During three eventful centuries, the part of North America that is now
the United States has witnessed two fierce culture-survival struggles.
In the first of these struggles--that between the American Indians and
the whites, the culture of Western Europe supplanted the culture of
primitive America. In the second struggle--that between the slave
holders of the South and the rising business interests of the North,
the slave oligarchy was swept from power, and in its place there was
established the new financial imperialism that dominates the public
life of the nation at the present time. Despite the extreme youth of
the capitalist system in the United States, there are already many
signs that those who profit by it must be prepared to defend it at no
distant date. The Russian Revolution of 1917 sounded the loudest note
of warning, but even before that occurred, the industrial capitalists
had entered upon a struggle which they believed to be of the greatest
importance to their future.

During the twenty years that elapsed between the Homestead and Pullman
strikes and the beginning of the world war, the pages of American
industrial history are crowded with stories of the labor conflict--on
an ever vaster and vaster scale, between nationally organized
employers, using the power of the police, the courts and, where
necessary, the army; and the nationally organized workers, backed by
some show of public sentiment, and armed with the strength of numbers.
Although the bulk of the workers was still unorganized, and although
those who were organized thought and acted within the lines of their
crafts, considering themselves as railway trainmen or as carpenters
first, and as workers afterward, there was not wanting a new
spirit--sometimes called the spirit of industrial unionism--
emphasizing labor solidarity and speaking most loudly through the