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The present argument for high wages, we made in the eighties. We called it “the new economic coefficient in our industrial life.” “It is the well-paid workman,” said The Chautauquan, “who is a relatively large consumer. We are built upon a foundation of which this well-paid workman is an important part.”

As for hours and conditions, we were ardent supporters of the eight-hour day, organized labor’s chief aim in the eighties, and we were for contracts between labor and capital, each being held responsible for his side of the bargain. We were for education, arbitration, legislation, the program of the Knights of Labor rather than the program of force which the growing American Federation of Labor was adopting. We discussed interminably the growing problem of the slums, were particularly strong for cooperative housing, laundries and bakeshops; we supported the popular Town and Country Club, seeking to keep a healthy balance between the two; we were advocates of temperance but shied at prohibition—largely, I think, because it had become a political issue, and we did not like to see our idealists going into politics, as Bellamy and Henry George and the leaders of many causes were doing.