FA T R PT AY FOR. THE WORKERS PERCT'STICKNET-GRANT Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/fairplayforworkeOOgranrich FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS SOME SIDES OF THEIR MALADJUST- MENT AND THE CAUSES BY PERCY STICKNEY GRANT NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1919 Copyright, 1918, by MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY &1 Published September, 1918 TO THOMAS L. CHADBOURNE Member and Counsellor of the War Trade Board Washington, D. C. Dear Tom, When the British Munition Commission were in New York last fall, they were given a luncheon at the McAlpin, by Mayor Mitch- el's Committee on National Defense, of which you were Chairman. At the luncheon Sir Stephenson Kent, K.C.B., Chairman of the British Mission, declared: "If Great Britain had had the trouble with labor America is having, it icould have lost the war." A working agreement between capital and labor for the pro- duction of munitions does not settle their controversy. Labor in Oreat Britain has been very loyal to its agreements; yet Mr. Arthur Henderson, on February 1, 1918, could say that the condition of labor in Great Britain was dangerous. Some- thing more than a truce is essential even in war time for indus- trial efficiency. As a war-time measure such knowledge and sympathy as will bring the two sides of our industrial life most completely together are necessary for national success. The present volume is an at- tempt to put before conservatives some of the positions of labor, from the historical point of view. You have, perhaps, seen some of the material of this volume in the North American Review and in a book of mine, called " So- cialism and Christianity." May I finally say that I put your name in the front of this book as an expression of my admiration. You are a sort of superman of size and sympathy — the biggest thing I know physically, and also one of the few men of means icilling to discuss the labor question on its merits — that is, without ani- mosity. Upon the extension of this spirit, in my opinion, de- pend the future peace and safety of our country. You are fond of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I am sure you unll recall the following quotation from " The Progress of Culture." " When classes are exasperated against each other, the pea>ee of the world is always kept by striking a neio note." Sincerely yours, . . r, * PERCY STICKNEY GRANT. Ascension Rectory New York March, 1918 " The real question everywhere is whether the world, distracted and confused as everybody sees that it is, is going to be patched up and restored to what it used to be, or whether it is going forward into a quite new and different kind of life, whose exact nature nobody can pretend to foretell, but which is to be dis- tinctly new, unlike the life of any age which the world has seen already. ... It is impossible that the old conditions, so shaken and broken, can ever be repaired and stand just as they stood before. The time has come when something more than mere repair and restoration of tlie old is necessary. The old must die and a new must come forth out of its tomb." Phillips Bbooks, Sermon, " The Light of the World." PREFACE The most unexpected result of the war is, perhaps, the enlarged influence of the working- classes, — an influence that after the war seems likely to increase. The people have recently emerged to new power in many countries, — in China, in Russia, in Mexico, in Great Britain, which is anxiously arranging for labor and gov- ernment to proceed in closer accord, in India, to which Great Britain has sent a commission to prepare for some degree of native independ- ence. Labor organizations in several countries communicated with each other in efforts to pre- vent war, or, since, to secure peace. A proposi- tion by Socialists to hold a conference in Stock- holm was considered important enough to be discouraged by che Allied Governments. The United States has appealed to the German people, over the heads of their rulers, and welcomes any sign of a revolutionary spirit. The President left Washington in war time to attend a convention of the American Federation of Labor, at Buffalo. Labor committees from Great Britain have visited us. The proletariat of most of the countries have taken a new part in war discussion and look for- ward to signal influence at the peace councils. This coming to the front of the workers of the world is the important news of our times. viu PREFACE The day of the proletariat has arrived, but America is not ready. I do not mean that anarchy, or even Socialism, is knocking at the door, or that plutocracy is packing up. A new and commanding influence to be exerted by the working-class has arisen. America is unpre- pared to meet the situation because it has failed, on the whole, to grasp the profounder concerns of the people's hopes and has given aristocratic status to its successful classes. The object of this volume is to call attention to some of the consequences of our blindness to the world's deeper democratic activities and to the dawn of proletarian control. A review of a few subjects upon which the working-people have strong opinions, not well understood outside their class, may facilitate our passage from before-war to after-war times when labor will undoubtedly expect to exercise larger powers. One reason for our plutocratic type of de- mocracy is to be found in our religious and economic conservatism. Professor Ross discov- ers **will" to be the profoundest character- istic of the American colonists. American re- ligion, politics, business, athletics are still run by **wiir' and its **get there'' representatives. But something more is necessary than will, as, for instance, science and sympathy. The time has come for America to create a new will com- pacted of knowledge and love as well as of dogged resolution. PREFACE ix So it comes about that the real tragedy of American life is that while we live in the midst of optimistic facts we are governed by inher- ited pessimistic theories: — Calvin's depravity of human nature; Malthus* theory that man is too prolific for nature; Adam Smith's laissez faire economics, with selfishness as a stabilizer of industry. Our job is to jettison these Jonahs and to catch up with present reality. Besides our inherited pessimism as observed in religious and political motives, the generation that came over into the twentieth century was in- fluenced by the pessimism of some of its greatest poets. Swinburne 's incomparable lyricism never- theless yielded a depressing picture of man : * ' A silent soul led of a silent God, Toward sightless things led sightless.'' Even Matthew Arnold got no further than to cry out bitterly : **But now the old is out of date, The new is not yet born." Now the new is born and events are neither * * silent ' ' nor * ' sightless. ' ' The day of the people has come : clarion voices proclaim it. We have not dreamed what can be done to prevent human woe. ** Prevention " must be as signal a word as *^ Salvation" has been. ** Alleviation," the aim of so many religious and kindly people, is a timid and hopeless word. Again, we have been pessimistic. ** Human life X PREFACE must be some kind of a mistake/' says Schopen- hauer. Not a bit of it, but man had made the mistake of accepting his miseries as essential to existence and therefore permanent, or as the mys- terious will of overruling supernatural powers. The optimistic facts of life revealed to our generation are staggering in their splendor. Take, for instance, the statement of the warden of the Colorado State Penitentiary. **In my judgment 60 per cent, of the sane, able-bodied men now confined in the penal institutions, both State and Federal, of the United States, are trustworthy, and if properly handled can be made available for work anywhere in the United States. Our experience in handling honor men at the Colorado State Penitentiary proves this beyond question. Of course, there are the other 40 per cent, who are mentally defective and truly dangerous from whom society must pro- tect itself. '' Or, turn to the subject of industrial accident, where it has been thought that the human element was possibly more responsible than any other and could not be controlled. ** Spend enough upon the engineering problems and serious and fatal accidents will be very largely eliminated. What is the limit of reduction in severe and fatal cases? The possibilities of im- provement in physical conditions ace almost un- limited. It is possible to conceive industry con- ducted under conditions so safe that the occur- PREFACE xi rence of severe injury will excite the same surprise that its absence now does.'' * Two-thirds of the insane in the country need not have been insane. One-half the sick in the country need never have been brought to their beds. Much of what we have called crime is found to be due to physical and mental defects, and of the 300,000 defectives in the country, per- haps one-half of them can be greatly improved. Psychotherapy, as seen