To the average politician, the Public is something to be fawned on one minute and fleeced the next; for the marginal factory owner, it is something to be fleeced always, and fawned on when occasion required. For Mr. Gompers, it is no doubt a Thing whose one function is to have an opinion opposed to most strikes on their merits and against the rest on principle. Some have even doubted the existence of this Public; others have inferred its existence from the trail of havoc it leaves behind, and affirm that they know the particular newspaper office to which it goes each day to express its opinion. The Public has more shapes than Geryon in a palace of trick mirrors, and less intelligence than Triceratops, who could have swallowed his brain at a gulp. It allows the "laws of economics" to provide its food and clothing; and when a great Strike supervenes, it puts its Great Seal of approval on Published Opinion, in some such form as this: Such things should not be; they must stop; the guilty ones must be punished.

Then it turns its attentions to murders, divorces, and Mr. Jenkins, and leaves the "laws of economics" and the politicians to punish the guilty ones and meet the future. It allows the "laws of economics" to set prices; it discovers that Mr. Hoover can set prices better than the "laws of economics"; it dismisses Mr. Hoover, and like a pettish child disposes of its railroads because, forsooth, it has not learned to run them. And this is the amorphous djinn to which we believers in democracy cheerfully trust our salvation.