The spirit they display lies outside
the field of blame from those who have never known what it means to
lose wife and children in the slow starvation of the strike or husband
and sons in the death-pit of a mine, and themselves to be cheated
life-long of the joys that ought to fall to the lot of the normal,
happiness-seeking human being, from birth to death.
The syndicalists will have done their work if they rouse the rest of
us to a keener sense of our responsibilities. When the day comes that
every worker receives the full product of his toil, the reasons for
existence of this form of revolutionary activity will have passed
away.
Of one thing the present writer is convinced. That this newest form of
the industrial struggle, however crude it may appear, however blind
and futile in some of its manifestations, is destined to affect
profoundly the course of the more orthodox trade-union movement. The
daring assumptions that labor is the supreme force, that loyalty to
the working world is the supreme virtue, and failure in that loyalty
the one unpardonable sin, has stirred to the very depths organized
labor of the conservative type, has roused to self-questioning many
and many a self-satisfied orthodox trade unionist, inspiring him with
loftier and more exacting ideals.
Pages:
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469