‘Abdu’l-Bahá says the day of force has passed, the day of love has dawned. In the ages behind us force and competition constituted the laws of being, but in the period we are entering love and co-operation will be the dominating principles. The Messenger of God, always the Divine Educator in each new age, reveals laws for the founding of a divine civilization.

While in the United States ‘Abdu’l-Bahá told us how an ideal community might be established. He also outlined definitely the changes that would manifest in business methods reflecting the New Era. These he explained would gradually eliminate competition, and substitute co-operative means of conducting all sorts of industrial and commercial enterprises. He said that employer and employee must be brought together so that the management of affairs would not rest solely in the hands of the owners of a factory or institution, but would permit of consultation between worker and director, so that all decisions would result from mutual understanding. Strikes arise he declared because neither worker nor manager feels the point of view and temper of the other. He insisted that workmen must always be represented on the boards of the companies employing them, that they must have access to the books and understand the financial status of the concern for which they worked so that they could estimate the justice of any change contemplated in the wage scale.

He declared that strikes could never acomplish the end desired by the workers for until they understood the financial conditions of the firms employing them they would keep on demanding more and more wages in ruinous degree, while if they comprehended the financial situation they would themselves propose reasonable measure. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá taught moreover that violent action invariably produces reaction, thus defeating the end in view, and collectively or individually brutal force destroys its own purpose.

He said the workers must become owners of stock in the centers that employed them and have a share in the profits which accrued so that in the end they would no longer be paid wages but would receive their portion of the return on work and capital invested. He said also that in such a plan the employee must be protected from loss, because as he did not possess capital in cash but rather in his industry there would come lean years in which the financier could wait comfortably for his delayed dividends, on acount of his accumulated wealth, but at such periods the worker endowed only with hands and brain, must receive the stipend necessary for his expenses.