Of course with both sides in a factory in this way pursuing the other side and asking it to help it not to be fooled, everything everybody says counts. There is less waste in truth in a factory. Truth that is asked for and thirsted for, is drunk up. The refreshment of it, the efficiency of it which the people get, goes on the job at once.
XIII
LISTENING TO JIM
(A Note on Collective Bargaining)
I would like to say to begin with that I believe in national collective bargaining as it is going to be in the near future—collective bargaining executed on such subjects and with such power and limitations and in such spirit as shall be determined by the facts—the practical engineering facts in human nature and the way human nature works.
I do not feel that collective bargaining has been very practical about human nature so far. The moment that it is, the public and all manner of powerful and important persons, who are suspicious or offish or unreasonable about collective bargaining now, are going to believe in it.
A book entitled "A Few Constructive Reflections on Marriage" by a man who had had a fixed habit for many years of getting divorces,—a man whose ex-wives were all happily married would not be very deep probably. A symposium by his ex-wives who had all succeeded on their second husbands would really count more. Most candid people would admit this as a principle.
The same principle seems to hold good about what people think in National Associations of Employers and national associations of workingmen in labor unions.
Thinking a thing out nationally on a hundred million scale which is being done by people who cannot even think a thing out individually or on a two-person, or five-person scale, is in danger of coming to very superficial decisions.