A
policy of emancipation should provide labor with a means of attracting
to itself that kind of knowledge which is gained in universities,
laboratories, colleges of science, and, above all, in the actual
guidance of great industrial enterprises. In any trial of endurance
those who start with the greatest intellectual, moral, and material
resources will win.
I do not deny that the strike is a powerful weapon in the hand of labor,
but it is one with which it is difficult to imagine labor dealing a
knock-out blow to the present social order. I believe in an orderly
evolution of society, at least in Ireland, and doubt whether by
revolution people can be raised to an intelligence, a humanity, or a
nobility of nature greater than they formerly possessed. Nobody can
remain standing on tiptoe. After a little time disorder subsides and
some strong man leads the inevitable reaction. In France people
revolted against a decadent monarchy, and in a dozen years they had a
new emperor. In England they beheaded a king as a protest against
tyranny, and they got a dictator in his place who took little or no
account of parliaments; and finally a second Charles, rather worse than
the first, came to the throne.
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