9. In determining a choice of a vocation what considerations are you going to keep in view? What tests have you applied to make sure that you know your own tastes and abilities? Have you made yourself acquainted with the industrial opportunities? See foot note on p. 397.
10. To what extent should the workers share in the management of industry?
Topics for Debate
1. The Sherman Law should be repealed.
2. The government should have the power to fix maximum prices in the case of all goods produced by industrial organizations which possess a monopoly.
CHAPTER XXI
LABOR AND LABOR PROBLEMS
The purpose of this chapter is to describe the organization, rights, claims, and problems of the American wage-earner.
Hand-industry created no labor problem.
Labor in the Old and the New Industrial Order.—So long as the system of hand-industry was in existence there was no sharp division of employers and laborers into two separate classes. The employer was himself a workman at the loom, the bench, or the forge. He might have as helpers a couple of apprentices who were learning the trade, and perhaps a journeyman or two; but rarely were there more than a half dozen men or women employed in a single establishment. The apprentices and journeymen, moreover, expected in due course to set up in business for themselves. There was no hard-and-fast labor class, and no labor problem as we have it at the present day. The employer and his helpers worked together, often lived together; no great gulf separated them in wealth, education, or social position.