Their
civilizations, like ours, were built on the unstable basis of a vast
working-class with no real share in the wealth and grandeur it helped to
create. The character of his kingdom was revealed in dream to
Nebuchadnezzar by an image with a golden head and feet of clay, and that
image might stand as symbol of the empires the world has known. There
is in all a vast population living in an underworld of labor whose
freedom to vote confers on them no real power, and who are most often
scorned and neglected by those who profit by their labors. Indifference
turns to fear and hatred if labor organizes and gathers power, or makes
one motion of its myriad hands towards the sceptre held by the autocrats
of industry. When this class is maddened and revolts, civilization
shakes and totters like cities when the earthquake stirs beneath their
foundations. Can we master these arcane human forces? Can we, by any
device, draw this submerged humanity into the light and make them real
partners in the social order, not partners merely in the political life
of the nation, but, what is of more importance, in its economic life?
If we build our civilization without integrating labor into its economic
structure, it will wreck that civilization, and it will do that more
swiftly today than two thousand years ago, because there is no longer
the disparity of culture between high and low which existed in past
centuries.
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