A certain type of labor agitator, or a “parlor laborite,” prefer to see only the gloomy side of the worker's life. They are as dishonest as the employer who would see only the contentment. The picture must be viewed in its entirety—and that means considering the workers not as a labor problem, but as a social problem. Workers are not an isolated group, who keep their industrial adversities or industrial blessings to themselves. They and their families and dependents are the majority of our population. As a nation, we rise no higher in the long run than the welfare of the majority. Nor can the word “welfare,” if one thinks socially, ever be limited to the word “contentment.” It is quite conceivable—nay, every person has seen it in actuality—that an individual may be quite contented in his lot and yet have that lot incompatible with the welfare of the larger group. It is but as a part of the larger group that worker, employer, and the public must come to view the labor problem. When a worker is found who appears perfectly amenable to long hours, bad air, unhygienic conditions in general—and many are—somebody has to pay the price. There are thousands of contented souls, as we measure contentment, in the congested tenement districts of East Side New York. Does that fact add to our social welfare? Because mothers for years were willing to feed their children bad milk, was then the movement to provide good milk for babies a waste of time and money? Plenty of people always could be found who would willingly drink impure water. Society found that too costly, and cities pride themselves to-day on their pure water supply and low typhoid rate. There are industrial conditions flourishing which insidiously take a greater toll of society than did ever the death of babies from unclean milk, the death of old and young from impure water. The trouble is that their effects permeate in ways difficult for the unwilling eye to see. Perhaps in the long run, one of the most harmful phases of modern civilization is this very contentment of not only the workers, but the employer and society at large, under conditions which are not building up a wholesome, healthy, intelligent population. Indeed, it is not so much the fault of modern industrialism as such. Perhaps it is because there are so many people in the world and the ability of us human beings, cave men only ten thousand years ago, to care for so many people has not increased with the same rapidity as the population. Our numbers have outrun our capacities. Twentieth century development calls for large-scale organization for which the human mind has shown itself inadequate.