It would be fair and fine all around if idle workmen would not riot nor idle employers meet force with force, but invoke the impossible sheriff. When the Dragon has been chained in the Bottomless Pit and we are living under the rule of the saints things will be so ordered, but in these evil times “revolutions are not made with rosewater,” and this is a revolution. What is being revolutionized is the relation between our old friends, Capital and Labor. The relation has already been altered many times, doubtless; once, we know, within the period covered by history, at least in the countries that we call civilized. The relation was formerly a severely simple one—the capitalist owned the laborer. Of the difficulty and the cost of abolishing that system it is needless to speak at length. Through centuries of time and with an appalling sacrifice of life the effort has gone on, a continuous war characterized by monstrous infractions of law and morals, by incalculable cruelty and crime. Our own generation has witnessed the culminating triumphs of this revolution, and now, while still the clank of the falling chains is echoing through the world, and still a diminishing multitude of the world’s workers is in bondage under the old system, the others, for whose liberation was all this “expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” are sharply challenging the advantage of the new. The new is, in truth, breaking down at every point. The relation of employer and employee is giving but little better satisfaction than that of master and slave. The difference between the two is, indeed, not nearly so broad as we persuade ourselves to think it. In many industries there is virtually no difference, and the tendency is more and more to effacement of the difference where it exists. III