Wherever, then, we find this spirit of exclusion manifested, whether actively as in some of the instances I have cited, or passively in apathetic indifference to the welfare of the down-trodden worker, man or woman, American or foreign, white or colored, there is no true spirit of working-class solidarity, only a self-seeking acceptance of a limited and antiquated form of labor organization, quite out of keeping with twentieth-century conditions and needs.  This does not make for advance ultimately in any branch of labor, but is one of the worst retarding influences to the whole movement.  In former ages the principles of democracy could only extend within one class after another.  The democracy of our day is feeling after a larger solution; the democracy of the future cannot know limits or it will be no democracy at all.

It has been pointed out many times that the rich are rich, not so much in virtue of what they possess, but in virtue of what others do not possess.  The ratio of the difference between the full pocket and many empty pockets represents the degree in which the one rich man or woman is able to command the services of many poor men and women.  We all recognize these crude differences and regret the results to society.  But after all is the case so very much bettered when for rich and poor, we read skilled and unskilled, when we have on the one hand a trade whose members have attained their high standing through the benefits of years of training, a strong union, high initiation fees, perhaps limitation of apprentices?  I am neither praising nor criticizing any methods of trade protection.  All of them are probably highly beneficial to those within the charmed circle of the highly organized trades.  But if, in the very midst of the general state of industrial anarchy and oppression which the unskilled workers have to accept, it is possible to find trades in which organization has been so successful in maintaining good conditions, this is partly because the number of such artisans, so skilled and so protected, has always been limited.  And let us ask ourselves what are the effects of these limitations upon those outside the circle, whether those excluded from the trade or from the organization because of the demands exacted, or those debarred by poverty or other circumstances from learning any skilled trade at all.  Unquestionably the advantages of the highly protected ones are not won solely from the employers.  Some part of their industrial wealth is contributed by the despised and ignored outsiders.  Some proportion of their high wages is snatched from the poor recompense of the unskilled.  Women are doubly sufferers, underpaid both as women and as unskilled workers.  It is not necessary to subscribe to the old discredited wage-fund theory, in order to agree with this.