in Christian Science, the Emmanuel Movement, Psychoanalysis, and in other mental healing, has opened a sunlit door. The ancestry of many of the fears and supersti- tions which worry and weaken human nature is now so plainly revealed that they should be easily removed. The power of environment is discerned with increasing and fresh illustration. For in- stance, the Insurance Act in England is not meet- ing full expectations because whatever may be the better medication or sanitorium treatment of the sick poor, they have to return to housing and neighborhood conditions that largely undo the result of their medical treatment, while the agri- cultural laborers of England, whatever their eco- nomic misfortunes, are physically the best. Speaking of modern welfare work Jane Addams says: **The moral basis of all these movements is the excellence of human nature under decent conditions.'' captain F. J. Moore, writing to the * Monthly Review of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, August, 1917, p. 15. xii PREFACE London Nation about religion in the trenches, says that the war has revealed to the world at large, and not least to the men themselves, that goodness, and not evil, is the ** original' ' thing in human nature. **No matter how they drink or how they swear, or whatever they do, there is a nobler self beneath it all capable of a sacrifice like the cross.'' The Literary Digest (Septem- ber 15, 1917) sums it up: ** Original sin has been replaced by original goodness." (Exit Calvin.) Professor Patten proves that we are living in a surplus, not in a deficit civilization. Lester Ward shows that production increases as the square of the hands employed. (Exit Malthus.) We find that changed social ideas produce changed economic theories. In our time, demo- cratic common sense is deciding that human per- sonality must be built up, not destroyed, by eco- nomic processes ; that wages must serve individual welfare and social need. (Exit Adam Smith. Enter Jesus.) In the midst of this optimism of fact, this opu- lence and self-curing power of nature, how pitiable those lugubrious but convenient economic theories by which men strengthen themselves in tyrannies over their fellows or justify riding upon their backs! **Life,'' says Nietzsche, *4s that which must ever surpass itself." May I dare to offer as the method by which life is able to surpass itself, the impulse to clarity — to know the mean- ing of things — as the pledge of progress. CONTENTS PAOB Preface vii I Domestic Problems and Foreign War 3 II The Worker *s Lost Status and His Unrest 17 III The Working-man and Patriotism . 47 IV The Americanizing of the Immi- grant Worker 61 V Physical Betterment — the Func- tion OF THE State .... 79 VI Administration of the Law and the Worker 105 VII Unjust Laws and How to Remedy Them 129 VIII Are Rich Americans Aiding Ameri- canization! 161 IX The Waste of Ignorance and Com- petition 187 X Mental Adjustment Through Or- ganized Efforts for Free Speech 207 XI The Economic Influence of Re- ligion 233 XII Labor Organization and Its Influ- ence ON Our Problems . . . 257 XIII The Cure for Democracy — *^More Democracy'' 289 XrV What the Working-men Want — In- dustrial Self-Government . . 309 Appendlx 337 Bibliography 364 DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND FOREIGN WAR "Great economic and social forces flow with tidal sweep over communities only half conscious of that which is befalling them. Wise statesmen are those who foresee what time is thus bring- ing, and try to shape institutions and to mould men's thought and purpose in accordance with the change that is silently sur- rounding them." Viscount Morley's Recollections, Vol. I., p. 143. " There are two aims that to my mind should be steadily kept in view, and constantly applied as crucial tests to all schemes and proposals which deal with reconstruction. They sound com- monplace enough, but they go to the root of the matter. The first is that we shall need a largely increased production year by year of national wealth. The second that we must see to it that as among the producers there is a fairer distribution of the yield." Mr. Asquith's War -Aims Speech, December 11, 1917. CHAPTER I DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND FOREIGN WAR ONE of the significant cartoons produced by our declaration of war represents Uncle Sam, in the costume of a frontiersman, taking down from over the chimney-piece his musket and powderhorn, as he remarks: **Gosh! I had so many other things to do!*' These ** other things'* are home things — Uncle Sam's dream of domestic happiness; for he has near-by and pressing matters, has Uncle Sam, which concern the prosperity and contentment of his people. Perhaps he was thinking of the exodus of the negroes from the South that in volume and eco- nomic moment may rank with the great migra- tions of history. Or, he may have been brooding on the battle raging in San Francisco between the labor unions and the business interests with their $1,000,000 war fund — a conflict illuminated by the threat of the workers that labor leaders condemned to death shall not die. Uncle Sam may have had in mind his neglected 8 4 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS farms, ^' Where four-fifths of the area of the large holdings," one of his commissions tells him, *^is being kept out of use by their 50,000 large owners, while 2,250,000 farmers are struggling for a mere existence on farms of less than fifty acres,'* and only a little over half of the land on farms is improved. Or, was Uncle Sam worrying about a wasteful nation going to war, adding military destruction to its economic destruction which is equal annu- ally to the capital of all its banks ? Did he have before his eyes the vision of addi- tions to his huge list of incapacitated — before the war a daily **sick list'' of three million out of which come half the outcries of American des- titution ? Without doubt the race question, the labor question, the land question, conservation and the health question, are some of the ** other things" that war seemed at first glance to postpone. Not only do home matters slide out of minds absorbed in the war zone; but patriotic citizens feel that domestic problems ought to be forgotten during the war as a measure of the nation's sac- rifice and also as a means of necessary concen- tration for overseas success. But we cannot, if we would, leave our domestic problems behind us when we join our allies. What we are in Europe depends upon what we are in America. A foreign war reveals domestic weak- nesses. Every man on the firing-line requires DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 5 from four to six persons behind the firing-line to keep him supplied. The army is the whole peo- ple. If we forget or postpone home problems we become bad soldiers in the field. The fact is that during the war we must pay- more attention than ever to home conditions. Every fighting nation has been weakened by labor difficulties, and has found itself forced to deal inopportunely with the most fundamental social and economic questions. By anticipating the claims of our own internal problems we may save ourselves fatal weakness in a world crisis. Without a positive social polity, we shall, at any rate, be the victims of reactionary attack. Already under the guise of war-need the old crew which fruitlessly fought liberal laws have be- sieged legislatures to destroy recent safeguards thrown around the workers. The hours of labor for men, women, and children are attacked; the length of the school year; the full crew bill; the La Follette Seaman's Act. In the State of New York by the permissive shortening of the school year the Empire State actually mobilized child labor before it mobilized its army. Gains in social legislation must not be lost ; they are national assets, not class advantages ; they are *^good business.'' For the labor question is not merely an irritating militancy between employer and employee, in which the worker occasionally wins privileges — recovered perhaps later by the 6 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS bosses — but having no permanent public signifi- cance, no general gain or loss. The labor question is concerned with human conservation and race effectiveness. The triumph of labor is the triumph of humanity in its very flesh and blood. A relapse now in labor legisla- tion is war's home harvest in flesh and blood — war's preventable losses behind the firing-line. Consequently, any retreat during the time of war into older and restricted economic usages, is not only a matter of dangerous precedent to labor — the setting aside perhaps for years of its hard- won verdict — but it is a dangerous prerogative resumed by capital upon an utter misunderstand- ing of the labor problem. Centralization Demands Transformation There are other reasons why during the war we cannot escape the consideration of domestic prob- lems. The centralization necessary in war time for intensive national life means automatically much