Every man like all Gaul is divided into three parts. He is an employee of somebody, an employer of somebody, and a consumer.
The natural employer left to himself is apt to suppose, if he is making shoes, that his consumers ought to pay more for shoes, and that his employees ought to be paid less. As regards hats, and umbrellas, and overcoats, and underwear, the same man is a rather noble impartial person towards employers and employees. He wants them to listen to each other and lower the cost of living by not having strikes and lockouts, and by not fighting each other ten hours a day.
In 999 out of 1000 labor quarrels a consumer is naturally a fair-minded person and the best-located person to control and determine how any particular business shall be run.
The League proposed is planned to operate in its national and local functions as a national Consumers' Club, with working branches in every town which shall be engaged in doing specific things every day toward making the employers and employees in that town listen to each other in the interests of the consumer public.
It is always to the interests of the consumer-public to see to it that people who have particular interests in a business should be compelled to listen to the others' interests.
Consumers naturally prefer experts to run things for them, but if they do not run them for them, they are the natural people to make them do it.
In the last resort the right to control is with the consumers.
We are going to look to them very soon now as the natural Central Telephone Exchange in business. It is the consumers who connect everybody up. They are the switchboard of the World.
XII