In the long run the state could hardly impose by law such a method of labor organization upon the industrial fabric.

Unless the employers themselves came to realize just what they could fight for with some chance of success, and with the best general results if successful, the state could not force him into a better understanding of the relation between their own and the public interest.

But in so far as any tendency existed among employers to recognize the unions, but to insist on efficiency and individual opportunity; and in so far as any tendency existed among the unions to recognize the necessary relation between an improving standard of living and the efficiency of labor--then the state and municipal governments could interfere effectively on behalf of those employers and those unions who stand for a constructive labor policy.
And in case the tendency towards an organization of labor in the national interest became dominant, it might be possible to embody it in a set of definite legal institutions.

But any such set of legal institutions would be impossible without an alteration in the Federal and many state constitutions; and consequently they could not in any event become a matter for precisely pressing consideration.

In general, however, the labor, even more than the corporation, problem will involve grave and dubious questions of constitutional interpretation; and not much advance can be made towards its solution until, in one way or another, the hands of the legislative authority have been untied.
Before ending this very inadequate discussion of the line of advance towards a constructive organization of labor, one more aspect thereof must be briefly considered.