I want to analyse each of these principles separately, but certain preliminary observations are important. In any industrial society, as Mr Justice Holmes has insisted,[34] liberty of contract always begins where equality of bargaining power begins. Granted, therefore, the normal conditions of modern enterprise, only the existence of strong trade unions will ensure to the average worker just terms in his contract of service. If he stands alone, he has neither the knowledge nor the power to secure for himself proper protection. Nor is this all. Strong trade unionism always means that public opinion can be made effective in an industrial dispute. One has only to compare the situation in the British textile industries, where the power of the unions necessarily involves a search by the state, if there is a dispute, for the terms of a just settlement, with that in America where, from the weakness of the unions, the state seems hardly to know when a dispute has occurred, where, also, the police-power is almost invariably exerted on the side of the employer, to realize the meaning of strong trade unionism. It is, in fact, the condition of industrial justice. No limitation upon freedom to associate is, I urge, permissible unless it can be demonstrated that clear and decisive advantage to the community, including, be it remembered, trade unionists themselves, is likely to result. In this background, let us examine the first of the four principles I have enumerated. No coercion of the government, direct or indirect, is legitimate. If men want to obtain from government a solution other than government is willing to attempt, the way to that end is not by the use of industrial power, but through the ballot-box at a general election. Or, from the angle of indirect coercion, the first interest of the state is in the general well-being of the community; a general strike necessarily aims at that well-being and may therefore be prohibited. The general strike, even a large sympathetic strike, is in fact a revolutionary weapon. As such, it is a threat to the Constitution and illegal as well as unjustifiable.