These changed viewpoints of the working classes began to result in attempts on their part to form associations to resist the tendency on the part of capitalists to force down the scale of wages to fit the increased population. Trade unions flourished and became powerful, and the same impulse carried many into the ranks of socialism, and still beyond into the fold of anarchism and syndicalism. And, here note this significant fact, with these new perceptions and these new movements among the masses, THE BIRTH-RATE BEGAN TO FALL RAPIDLY. The writer above quoted from says of this period: "The pessimists were faced by horrors on both sides. On the one hand, they saw that the ever-increasing rate of human production which seemed to them the essential condition of national, social, even moral progress, had not only stopped but was steadily diminishing. On the other hand, they saw that, even so far as it was maintained, it involved, under modern conditions, nothing but social commotion and economic disturbance. There are still many pessimists of this class alive among us even today, alike in England and Germany, but a new generation is growing up, and this question is now entering another phase." It would seem that the race is now well started in the third period, phase, or stage of this conception of the birth-rate. Even the Great War is not likely to seriously interrupt its ultimate progress, though conditions in all civilized countries will unquestionably be disturbed by the unusual conditions now prevailing and caused by the great conflict. The spirit of this third stage seems to be that the Truth is to be found between the two extremes, viz.: (1) the extreme of passive optimism of the first stage; and (2) the extreme of passive pessimism of the second stage. It realizes that there is excellent ground for hope in better things; but it equally realizes that hope alone is vain, and will accomplish nothing unless it is accompanied with and directed by a clear intellectual vision manifested in individual and social action based on that clear intellectual vision.