the street and stops them in what they are doing, and tells the people
in the street that they cannot ride, or that they shall not sleep, or
that they cannot eat--when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping the
whole world up all night because it has a Stomach Ache, I feel suddenly
that the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put it
into such hands that the people in the streets will be protected; into
hands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomach
ache. An industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody in
it has been over-eating and getting more than their share, and is
incompetent and unfit; and obviously it should have its freedom, its
privilege of selecting its food, taken away from it until it behaves.

Always allowing for exceptions, we may put it down as a general truth
that, when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position, it
is because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conduct
it, and the cure lies, not in more force, but in more brains. One cannot
help being angered by force, because one knows that it is not only not a
remedy, but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness in
business. Force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up,
postpones coöperation, defeats the mutual interest which is the very
substance of business efficiency in a nation. Force is itself the injury
mounting up more and more, which it seeks to cure.

The most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be to
have employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for getting
men to trust and believe in them. We are getting smoke-consumers,
computing machines, and the next contrivance is going to be the employer
who has the understanding spirit, and who sees the cash value of human
genius, the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting on
with people. Arbitration boards are at best (as they themselves would