MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 19 



They are in too many workplaces servile, driven, cowed. These conditions do 

 not make for efficient workmanship or for good citizenship. Docile and 

 mechanized workers cannot be as efficient, their per capita output will be less 

 than that of workers who take an interest in their work, who have an oppor- 

 tunity to do creative work, and who have some even though it be small, voice 

 in the management of the business. The laborer may be made to work ; but 

 the unwilling worker is below the par of efficiency. Every teacher kno^s 

 that the uninterested pupil does not measure up to his possibilities ; it is not 

 as well understood that the uninterested wage worker is the inefficient and 

 careless worker. Moreover, such a situation may easily develop the com- 

 bustible stuff out of which is formed the personnel of the I. W. W. or of the 

 Bolsheviki. Out of the regimentation of docile individuals into well-disci- 

 plined groups of zestless individuals grows the danger of sudden and violent 

 self-assertion. 



The thwarting of the instinctive desires among working people tends as in 

 the case of school children, to produce unrest, abnormality, delinquency and, 

 in some cases, violence. Workers, thwarted by industrial conditions, become 

 abnormal men and women. Keen observers have noted the gi'owth of "sullen 

 hostility" toward the employing class on the part of the migi'atory workers. 

 The great group of migratory or nomadic workers have lost the incentives and 

 the point of view which places emphasis upon workman-like qualities. They 

 are drifting and rootless workers who are hostile' to employers, to organized 

 society and to the ideals which the middle class and the more conservative 

 type of workmen blessed with home ties and a stake in life, hold dear. The 

 problem is not one of statics or of going back to a pre-war footing ; it is rather 

 one of movement toward industrial democracy of the type advocated by the 

 British Labor Party or toward syndicalism and I. W. W.-ism. The urgent 

 problem is to find a practical middle ground in industry between autocracy or 

 Prussianism and syndicalism or Bolshevism. 



Programs for reconstruction or re-adjustment should be formulated with 

 this situation in mind. The reactionaries of today are playing into the hands 

 of the syndicalists and ultra-radicals. Punishment alone is insufficient in 

 dealing with criminals ; and it will likewise prove insufficient in dealing with 

 the radical members of the I. W. W. The United States should give them an 

 opportunity to earn an honest livelihood, to gain a semblance to equality of 

 economic opportunity, and to satisfy the fundamental and deep-seated instincts 

 of human nature such as self-assertion, acquisitiveness and contrivance. If 

 we are not ready to take this step toward making this country safe for 

 democracy, let us again read the records of historic political and social 

 upheavals. 



The ideals of the American educational system— though very imperfectly 

 carried out in actual practice — call for the development of thinking aud. seir- 