domestic transformation, especially in an individualistic country like America. To accom- plish successfully this socializing of our citizens will demand sympathetic and profound study of the domestic situation. Secretary Lane's remark to coal operators in Washington, in June, 1917, is not to American ears axiomatic and will require elucidation and cogitation. **To be an American citizen today is not to have the right to make a DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 7 million dollars, but the right to live up to the demands of democratic ideals, and to sacrifice for it.'' Shall we not also discover like the other fighting nations that the minds of the soldiers at the front turn backward upon the domestic situation? They have time in the trenches to think. Their thought on the whole has been revolutionary. The men who are fighting in France are asking searching questions about religion, politics, business — about their own futures, — which forebode social recon- struction. They are revolving fundamental prob- lems. Such mental ferment among the soldiers themselves, prophesies domestic change. Two of our allies, Russia and France, are prob- ably more advanced than we are in democratic ideals. A new light upon home problems is likely to dawn upon American soldiers when they learn from observation the radical economic views of the French, to say nothing of the more influential political position held by the English working- classes. Our armies will return home more criti- cal of our way of doing things than when they left our shores. Won't it be well for us — the home-stayers — to try to keep pace in our devel- opment with the men at the front! There is also the reflex action upon industrial and political organization of the new relationship between officers and men in our proposed gigantic armies — a more democratic relationship. In the 8 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS English army Donald Hankey saw a new democ- racy developed from the confidence that officers and men learned to have in each other. He be- lieved that a better spirit between employers and employees will be produced as a result of this war- time experience. The ordinary labor conditions in which the employer complains of his men as being ungrateful and the men are suspicious .of their employers as being exploiters, may be modi- fied in the future by a new human relationship of mutual sympathy and dependence, like the con- fidence and pride felt for each other by officers and men in the face of a powerful enemy. Schooled by war this new working democracy which embodies discipline and authority, which at all hazards must create efficiency, mutual help, and high spirit, may make a decided contribution to the industrial peace of the future when armies, so inspired, are again scattered through the nation's economic organization. America Is in the Rapids of Social Revolution But it is a waste of time to marshal reasons for paying special attention during the war to domestic conditions, as though what is done in America depended upon argument. As a matter of fact, social revolution has overtaken the do- mestic affairs of the warring nations. Mr. Stephen McKenna, nephew of the former Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, said in an interview in DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 9 New York the middle of May, 1917 : ** England has had changes amounting in effect to a social revolu- tion as the result of the war and America will probably experience much the same thing.'' America by going to war has entered the rapids of social revolution and must eventually come out into the intense liberalism of awakening Europe. Who knows! If America makes haste to learn what Europe can teach, she may perhaps be saved dislocation of her own. The difficulty with radical change in America is that it has not been foreshadowed by general sympathetic attention. We have not had the same historical or pressing reasons that Europe has had for social analysis and criticism. For in- stance, we have not in America experienced in an impressive way the feudal system, or since our independence had a hereditary ruler. We have not had the problems incident to powerful politi- cal neighbors with boundless national ambi- tions to force us either to farsighted diplomacy or to an internal defensive organization. We have not had serious social or religious disturbances; or we have blindly or good-naturedly ignored them. Even the problems that we share in common with Europe have been largely banished as incredible in our idealistic republic. We have claimed to have no class distinctions. We have treated capitalism as a finality, not as a stepping stone on the road of general progress. We 10 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS have supposed political democracy to be the limit of democracy and we have fancied America hors concours in any exhibit of free institutions. Any criticism of America's brand of democracy is resented as an insult to the flag. Any suggestion as to betterment seems a slap in the face to the successful American— his courage, his initiative— and consequently merely a scheme for putting beggars on horseback. Nor are we prepared to sympathize with Europe's awakening liberalism by parallel eco- nomic studies of our own. In our war prepara- tion, so far, we have gone against American in- dividualistic traditions because we have largely followed France and England. In so doing we are governed by practical considerations and do not understand the economic implications of our war socialization. We cannot, therefore, be too well informed about our domestic problems or consider them too much at this time. Not only are they very much a part of our war success, but at the conclusion of the war, social readjustments can only be accomplished smoothly by a new in- telligence as to their principles and bearing. The National and Social Conflicts We must finally remember that there are two conflicts going on at the same time — a conflict of nations and a conflict of classes— the international conflict and the social conflict. The social conflict DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 11 will not call a truce during the national conflict because it cannot. This social conflict is not pro- jected by a nameless unrest but by the vital urge of existence in the actual affairs of daily life which demands of every man that he secure for him- self and his family all possible opportunity for growth, which will be his contribution to race progress. On deeper analysis it will be found that these two conflicts — the social and the national — are one; that they are at bottom economic and have to do with ideals for larger human betterment. Feudalism, autocracy, militarism, imperialism, democracy, are methods of organization for se- curing human advantage. America is backing the proposition that in the world of today democracy is of wider, richer advantage to mankind than pre- ceding forms of racial or national organization. We are further undertaking to prove that, after all, the highest loyalty is not a man's loyalty to the person of a prince, but his loyalty to his brother-man and to the principles of fellowship. We cannot keep the inner and the outer apart in government any more than we can in people. Attention to domestic problems becomes more ex- cited in times of war, which is like the hand on a kaleidoscope, turning things as we look, into new arrangement. Run over in your mind for a moment some of the internal changes the war has produced. A change in the modem industrial system has 12 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS been supposed to be so infinitely difficult and haz- ardous that it could only be compassed slowly and even if soon begun could only after generations be consummated. English economists are surprised at the short time required to change their industrial organiza- tion from individual to governmental manage- ment and from industrial to military production. **In an extraordinarily short time,'^ says Profes- sor Pigou, **the business and industrial commu- nity has changed front and altered its formation in conformity with new conditions. '' War has brought Europe greater efficiency in railroading by government management; it has made of production, conservation, and distribu- tion, once a speculation, a mathematical problem; it has increased skilled labor and brought up into the ranks of thrifty toil classes thrown into crime by unemployment; it has shown clearly that long hours and bad sanitation for laboring men, women, and children lessen production, de- stroy physique, and are *^bad business*'; it has shown that the safety of the state depends upon the loyalty and intelligent co-operation of labor; it has put new value upon large families ; upon the working-class, and upon youth. In short, every function that nineteenth-century political liberal- ism claimed must be left to the individual in order to insure national well-being, has, during the war, been assumed and has been administered success- fully by the state. DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 13 A notable aspect of the Great War is the extent to which the countries engaged are officially and unofficially making preparations for peace, — ^mer- cantile, industrial, political preparation — not in order to bring about peace but, when peace is de- clared, to start the race anew in better condition. While at war the nations are training for peace. In England innumerable committees, govern- mental and private, are canvassing the wages, organizations, and housing of labor and how to associate it with government as never before. In America we did not like the maxim **in time of peace prepare for war.'