The Reader's Digest November 1939 [antikvár]

NOVEMBER 1939"An article a day" of enduring significance, in condensed, permanent booklet form?DEIGHTEENTH YEARVOLUME 35, NO. 211Labor and National UnityBy 1William HardVeteran Washington correspondent; lecturer on economics and politicsF EVER we needed national uni-it is now. We need it ifwe are able to remain neutral. We need it if we are forced into the world's wars.The national unities illustrated by Germany and Russia are formidable. They are at present a military menace. More importantly, they are always our intellectual and economic rivals. They aspire with confidence and with determination to domination of the world's philosophic thought and economic behavior in both hemispheres. They can be countered only by a superior national unity of our own and of our own sort.We cannot find this unity simply in hating theirs. We must have more than merely something to hate. We must have something to love.In a previous article * I spoke of the disruption of our national unity caused by our economic civil war between rival occupational elements in our population. Here I wish to speak of a certain sector in that war: the struggle between labor and capital.I have been reporting outbreaks of this struggle for over 30 years. Often we pick on some individual as being responsible for it. He creates it about as much as a clock creates the time by striking three. It is a struggle of impersonal origins, and it does not abate.The other day one of the wisest of labor men came to Washington. He has been a union official. He has been a government official. He is now a corporation official. He was* See "America Unlimited," The Reader's Digest, September, '39, p. i.