But a large fraction of the people in the industrial countries is visibly growing uneasy under these principles as they work out under existing circumstances. So, e.g., it is evident that the common man within the United Kingdom, in so far as the Labor Party is his accredited spokesman, is increasingly restive under the state of "things as they are," and it is scarcely less evident that he finds his abiding grievance in the Vested Interests and that system of law and custom which cherishes them. And these men, as well as their like in other countries, are still in an unsettled state of advance to positions more definitely at variance with the received law and custom. In some instances, and indeed in more or less massive formation, this movement of dissent has already reached the limit of tolerance and has found itself sharply checked by the constituted keepers of law and custom.
It is perhaps not unwarranted to count the I. W. W. as such a vanguard of dissent, in spite of the slight consistency and the exuberance of its movements. After all, these and their like, here and in other countries are an element of appreciable weight in the population. They are also increasingly numerous, in spite of well-conceived repressive measures, and they appear to grow increasingly sure. And it will not do to lose sight of the presumption that, while they may be gravely in the wrong, they are likely not to be far out of touch with the undistinguished mass of the common sort who still continue to live within the law. It should seem likely that the peculiar moral and intellectual bent which marks them as "undesirable citizens"
will, all the while, be found to run closer to that of the common man than the corresponding bent of the law-abiding beneficiaries under the existing system.
Vaguely, perhaps, and with a picturesque irresponsibility, these and their like are talking and thinking at cross-purposes with the principles of free bargain and self-help. There is reason to believe that to their own thinking, when cast in the terms in which they conceive these things, their notions of reasonable human intercourse are not equally fantastic and inconclusive. So, there is the dread word. Syndicalism, which is quite properly unintelligible to the kept classes and the adepts of corporation finance, and which has no definable meaning within the constituent principles of the eighteenth century. But the notion of it seems to come easy, by mere lapse of habit, to these others in whom the discipline of the New Order has begun to displace the preconceptions of the eighteenth century.
Then there are, in this country, the agrarian syndicalists, in the shape of the Nonpartisan League, large, loose, animated, and untidy, but sure of itself in its settled disallowance of the Vested Interests, and fast passing the limit of tolerance in its inattention to the timeworn principles of equity. How serious is the moral dereliction and the subversive stupidity of these agrarian syndicalists, in the eyes of those who still hold fast to the eighteenth century, may be gathered from the animation of the business community, the commercial clubs, the Rotarians, and the traveling salesmen, in any glace where the League raises its untidy head. And as if advisedly to complete the case, these agrarians, as well as their running-mates in the industrial centers and along the open road, are found to be slack in respect of their national spirit. So, at least, it is said by those who are interested to know.
It is not that these and their like are ready with "a satisfactory constructive program," such as the people of the uplift require to be shown before they will believe that things are due to change. It is something of the simpler and cruder sort, such as history is full of, to the effect that whenever and so far as the time-worn rules no longer fit the new material circumstances they presently fail to carry conviction as they once did. Such wear and tear of institutions is unavoidable where circumstances change; and it is through the altered personal equation of those elements of the population which are most directly exposed to the changing circumstances that the wear and tear of institutions may be expected to take effect. To these untidy creatures of the New Order common honesty appears to mean vaguely something else, perhaps something more exacting, than what was "nominated in the bond" at the time when the free bargain and self-help were written into the moral constitution of Christendom by the handicraft industry and the petty trade. And why should it not?
