _all_ the members of the industrial group must
assume, actually assume, responsibility for production, if production
is to advance. Equally important in the interest of creative work is
the power of these appeals to shift the motive for production from
the acquisitive to the creative impulse.
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