To
this awakening no single person contributed more than the economist
Professor Richard T. Ely, then of Johns Hopkins University. His pioneer
work on the _Labor Movement in America_ published in 1886, and the works
of his many capable students gave the labor movement a permanent place
in the public mind, besides presenting the cause of labor with
scientific precision and with a judicious balance. Among the other
pioneers were preachers like Washington Gladden and Lyman Abbott, who
conceived their duty as that of mediators between the business class and
the wage earning class, exhorting the former to deal with their employes
according to the Golden Rule and the latter to moderation in their
demands. Together with the economists they helped to break down the
prejudice against labor unionism in so far as the latter was
non-revolutionary. And though their influence was large, they understood
that their maximum usefulness would be realized by remaining sympathetic
outsiders and not by seeking to control the course of the labor
movement.
In recent years a new type of intellectual has come to the front.
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