^ Why not, then, adopt the new maxim **In time of war prepare for peace''? II THE WORKER'S LOST STATUS AND HIS UNREST "A nation habituated to think in terms of problems and of the struggle to remedy them before it is actually in the grip of the forces which create the problems, would have an equip- ment for public life such as has not characterized any people." John Dewey, The New Republic, May 6, 1916, p. 16. And therefore today is thrilling With a past day's late fulfilling; And the multitudes are enlisted In the faith that their fathers resisted. And scorning the dream of tomorrow, And bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday. Arthur O'Shaughnessy. "In every government the laws of education ought to be in relation to the principles of that government." Montesquieu, Democracy in America, Book IV. "The more one sees of this war, the more one is inclined to the belief that its real significance lies behind the battle lines rather than on them." " The inner significance of this war has to do with the emanci- pation of labor, just as the inner significance of that of a hun- dred years ago had to do with the emancipation of the shop- keeper — who has since become a plutocrat! " From " Unrest Behind the Lines," Winston Churchill, N. Y. Times Magazine, December 2, 1917. CHAPTER n THE WORKER'S LOST STATUS AND HIS UNREST ONE danger that threatens our democracy is our ignorance about its problems. This dangerous ignorance is due to many causes. The eighteenth-century doctrinaire notion that de- mocracy means a return to nature and therefore to a simpler and easier social organization: the misleading assumption from our Declaration of Independence, that the maintenance of personal political freedom is a sufficient aim of the state: our unwillingness to recognize economic neces- sity as an undercurrent in social and political matters : our obstinate insistence that America contained no classes when it is of the very nature of economic development to stratify society: the control of our press and its censorship of un- pleasant industrial facts: the suppression in universities of economic liberalism: the absence among our student bodies of vital attention to current industrial problems, — all of these Ameri- can characteristics have contributed to democ- racy's ignorance of its own problems. There are, however, direct sources of fresh and 17 18 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS reliable information from which the public should hear. One of these is the conservative labor press, which prints careful and full accounts of labor conditions, strikes, and court proceedings.* Another is the social worker, generally a college graduate, who is in and out of the families of the poor. Another is the missionary, who usually has years of experience in a special locality and is its expert. Another is the Open Forum, where eager-minded working-people — students of social problems — discuss them with a knowledge and an oratorical power which often paralyzes and silences their opponents of the educated classes. The condition and need of America as re- vealed by such sources of information are alarm- ingly different from the generally conceived pic- ture; they largely account for the radicalism of social workers, many clergymen, and some col- lege professors, as well as the secret revolt of many employees in the financial districts of our great cities. A Republic Demands Omniscience A republic, as a self-governing state, must de- mand of its sovereign citizens something of that omniscience we used to laugh about as imper- sonated in the Kaiser and Mr. Roosevelt. For an American citizen it is a moment of startled awakening when he becomes alive to the fact that * For a list of labor newspapers, etc., see Appendix. LOST STATUS AND UNREST 19 if the republic is to last he must in very truth be sovereign. This he cannot be without an educa- tion in the subjects upon which democratic se- curity depends. For instance, he must be better educated in the history of economics if he is to reply successfully to those discontented voices heard asserting, since we published our idealistic reasons for going to war, that there is more democracy in Europe than in America. The National Economic League's program for 1917 contained a list of subjects for special consid- eration arranged in an order of importance indi- cated by the preferential votes of its members. There were forty-one subjects and on an average half a dozen sub-topics under each head. Here, then, are two hundred and fifty subjects of impera- tive importance for Americans. Let me name a few to test the reader's readiness upon vital cur- rent problems. 1. National Defense (Preparedness (Military, Na- val, Economic, Financial, Industrial, Commercial, So- cial). Universal Compulsory Military Training and Service. Limitation of Armaments. Disarmament, etc. The Peril of Militarism). 2. International Peace (Enforcement of Peace, In- ternational Organization to Maintain Peace, the League to Enforce Peace, Peace Terms, Promoting In- ternational Friendship, the True Basis of Lasting Peace, etc.). 3. International Relations (America's Foreign Pol- icy, the Monroe Doctrine, Our Relations with South 20 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS America and the Orient. America's Rights and Ob- ligations. The Problem of Mexico). 4. American Merchant Marine (American Shipping Laws). 5. Labor Problem (Relation Between Employers and Workmen, Labor and Capital, Strikes, Wages, Hours, Unemployment, Poverty). 6. Education (the Public Schools, a National Sys- tem of Education. Ethical, Religious, Civic, and Moral Training in Public Schools. The Press. Motion Pic- tures). 7. Conservation (Conservation and Development of Natural Resources, Economic Wastes, Conservation of Human Life, Public Health, Industrial and Personal Efficiency, Conservation of the Public Interests). 8. Efficiency and Economy in Government (Reform of Federal Finance Through Budget Control. Exces- sive Appropriations for Post Office Buildings. Pre- paredness). 9. Administration of Justice (Law Reform. The Judiciary. The Encroachment of the Legislative upon the Judicial Department of Government. Separation of Politics from the Judiciary). 10. Taxation and Tax Reforms (National, State, Municipal, Taxation of Land Values, Incomes and In- heritances, etc.). How many high school boys, or even college graduates, could secure a mark of fifty per cent, if examined on these questions 1 The National Economic League's study pro- gram for 1918 is even more difficult. LOST STATUS AND UNREST 21 Employers ** Forget'* the Human Element Little attempt seems to be made by employers in America to understand either the human ele- ment or the economic problems involved in the labor movement. The whole matter is **unresf ; the only way out is for capital to stand pat. Mr. Theodore Shonts, President of the Interborough Railroad Company of New York, addressed as follows the students of Drake University, Iowa, June 12, 1912: ^'The spirit of unrest is abroad. It is a universal sign of the times. Nor is it confined to this land alone ; it is world-wide. That country is no longer considered the best governed which governs the least. The cry is for universal governmental activity. Whether it be called socialism, collectivism, communism, municipal operation, or government ownership, the result is the same. The community itself must run the individual and provide for his wants while the individual sinks into a helpless unit, incapable of upholding the stabil- ity of the very government which he designs to nourish his common wants.'' Members of the State Factory Investigation Committee of New York openly declared from public platforms that * * in the factories of the city and State the human element is pretty much for- gotten.