If war lasts long enough, as it did in Austria, millions of
citizens must starve. If labor should try slacking, as it did in
Russia, the economic state would starve to death and the workers
die with it.

Men who have been through strikes and lockouts until they have
been reduced to rags and hunger place no trust in the Russian
theory that men can quit work and loaf their way to wealth. We
loafed our way to hunger, misery and peonage. We saw that the
whole world would come to our fate, if all should follow our
example. Luckily we won our point, so we went back to work and
helped feed the starved social state, and in a few years America
was rich again. And America continued rich and fat until the
World War wastage shrank her to skin and bones again. Much of her
muscle has disappeared (1921: five million workers are idle) and
she must be nursed back by big crops, and big output by labor
before she will be strong enough to reabsorb into her system
every muscle in America.

That's my belief. That's my gospel. I did not make this gospel.
It is God's law and we can not alter it. If I were asked to write
the BIBLE OF LABOR, this chapter would be the law and the
prophets. And from these truths I would advise each man to write
his own Ten Commandments.



CHAPTER XXX

BREAKING INTO THE TIN INDUSTRY