Before a disease can be treated with any hope of success, its cause, no less than its manifestations, must be studied. American industries and internal improvements were begun with American labor. I can remember when girls in northern New England spent their winters in the factories at Lowell and Manchester and returned to teach school during the summer. When our industries outgrew the supply of American labor, agents were sent abroad and immigrants were brought over under contract. When Congress forbade the admission of contract labor, and wages still advanced, the world heard of it and a polyglot mass of all kindreds and tribes and complexions came flocking to our shores, because, as we have seen elsewhere in this volume, labor was better rewarded here than elsewhere, and relatively better rewarded than capital. Naturally, American-bred boys and girls did not fancy working side by side with foreigners who did not speak the English language, who had not imbibed American ideas and were strangers to American standards of living. So they ceased to accept work, and commenced looking for situations. I visited a mill in Passaic, New Jersey, where the rules were posted in five languages, and a teacher in one of the schools told me there were nineteen languages spoken in her room. In thousands of establishments, laborers, many of whose names are unpronounceable, are known by numbers. Think of an American citizen, outside of a penitentiary, being identified and known by number. Will any wage satisfy that man? What wage or salary will you accept and be known to your boss only by number, and stand in line and accept a pay envelope at the end of the week as “437”? An increased wage may temporarily satisfy the intellect of a man thus environed but it will not satisfy his heart hunger. There are only two demands that a laborer knows how to make: He can ask shorter hours, and he can demand more wages, but neither will satisfy, for neither is the thing he needs. Would you like to know what it is for which the very soul of every man—laborer no less than capitalist—cries and without which he will not be appeased? You do not need to be told. You have only to hark back to the days of your youth. You have only to study mental philosophy, using your own inner consciousness as a text book, and you will find the answer. What the American laborer demands, what the American citizen, regardless of his surroundings, needs, is recognition. He wants a voice. His very being demands some measure of responsibility. He needs to feel that in some way he has contributed to results and that someone besides himself knows it. God save America from a generation in whom these divinely implanted aspirations have been stifled.