^' But this is just the field labor wishes to control — not the mercantile but the human. An astounding illustration of the forgetfulness by business men of the human side of their under- 22 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS takings came to light in connection with our shipbuilding program. Hundreds of millions of dollars were appropriated; great contracts were signed ; shipyards were built or enlarged — ^but no ships were forthcoming. Those responsible for all this outlay, it was discovered, had not thought it worth while to provide housing for the laborers who were to give life to this enormous stagnant investment. The significance of labor's unrest is far-reach- ing. It does not mean merely that labor believes itself entitled to a larger share of production and to better sanitary shop and home conditions; labor's unrest means that modem industrial life was organized without taking into account what the worker had to say about it and that in con- sequence we have a broken-winged industrial machine and a deceptive political order. The Rise of the Proletariat Feudalism gave the serf food, shelter, and cloth- ing in exchange for his labor and his military service. The serf had his stated place. He was a small partner in the concern and shared its profits. The wage system gives the laborer noth- ing but the right to compete for a job. In times of war the state can take over the worker's indus- trial or military services ; but in times of peace it does not insure him subsistence. The worker is merely an economic buffer between the comfort- LOST STATUS AND UNREST 23 able classes and any tightening of economic pres- sure, — that is to say, bad times and starvation. He is the sop thrown to the Cerberus of capital- istic mismanagement. When things go wrong and hard times come, a few million laborers are thrown out of work and their families are put on short rations, which often means on none at all, until by this means business has saved enough and thrift, the semi-starvation of those still working, has put by enough for a new speculative drive. Radical workers call themselves *^wage slaves.'* To be able to give sympathetic attention to the labor question one should be acquainted not only with the present-day facts which make a strong sentimental appeal, but with character- istic legislation in England and America after the Industrial Revolution of the last half of the eighteenth century. Still further back he should see the source from which the modern prole- tariat is originally derived in the break-up of feudalism, the discovery of America, the expro- priation of guilds and of estates by new politi- cal power after the Reformation. Such a look backward is far from an aca- demic treatment of our subject ; it shows the servile history of labor; it discloses centuries of momen- tum behind the labor movement; it reveals mis- fortunes that one portion of the community should not bear alone ; it confirms the impossibility of a return into older and more autocratic forms. King Canute sweeping back the tide is a pic- 24 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS ture of an industrial magnate that thinks to stay by force the creeping tide of proletarian advance which has gained in mass and momen- tum for at least five hundred years. The word proletariat — discordant, with good right, to American ears — must, after all, be con- sidered not as a name for a vague and small body of sophisticated malcontents in the labor movement, but for a great army upon a long and patient march. In England from the Conquest onward for nearly three hundred years there was, in our sense of the word, no labor problem. In England the guild system with its apprentices, journey- men, and master craftsmen, did not develop large bodies of workmen. A journeyman could easily set up for himself after his apprenticeship and become a master craftsman, take into his house an apprentice or two, or a young journeyman or two. At any rate, the size of his domestic quarters and afterwards law limited the labor groups. He could not employ women except his wife or his daughters and there was no night work. ** There were, therefore,'' says Professor Ash- ley, **no collisions between * capital and labor,' though there might be occasional quarrels be- tween individuals. The hard-working journey- man expected to be able in a few years to be- come an independent master; and while he re- mained a journeyman there was no social gulf LOST STATUS AND UNREST 25 between himself and his employer. They worked in the same shop, side by side, and the servant probably earned at least half as much as his master.'' * Nor was speculation allowed to advance prices and so reduce the purchasing value of the work- man's earnings. Professor Ashley quotes a graphic illustration of the community's pro- tection of itself: * * John-at-Wood, baker, was charged before the common sergeant with the following offense: * Whereas one Robert de Cawode had two quarters of wheat for sale in common market on the Pavement within New- gate, he, the said John, cunningly and by secret words whispering in his ear, fraudulently with- drew Cawode out of the common market; and they went together into the Church of the Friars Minor, and there John bought the two quarters at 15l;^d. per bushel, being 21/2^- over the com- mon selling price at that time in the market; to the great loss and deceit of the common peo- ple, and to the increase of the dearness of corn.' At- Wood denied the offense, and *put himself on the country.' Thereupon a jury of the venue of Newgate was empaneled, who gave as verdict that At- Wood had not only thus bought the corn, but had afterwards returned to the market, and boasted of his misdoing; *this he said and did to increase the dearness of corn.' Accordingly he was sentenced to be * " Economic History and Theory," W. J. Ashley, p. 94. 26 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS put into the pillory for three hours, and one of the sheriffs was directed to see the sentence executed and proclamation made of the cause of his punishment. ' ^ * A *^ labor class'' appeared in England as early as the middle of the fourteenth century. Among artificers there were men who could not look for- ward to being master craftsmen, owing to the superfluity of labor and the growing power of capital. Landlords, too, changed tillage to pas- ture and turned families off the land. The ** work- ing-class" and the *' labor question" are consid- erations that had to be dealt with in England by legislation as early as 1450, from which time the seriousness of the problem has increased. * * Through the breaking up of the feudal houses with their numerous retainers," says Kirkup, ** through the transformation of the old peasant- holdings into extensive sheep-runs and generally through the prevalent application of the com- mercial system to the management of the land, instead of the Catholic and feudal spirit, the peasantry were driven off the land; a multitude of people, totally destitute of property, were thrown loose from their old means of livelihood and were reduced to vagabondage or forced into towns. It was in this way that the modern prole- tariat made their tragic entry into history." f The Industrial Revolution increased the ranks ♦"Economic History and Theory," W. J. Ashley, p. 184. t " A History of Socialism," Thomas Kirkup, p. 133. LOST STATUS AND UNREST 27 of the proletariat. The steam engine, the power loom, the spinning jenny, and the cotton gin developed a factory system which took the tools of production out of the hands of the workers and put machinery, capital, and its combination into the hands of the masters. The public tur- bulence and multiplication of crimes incident to this economic change can be judged by the in- creasing number of offenses which in England was visited with capital punishment from 1750- 1799. At the end of the century there were 200. In the same year that England had so great a number of capital offenses she forbade labor to combine. In the year she refused to repeal a law which hanged an apprentice for stealing four shil- lings from his master, England deprived the laborer of old usages that mitigated wage griev- ances. Into the proletarian army were flung men, women, and children of old cottage industries. Poorhouse children were contracted for and sold like cattle. The French Revolution and the English Reform Bill did not emancipate the workers. These were revolutions of the capitalistic and mercantile classes against the control of feudal lords and the clergy — they were bourgeois advantages, not proletarian. The people were left out. The Communistic Manifesto of 1848 and the repeal in 1871 of the English laws against combi- nations of workmen can be considered dates which mark the rise of the modern labor movement in 28 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Germany and England — that is, the definite and intelligent determination of the modern working- classes to secure industrial power, to become an integral part — in fact, a partner — in the modern business organization. Is it a wonder that the proletariat, these work- ers, outcasts from the regard and care of the pow- erful, should be somewhat indifferent to any na- tionalism that opposes socializing the state? ^*That,'' as August Boeckh and Lassalle taught, **we must widen our notion of the state so as to believe that the state is the institution in which the whole virtue of humanity should be realized. ' ' Working-men Must Combine The labor question appears in a new light the moment one sees that an individual working- man is no match, in bargaining, for a corpora- tion; that is to say, no match for the expert financiers and lawyers who generally represent important corporations. Even in his home the working-man is not much of a financier; for he leaves the spending of his money, as do the other wage-earners of the family, to the wife and mother who is the family treasurer and bar- gainer. Working-men must combine, at any rate, for collective bargaining; and this combination, once effected, leads to a use of trade-unions in many beneficial directions. LOST STATUS AND UNREST 29 In spite of the industrial feebleness of the in- dividual working-man, English and American laws have not encouraged combinations of labor. Labor has been discouraged ; capital has been en- couraged. In 1799 in England, a law was passed forbidding working-men to organize for any pur- pose. In 1813 an English law, which had per- mitted justices of the peace to raise wages in a certain list of occupations when in their opinion conditions warranted such increase, was re- pealed. In 1814, the apprenticeship adjustment of labor standards was done away with, *^ labor being then left without any measure of protec- tion at all.''