People declare in the same way
that the interests of labor and capital are identical, and implore them
not to fight with one another. But the truth of that statement seems to
me to depend largely on whether capital owns labor or labor owns
capital. As an abstract proposition it is one of the economic formulae
I would leave instructions at my frontiers to have detained until
further inquiry as to its antecedents. All these statements may be
true, but to make them operative, to give them a dynamic rather than a
static character, we must convince people they are true by close
argument and still more so by realistic illustration.
To bring about a high nobility in the national soul we must make harmony
in its economic life, and the two main currents of economic energy--the
agricultural and urban--must be made to flow so that their action will
not defeat each other. Let us take the farmer first. How ought he to
wish to see life in the towns develop? Should he wish for the triumph of
labor or capital: the success of the co-operative movement, the triumph
of the multiple shop or the private trader, of guilds of workers or
autocrats of industry? Economic desires generally depend on the nature
of the industry men are engaged in.
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