Toil And Self

n use for well-nigh two centuries, and Boards of Conciliation dated still further back. But every form that had been tried up to this date under whatever name rested on the voluntary submission of disputes to a board which was also a semi- volunteer body; that is, composed generally of one judge nominated by the employer, one by the employed, and a third elected by those two, or failing that, appointed by the Governor of the State. This, though frequently aState Court of Arbitration, was in effect the same thing as a Board of Conciliation, differing only in the power that created it, and in both cases without any binding compulsory or legal force. Such courts satisfied neither the workmen nor the employers, and after many trials were regarded as failures, to be classed with the Guilds and Unions. Though organized more perfectly and effectively year after year, these courts still had no legal power to enforce the rights of the workmen. When the men turned to the ballot for relief, one of the prominent aims set before them was the establishment by their own votes of a Workmen's Court, whose decisions should be conclusive and binding. The power of corporations, which went on steadily increasing in every generation, had engendered a kind of despair in all but the stoutest Socialists, until the wave of frantic energy, described to you in the last lecture, lifted the multitude to a frenzy of enthusiasm which, as you haveseen, collapsed rapidly as soon as the clima...