The actual
Justice must come by trained intelligence, by broadened sympathies
toward the individual man or woman who crosses our path; one item
added to another is the only method by which to build up a
conception lofty enough to be of use in the world."
This schoolgirl recipe has been tested in many later experiences,
the most dramatic of which came when I was called upon by a
manufacturing company to act as one of three arbitrators in a
perplexing struggle between themselves, a group of
trade-unionists and a non-union employee of their establishment.
The non-union man who was the cause of the difficulty had ten
years before sided with his employers in a prolonged strike and
had bitterly fought the union. He had been so badly injured at
that time, that in spite of long months of hospital care he had
never afterward been able to do a full day's work, although his
employers had retained him for a decade at full pay in
recognition of his loyalty. At the end of ten years the once
defeated union was strong enough to enforce its demands for a
union shop and in spite of the distaste of the firm for the
arrangement, no obstacle to harmonious relations with the union
remained but for the refusal of the trade-unionists to receive as
one of their members the old crippled employee, whose spirit was
broken as last and who was now willing to join the union and to
stand with his old enemies for the sake of retaining his place.
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