* The effect of these laws was to reduce the earning power of men and consequently to in- crease the number of women and children forced into English industries. This happened at a time when steam power and the new factory system were destroying domestic occupations. The re- sult was that mills, running as many as fifteen hours a day, collected men, women, and children under one roof, where unwholesome conditions helped to lay the foundation for the wretched physique, ignorance, and slum life which one hundred years of English philanthropy have not corrected. **Only after twenty-five years of agitation were the hours of a child of nine in the factory limited to sixty-nine a week by the law of 1825. ' ' t The uncontrolled and misunderstood * D. H. Macgregor, " The Evolution of Industry," p. 65. t Ibid., p. 66. 30 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS growth of cities assisted the industrial forces destructive to human health. In spite of the enlargement of the English franchise, English working-men did not receive, in their attempts at self-help, much political assist- ance until 1869. Combinations of working-men were illegal if not criminal. It was not until well into the present century that a parliamentary com- mittee reported favorably on trade-unionism and even recommended its encouragement. In the United States, the first use of combination by the workers was for specific and temporary purposes. Opposition to these early, sporadic but successful strikes was marked by the first trial of journeymen for conspiracy in 1806. After this for nearly a quarter of a century American labor organizations had to exist under the guise of secret and benefit societies. Only when the work- ing-men's societies, founded in the various trades, came together and formed a representative body did they have the power openly to brave the op- position of the employers. The first trade-union in America, organized in Philadelphia in 1827, antedated the first English organization by two years. In America, the working-man, in his efforts toward wider industrial influence through trade- unionism, is still fought directly and indirectly by his employer. Labor organizations are fought secretly and publicly by employers' associations. Capital, in England, was not only strength- LOST STATUS AND UNREST 31 ened by the acts which weakened labor, but by direct legislation — as, for instance, the Joint Stock Acts, from 1844-1862. Owners of small capital were given the right to combine and at the same time a limited liability. The Workingman Has Been Disfranchised Industrially The result of these laws which repress the natural effort of labor in its own behalf, tak*en together with the economic theory that labor is nothing but a commodity under the laws of sup- ply and demand, have destroyed the former status possessed by the toiler under feudalism. The modern contract idea of his relationship to industry has not restored him to an integral place in our social economy. In the light of this displacement of the working-man, as a factor in the real control of the modern system, must be viewed his conscious or unconscious striving for a **say*' in the industrial management of his job. For he will not get back into the position he has lost until his voice has a recognized legal place in the industrial organization of his time. This is the explanation of his unrest — he has lost his economic equilibrium and is frantically trying to regain it. Some of his artless assumptions, so ridiculous to the capitalistic class, so exasperating to the public, so troublesome to the police and the courts, are pathetic attempts to recapture his lost status. For instance, when on strike, he will not 32 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS permit a non-union man to accept the job he left. A non-union man who acts as a strike-breaker is ** disloyal to the working-class,'' is **a traitor/' **a scab." The union man has a theory that the job belongs to him whether he is working at it or not: that if he strike, the job must be left open pending the union's settlement of the dis- pute. His demands for shop committees before whom a question involving the dismissal of working-men must come, and all other methods of asserting his influence over a given industry, to say nothing of the legislation he fights for, are only the efforts of a class outside the breastworks of economic control to gain re-admittance. In short, the working-man of today has been robbed, by the modern commercial and factory system, of what may be called his industrial franchise pos- sessed under an earlier system; he agitates and strikes to recover industrial enfranchisement. Philanthropy Cannot Remedy Social Mal- adjustment Meanwhile the ills incident to this subjugation of the working-class have been ameliorated by philanthropy, which appeals to the rich not only as an expression of noblesse oblige, but as an obligation and custom of Christianity. But philanthropy is practically played out. Needs multiply faster than the philanthropic funds. The increase of philanthropic institu- tions adds to their inefficiency. Philanthropic so- LOST STATUS AND UNREST 33 cieties spring up like mushrooms over night. Volunteer associations without number exist in churches, synagogues, settlements, unofficially in the army and navy, and in associations of teach- ers, firemen, policemen. They are so numer- ous that they tread upon each other. The Chari- ties Directory of New York State contains 458 pages of closely printed matter. Nothing needs more co-ordination and reorganization than our philanthropies. Mr. Wilbur C. Phillips' '*Unit" system, now being tried out in Cincinnati, hopes to affect this needed unification. But complete reorganization would mean assimilation with the industrial order, — nothing less than the destruc- tion of philanthropy as such and the emergence of its expected benefits by means of higher social justice. Every increase in philanthropic machin- ery delays the natural tendency in democracy to take upon itself responsibility for unfortunate conditions incident to its existence. Social mal- adjustment cannot be remedied by personal gra- tuities. In serious crises philanthropy breaks down and acknowledges defeat. For example, in its attempt to deal with the unemployed in the winter of 1913, and its response to hungry women and children in the spring of 1917. Democracy must bear the expenses of its own accidents. There is another reason for the collapse of philanthropy. Charity does not return to the worker that part of the value of his labor which is taken from him by the exploitation of capital. 34 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS The surplus profit, which goes not to his pocket but to that of the employer, is often dissipated by extravagance and waste. A pitiably small percentage of this surplus profit returns, in the form of philanthropy, to the workers, who, to make both ends meet, should have received it in the first place as a just recompense of their toil. The draining off of the value given by labor to material; the destruction of much of this value and the return of very little of it as philanthropy, increases the condition of destitution faster than philanthropic funds can possibly meet the need. Philanthropic distribution is always smaller than wage inadequacy. **Get off Our Backs'* In addition to this inevitable and increasing disparity between the classes due to the wage system, we must remember that in the last twenty years, in fact, up to the beginning of the war, while money wages had somewhat increased, their purchasing power had diminished to such an extent that real wages had dropped. More- over, according to the United States census, the ratio between production and wasteful competi- tion has been widening, which means that the ma- jority of the country have been more and more living on the productive energies of the minority of the country. This situation explains the outcry of working- LOST STATUS AND UNREST 35 men to idle capitalists, ^^Get off our backs/* The struggle of the working-class to bear this bur- den of the privileged class naturally has its limit, as all strength has its limit. It is only a question of time, then, when the space between great for- tunes and working-man's income will represent such a disparity as to be intolerable. Less than one-half of one per cent, of the population in 1915 had an income of over $3,000 a year. *^The wage rates of four-fifths of the males fall below $750; a third below $500.