It may be asserted that of the two sides employers are the
more inclined to be impatient, exigent, and excitedly emphatic
and to resort to an ultimatum. They are also the less famil-
iar with the broader aspects of the labor question. Not infre-
quently they have but the crudest notions of great modern social
problems. Successful employers sometimes labor under the in-
firmities of character that develop with inherited or otherwise
quickly accumulated wealth. Falling readily into the habit of
buying at their own wish and command, they grow hotly indig-
nant on having the men they have come to regard as subject to
their will interpose the obstacle of a will of their own. That
workingmen should have facts, views, perchance theories, and,
further, presume to act upon them, is to the capitalist, believing
it is he who finds them work, nothing short of disloyalty.
Such employers, of course, fall victims of their own defective
development. They must learn through pain and tribulation
that times have changed. The feudal age has been left behind
by the present century. Labor to-day knows its rights, has
developed its methods of asserting those rights, and when or-
ganized assumes an equality in the social scheme with every
other element, the employing class included. — American Feder-
ationist, November, igio.
