population a life of such limited happiness, of such restrictions on
personal development, and of such misery and desolation when sickness or
accident comes, that we should be childish political scientists not to
see that from such an environment little self-sacrificing love of
country, little of ethics, little of gratitude could come. It is
unfortunate that the scientific findings of our social condition must
use words which sound strangely like the phraseology of the Socialists.
This similarity, however, should logically be embarrassing to the
critics of these findings, not to the scientists. Those who have
investigated and studied the lower strata of American labor have long
recognized the I.W.W. as purely a symptom of a certain distressing state
of affairs. The casual migratory laborers are the finished product of an
economic environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out human
beings modeled after all the standards which society abhors. The history
of the migratory workers shows that, starting with the long hours and
dreary winters on the farms they ran away from, or the sour-smelling
bunk-house in a coal village, through their character-debasing
experience with the drifting 'hire and fire' life in the industries, on
to the vicious social and economic life of the winter unemployed, their
training predetermined but one outcome, and the environment produced its
type.

"The I.W.W. has importance only as an illustration of a stable American
economic process. Its pitiful syndicalism, its street-corner opposition
to the war, are the inconsequential trimmings. Its strike alone,
faithful as it is to the American type, is an illuminating thing. The
I.W.W., like the Grangers, the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' Alliance,
the Progressive Party, is but a phenomenon of revolt. The cure lies in
taking care of its psychic antecedents; the stability of our Republic
depends on the degree of courage and wisdom with which we move to the