"Labor unions usually pass through two phases. First, the inertia of the unorganized labor is too often stirred only by demagogic means. After organization through these and other agencies, the lack of balance in the leaders often makes for injustice in demands, and for violence to obtain them and disregard of agreements entered upon. As time goes on, men become educated in regard to the rights of their employers and to the reflection of these rights in ultimate benefit to labor itself. Then the men, as well as the intelligent employer, endeavor to safeguard both interests. When this stage arrives, violence disappears in favor of negotiation on economic principles, and the unions achieve their greatest real gains. Given a union with leaders who can control the members, and who are disposed to approach differences in a business spirit, there are few sounder positions for the employer, for agreements honorably carried out dismiss the constant harassments of possible strikes. Such unions exist in dozens of trades in this country, and they are entitled to greater recognition. The time when the employer could ride roughshod over his labor is disappearing with the doctrine of _laissez faire_ on which it was founded. The sooner the fact is recognized, the better for the employer. The sooner some miners' unions develop from the first into the second stage, the more speedily will their organizations secure general respect and influence. "The crying need of labor unions, and of some employers as well, is education on a fundamental of economics too long disregarded by all classes and especially by the academic economist. When the latter abandon the theory that wages are the result of supply and demand, and recognize that in these days of international flow of labor, commodities and capital, the real controlling factor in wages is efficiency, then such an educational campaign may become possible. Then will the employer and employee find a common ground on which each can benefit. There lives no engineer who has not seen insensate dispute as to wages where the real difficulty was inefficiency. No administrator begrudges a division with his men of the increased profit arising from increased efficiency. But every administrator begrudges the wage level demanded by labor unions whose policy is decreased efficiency in the false belief that they are providing for more labor."