Industrial war seems to follow
the same law of change as military war. As the incessant bickering of
private guerilla warfare has given way in modern times to occasional,
large, organized, brief, and terribly destructive campaigns, so it is in
trade. In both cases the aggregate of friction and waste is probably
much less under the modern _regime_, but the dread of these dramatic
lessons is growing ever greater, and the tendency to postponement and
conciliation grows apace. But just as the fact of a growing identity in
the interest of different nations, the growing recognition of that fact,
and the growing horror of war, potent factors as they seem to reasonable
men, make very slow progress towards the substitution of international
arbitration for appeals to the sword, so in industry we cannot presume
that the existence of reasonable grounds for conciliation will speedily
rid us of the terror and waste of industrial conflicts. It is even
possible that just as the speedy formation of a strong national unity,
like that of Prussia under Frederick the Great, out of weak, disordered,
smaller units, may engender for a time a bellicose spirit which works
itself out in strife, so the rapid rise and union of weak and oppressed
bodies of poorer labourers make for a shortsighted policy of blind
aggression. Such considerations as this must, at any rate, temper the
hopes of speedy industrial pacification we may form from dwelling on the
more reasonable effects and teaching of organization.
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