Potential In Peace or In War.

I

N making the transition from a peace to a war basis it is necessary for us as a nation to sift our institutions and policies, retaining those that are sound and that give genuine service and rejecting those that are artificial and that contribute to the exploiting forces. We have been content with names rather than with realities. There have been many virile, "essential agencies evolved out of fundamental needs of society that have not been recognized as a part of the political machinery. These forces are economic in nature. The real life and the real power of the nation is not political-it is economic.

Because Our political institutions and theories have not been formulated with regard to the real power of the nation we have often been beguiled into believing that a democracy existed when in truth the political forms were democratic in nature but the actual control was exercised through economic instrumentalities, organized on an autocratic basis and contributing to the building up of exploiting and often corrupting forces.

The forceful democratizing agency that has been operating in the economic world has been the trade-union movement.

As we go forward into the world war we need, more than ever, the trade-union movement. It has been needed in the initial work When demands came for an immediate, vastly inof preparing the nation for conflict. creased supply of munitions, government departments and agents have depended upon trade-union officials for information of sources of workers and to assist the government in securing and maintaining the good-will of workers. The government could not deal with individuals, it had to work through some organized agency; that agency existed in the trade-unions.

Many government officials handling industrial problems have been trained for other work and do not understand economic conditions or how to deal with workers as workers. The government has found that it can facilitate its work by having trade-union officials represent the workers, present their grievances and endeavor to reach an adjustment, because the trade-union movement represents an effort to meet a real industrial necessity by securing working agreements between employers and employes.

No government can be maintained without mobilizing the good-will of the masses. The trade-union movement is a constituted agency