The newspapers in England and America seem to think that in their business of rolling the world along, what they find themselves confronted with just now is an economic problem.

The problem that the newspapers are really confronted with, as a matter of fact, is one with which newspaper men big and little are more competent to deal than they would be with an expert problem in economics.  The real problem that newspapers are confronted with every night, every morning, to-day, is a problem in human nature.

Some people believe that human nature can be believed in, and others do not.  The socialists, the syndicalists, the trades unionists, as a class, and the capitalists as a class, are acting as if they did not.  A great many inventors, and a great many workmen, all the more bold and inventive workmen, and many capitalists and great organizers of facts and of men, are acting as if they believed in human nature.

Which are right?  Can a mutual-interest employer, can a mutual-interest worker, be produced by the human race?  There are some of us who answer that this is a matter of fact, that this type of man can be produced, is already produced, and is about to be reproduced indefinitely.

The moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers that this is true we will change the face of the earth.

Why not change the face of the earth now?

In this connection I respectfully submit three considerations: 

1st.  If all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what Lord Grey (as President of the Labour Copartnership Association) knows to-day about copartnership—­the hard facts about the way copartnership works in calling out human nature—­in nerving and organizing labour, every employer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude toward labour which would result in making strikes and lockouts as impracticable, as incredible, as moony, as visionary forever as ideals of a world without strikes look now.

2nd.  If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what Frederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen’s work so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third more wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and of the trades unions of the world—­the attitude of doing as little work as possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways of not being of any use to employers—­would face about in a day.

3rd.  What Lord Grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is in the form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts.  What Frederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and with steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the form of history that has been making for thirty years—­and that can be looked up and proved.

Why should not everybody who employs labour know what Lord Grey knows?