*'* The Bureau of Personal Service of the Board of Estimate in New York reported to Mayor Mitchel the minimum on which a family of five could live in New York in 1917 as being $980, compared with $840 in 1915. The report, signed by George L. Tirrell, di- rector of the Bureau, classified the objects of ex- penditure into eight standard groups with the following expenditure allotment: 1915 1917 Housing $168.00 $168.00 Carfare 30.30 30.30 Food 383.812 492.388 Clothing 104.20 127.10 Fuel and Light 42.75 46.75 Health 20.00 20.00 Insurance 22.88 22.88 Sundries 73.00 73.00 Total per year. . $844,942 $980,418 * Scott Nearing, " Income," p. 106. Published in 1915. 36 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS The sundries are classified as follows: Papers and other reading matter, $5; recreation, $40; furniture, moving expenses, etc., $18; church dues, $5; and incidentals, soap, washing mate- rials, stamps, etc., $5. The estimates are made for a man, his wife, a boy thirteen years old, a girl ten years old, and a boy six years old. Of the housing situation the report says: **A family of five needs at least four rooms to meet the demands of decency. Rent in the tenement dis- tricts at present as in 1915, according to the statements of real estate men, averages $4 per room per month." Of course, it is to be remembered that at any time the cost of living in New York is higher than in any other part of the country. Estimates for other sections made by competent committees place the many requirements to support a family of five in time of peace as low as $750, or even $680. The more significant fact, however, is that four-fifths of our male industrial workers in nor- mal times do not receive enough to meet the ex- penses of their families upon a basis of even $750. A New Tendency — Personality Fixes Wages The tendency today, therefore, in fixing wages is to depend upon a new idea — the theory of per- sonal values and the need of the individual for LOST STATUS AND UNREST 37 such income as shall produce the normal devel- opment of personality. This standard of wages is surely a far cry from labor as a commodity or from the iron laws of wages — even from sup- ply and demand that for generations operated in England and America. It substitutes intelli- gent provision in place of the laissez faire doc- trine which maintains that as each individual benefited himself by the exercise of intense but enlightened industrial selfishness, he was also benefiting mankind. Now the question is, How do wages affect personality? Under the old theory of wages the slum was as natural as the hills ; under the new theory the slum is hell. The proletarian is sneered at for the number of children who see the light of day in his family. In fact, the word proletarian in its original sig- nificance means a person who has nothing else to bequeath to the state except children {proles means offspring or progeny). On the other hand, in a time of war or economic emergency, the state turns to the working-class and to their children in almost an agony of fear, to compare the nation's man and woman power with that of its enemies or competitors. The bearing of children should be treated with enough respect by a community whose life de- pends upon it to accord to parents at least hon- orable mention, and to bestow upon children the best physical, mental, and industrial equipment. At present, the industrial army, which we have 38 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS discovered must supply in time of war the mili- tary establishment in the field, is left to wallow. Peace Depends upon the Proletariat Fair play for the worker — which is nothing but social justice — goes even further than advantage to the state. It is the basis of international peace. No league to enforce peace can be suc- cessful when the nations concerned have vastly different forms of government. This is the dif- ficulty with a federation of nations which con- tain conflicting forms of organization. Imagine a United States of Europe with their present governments. There is no common denominator. Sultan, kaiser, emperor, or king will always have dynastic ambitions and immediate family plans which will be supreme guides to conduct rather than the interests of his subjects. Nor can monarchical programs, continually asserting and protecting their prerogatives, match popular in- dustrial needs. Instead of industrial justice, the hereditary monarch will offer makeshift meas- ures to dilute current difficulties and postpone the fundamental solution of deep social problems. Lord Bryce himself sees for Germany no en- during peace until the people change their gov- ernment. The historian of the Roman Empire can see peace in Europe only when ambition to reanimate that imperial idea has perished. There can be no permanent peace between ab- LOST STATUS AND UNREST 39 solute government and popular government. Democracy can make no reliable alliance with monarchs even when they are hard-working. Everything in civilized countries today, therefore, depends upon the proletariat. Permanent peace among European nations can only be brought about when the people overthrow their hereditary rulers. Democracies, at any rate, can understand each other, better than they can understand mon- archies or than monarchies can understand them. One cannot, however, shut his eyes to the fact that after monarchical government is abol- ished and political democracy established, there still remain within political democracy the problems and dangers of capitalism and pluto- cratic control. But even these can be more in- telligently faced and more readily met when the entire attention of civilization is concentrated upon them and is not diverted or beguiled by the problem of hereditary rule. A Growing Reaction Against Democracy In the face of these reasons I have mentioned for greater industrial justice, for fair play for the worker, we have in this country a growing reaction against democracy. Perhaps this can be indicated by an editorial in the New York Times, before we entered the war, which charac- terizes the efforts of working-people to secure opportunities for expressing their views and for 40 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS studying questions that vitally concern their wel- fare as *^a tremendous pother about free speech'* : **If community forums are to be set up, the responsi- ble part of the community must have a hand in them. ' ' They must not be left to the ''circulators of perilous or crazed opinion,'* — what opinions are perilous or crazed being the very point at issue and the object of debate. The universities as well as the press are re- actionary. An able article in the New Republic (Feb. 17, 1917), signed **A Professor," and dis- cussing the subject of faculty meetings, says : ''Majority vote is almost always reactionary. Dis- carded theories and practices hold sway longest in faculty gatherings. . . . Dogmatizing becomes the rule." The universities in denying platforms to radi- cal speakers are intensifying the mistakes of their curriculums. They might, at least, allow radical criticism to arouse in their students ques- tions never so easily answered as while under the college discipline of intellectual attention, when close at hand are some of the greatest liv- ing authorities to guide students to answers which are historically and scientifically approved. Educational opportunities are insulted when students are not permitted to discuss social questions until after college days, when in the LOST STATUS AND UNREST 41 stress of business and politics they are brought face to face with grave problems they were never introduced to in the classroom, which they must settle alone, one at a time, when, perhaps, per- sonal and national welfare are at stake. To doubt the ability of the people to make con- tribution to any discussion of current questions is to be ignorant of the mind of the people and of their ability. Groups of working-men that I meet are vastly cleverer than the average college graduate in the marshaling of facts, in the pow- ers of statement, and in vivid speech. The col- leges can well be warned that if they do not give another turn to their education, their graduates will find themselves at an enormous disadvantage in the economic struggles of the future when con- fronted by a self-educated proletariat. Parliaments, dumas, reichstags, chambers of deputies, would not have a right to exist if the contention were true that discussion does not lead to the disclosure of new facts ; to new views capable of modifying the hostile relation of classes and even of nations; — and to the emergence of mighty leaders of the people. America's Worst Enemy Is the Selfish Citizen The worst enemy of America is not a foreign enemy, but it is the selfish American citizen whose democratic ideals have gone to seed, and whose only program is ridicule and suppression. 