Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Labor Question. gp:96.i 13. Washington Gladden. The danger of the hour, as it appears to me, is that our captains of industry will array against themselves the gathering might of resistless democracy and be trampled in the dust. It would be far better for them, and for the common man, and for all the rest of us, if they would keep the leadership of industry. Leadership they can have if they have wit to claim it and sense enough to exercise it—leadership but not lordship. Industrial democracy wants leaders, but not autocrats; and large rewards and precious—not billions of dollars, but blessing and honor—are waiting for those who have the vision and the courage for this high service. Industrial democracy means giving the wage-workers, through collective bargaining, a voice in the determination of their share in the joint product. It does not mean the domination .si.tlie business by the men and the subjugation f.the emjplpyer, though this is the employer's apprehension, and this is the notion that sometimes gets into the working man's head. Mr. Kier Hardie, M. P., for whom I have great respect, spoke only the other day of the prospect that the working class was about to become the ruling class. Pardon, Mr. Hardie, but in democracy there are no ruling classes. We call no man master, not even the walking delegate. And inverted feudalism, with the common man on top, would be no whit better than the old fashioned sort with the common man under foot. We will have neither of them. You are not going to tyrannize over us, Mr. Kier Hardie, with your labor organizations, and we do not believe that you really want to do any such thing. You are going to stand by our side, with power in the industrial realm to assert and maintain your rights as men, and with a sense of justice in your br...