A strike by workmen in a particular business is a holdup of all the other workmen in the country, raises the cost of living for everybody, and is undemocratic and unfair.
A lockout of employers in a particular business is a holdup of all other employers and workmen, and is undemocratic and unfair.
In a country of a hundred million people a holdup conducted by a hundred million people for the hundred million people is democracy.
I employ this rather threatening illustration of the possible action of the League in certain cases because it suggests the power of democracy when experts and crowds act together—the fact that democracy can really be made to work, that democracy can be as forcible, as immediate and practical in dealing with autocratic classes, as autocracy can.
But only two or three per cent of what the League in its local and national branches would really do would be like the illustration I have used. The power the League would have to do things like this would make doing them unnecessary.
The regular work of the League would largely consist in accepting invitations from factories, and in supplying and training experts for the purpose of conducting in a factory mutual advertising campaigns, or studies in attention between workmen and employers, adapted to different types of factories.
The way out for democracy in dealing with predatory wealth which organizes to hold up the consumers, and with predatory labor which organizes to hold up the consumers, is for the consumers to organize.
XVII
THE NATIONAL LISTENING MACHINE