The proposed economic policy of reform, in so far as it were successful,
would also tend to stimulate labor to more efficiency, and to diminish
its grievances. The state would be lending assistance to the effort of
the workingman to raise his standard of living, and to restrict the
demoralizing effect of competition among laborers who cannot afford to
make a stand on behalf of their own interest. It should, consequently,
increase the amount of economic independence enjoyed by the average
laborer, diminish his "class consciousness" by doing away with his class
grievances, and intensify his importance to himself as an individual. It
would in every way help to make the individual workingman more of an
individual. His class interest would be promoted by the nation in so
far as such promotion was possible, and could be adjusted to a general
policy of national economic construction. His individual interest would
be left in his own charge; but he would have much more favorable
opportunities of redeeming the charge by the excellence of his
individual work than he has under the existing system.
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