* They are therefore
by training and origin distinctly leaders of a class, with the
outlook upon life, the prejudices, the limitations, and the
fervent hopes of that class.
* A well-known labor leader once said to the writer: "No matter
how much you go around among laboring people, you will never
really understand us unless you were brought up among us. There
is a real gulf between your way of looking on life and ours. You
can be only an investigator or an intellectual sympathizer with
my people. But you cannot really understand our viewpoint."
Whatever of misconception there may be in this attitude, it
nevertheless marks the actual temper of the average wage-earner,
in spite of the fact that in America many employers have risen
from the ranks of labor.
In a very real sense the American labor leader is the counterpart
of the American business man intensively trained, averse to
vagaries, knowing thoroughly one thing and only one thing, and
caring very little for anything else.
This comparative restriction of outlook marks a sharp distinction
between American and British labor leaders. In Britain such
leadership is a distinct career for which a young man prepares
himself. He is usually fairly well educated, for not infrequently
he started out to study for the law or the ministry and was
sidetracked by hard necessity. A few have come into the field
from journalism. As a result, the British labor leader has a
certain veneer of learning and puts on a more impressive front
than the American.
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