It has been my pleasant duty to discuss two papers: Solidarity Within the Firm: Principles, Concepts and Reflections, by Henry W. Briefs, and Industrial Justice in a Practical Sense, by Jerome S. Braun. These papers will be discussed in inverse order for purposes of exposi tional convenience and clarity. The major thesis of Braun's paper holds that everyone has a right to be average; the minor thesis holds that everyone is entitled to be treated sympathetically. It is not my purpose or my intention to deny either of these hypotheses, but I would like to qualify each of them. With respect to the major thesis, the right to be average implies an obligation to be satisfied with the rewards of being average. Satisfaction with being average requires that entrants into the labor force should have received good counseling and good placement on their first job. Bad counseling causes impossibly high expectations which breed discontent and aliena? tion. It is my fear that most academicians are more inclined to advise students into professional, managerial, and technical occupations, rather than into manual labor and into service occupations. Perhaps we are advising all of our students to become chiefs and none of them to be indians. Initial, job placement should be on a job which will be chal? lenging without being frustrating. If the job requirements are too low, the worker will be bored; if the requirements are too high, he will become frustrated and alienated. With respect to the minor thesis, surely all persons have a right to be treated sympathetically. But sympathy is not identical with mercy; neither is it mutually exclusive with justice. Rather, sympathy means and discipline requires true justice tempered with Christian mercy. Discipline must be maintained in all other aspects of social life. But discipline without mercy is harsh, and mercy without discipline is anarchy. Henry Briefs distinguishes between a narrow and a broad concept of solidarity; the narrow concept is the solidarity of the working class against the owners of the means of production and their managerial agents. While this is certainly justified in many circumstances, it is not the subject of this conference. Briefs is concerned with the broader concept of solidarity not only between labor and management, but also