42 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS The very definition of justice today needs re- vision. No one in America takes it badly that the Czar's property yielding an income it is said of forty-two millions a year may be confiscated. If we are correctly informed, there are American fortunes that yield the income of the Czar. This stupendous wealth may be admirably earned and expended. But there is something wrong with an economic system that makes such aggregation of property possible. At a time when between one and two million children are obliged to earn their living, unprotected by the National Child Labor Law; when millions of women are compelled to work for their bread; when over two hundred thousand churches throughout the country are straining every effort to collect and deal out their small philanthropies to sustain life and give shel- ter to those for whom the industrial conflict has proved too severe, America must find some cura- tive method of co-operation between labor and capital. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that America has neither zealous scientific paternalism, nor England's intelligent co-opera- tion with labor. Her past aloofness from the labor question is only one side of her national aloofness, — her intellectual provincialism, her suspicion or ignorance of ideas from ** abroad," her dislike of European trade marks — **made in England,'' **made in Germany." Like Walter Pater, America has desired to **keep as a solitary LOST STATUS AND UNREST 43 prisoner its own dream of a world/ ^ Her Euro- pean alliances may carry her into the first-line trenches of industrial experiment — into a social revolution. One road to safety is fair play for the worker. Ill THE WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM "*Le8 moralistes/ disait avec une haute clairvoyance Saint- Simon en 1807, ' se mettent en contradiction quand ils defendent ^ rhomme I'^goisme et approuvent le patriotisme, car le patriotisme n'est pas autre chose que I'^goisme national, et cet ^goisme fait commettre de nation d nation les m^mes injustices que r^goisme personnel entre les individus.' " Le premier point, c'est d'exister." Maurice Babres, Sous I'CEil des Barbares, p. 16. "The instinct of life is little developed in youth." Mechnikov, Prolongation of Life, p. 254. "What grows upon the world is a certain matter-of-factness. The test of each century, more than of the century before, is the test of results. New countries are arising all over the world where there are no fixed sources of reverence; which have to make them; which have to create institutions which must gen- erate loyalty by conspicuous utility." Walter Bagehot, The English Constitutions, p. 316. " Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines." Young's Night Thoughts. CHAPTER in THE WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM MR. ROOT, on the occasion of his formal welcome, August, 1917, by the City of New York, after his mission to Russia, gave his hearers and the American public a shock when he stated that some of the trouble in Russia had been stirred up by Russians who returned home from America, disgruntled with our institutions. ** These men (native Russian Socialists), aided by thousands who had swarmed back to Russia from America, thousands who returned vilifying and abusing the land that gave them refuge, gave them security, gave them liberty to think and speak and act; these men returned to Russia, de- claring America to be as tyrannous as the Czar, and calling for the destruction, not for the set- ting up, of competent government in Russia, but for the destruction of all governments — of Amer- ica, of England, of France, of Italy, and, inciden- tally, of Germany. They poisoned the minds of the working-men and of peasants and of soldiers. Their definite and distinct object was to destroy the whole industrial and national system of Rus- sia. And they had the power in Petrograd, for there at the beginning the garrison adhered to them." 45 46 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS As the months have passed, other Americans have returned from ampler observations in Rus- sia, for instance Colonel W. B. Thompson and Mr. Ernest Poole, whose reports are more re- assuring as to the personnel and spirit of the Russian Revolution. What is more, our govern- ment has directly addressed to the Russian people sympathetic and encouraging greetings. We have learned also to our surprise how closely foreign liberals keep track of international happenings. We better understand the hostility excited in the Russian Republic by our **Mooney trial,'' our race riots, deportations, burnings at the stake and lynchings. What can be less at- tractive to a new democracy than the mistakes of older democracies? We should not resent criticism from Petrograd when we have quite as harshly criticized our- selves. An official commissioner of California, in his report upon industrial outrages in that State, likened them to Russian outrages under the old regime, and Colonel Weinstock had visited Rus- sia. Our working-classes call our police ** Cos- sacks.'' John Graham Brooks, in his volume, ** Ameri- can Syndicalism," published in 1913, writes as follows: **No less fateful is it that syndicalism comes among us at a time when the general atmos- phere is electric with rude and querulous discon- tent; when censure of our main stabilities, con- WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 47 stitutions, courts, judges, will bring applause to any general audience in the United States. This criticism of our * secular sanctities* is not in the least an affair of mobs alone. It speaks openly and unashamed in the books and utterances of scholars and first-rate publicists. In nearly 300 regular socialist periodicals, this defiant criticism has become the habitual reading of some millions of our inhabitants. I have heard a large working- class audience burst into uproarious guffaws at this sentence spoken from the platform: *No so- ciety could exist that did not respect its courts of justice.' A very able university president re- cently attempted the defense of our conserving institutions in a popular arena. He was so heckled and worsted that he left the meeting feel- ing, as he told me, that 4hey thoroughly wiped the floor with me.* '' * We must remember, too, that thousands of Rus- sians are followers of Tolstoy, who, surrounded by absolutist governments and aggressive national ambitions, despaired of the spirit of nationality as large enough to embrace unselfishly the needs of struggling humanity. ** Tolstoy thought patriotism was stupid and immoral. He said it was stupid because it made every country think itself superior to other coun- tries, and immoral because it made one country take advantage of another. No patriot in the accepted sense, he said, could be a Christian. '' t *Pp 101-102. f Francis B. Reeves, " Russia Then and Now." 48 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS When Miss Wald, of the Henry Street Settle- ment (and there is no higher authority upon the mental attitude of Russian immigrants), was asked to comment upon Mr. Root's criticism of immigrants who had returned to Russia from America and condemned our democracy, she re- plied that the majority of the immigrants she saw she believed to be peculiarly American and patriotic. I should say the same thing. Perhaps the trouble is that the immigrant is too American and bores us by always quoting the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln. Some of our countrymen are a little tired of these exhibits. An American ambassador in Europe, a man of large wealth, expressed the fear, when Mr. Wilson was elected President, I am told, that, now de- mocracy was in the saddle, America would send over, to replace him as ambassador, * * some Abra- ham Lincoln sort of man, who," he said, ^Svould never go here.*' In an audience composed mostly of working- people, the invited speaker, a gentleman of im- portance, could not recall some phrases of Lin- coln's Gettysburg address, which he groped for in the course of his speech. They were supplied quietly from the floor by a Russian boy who had been but a short time in this country. Which of these two, the ambassador or the Russian boy, should you call the more promising American? WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 49 Unfoetunate Linking of Patbiotism with Patrimony A spirit of disillusioned criticism is well known to speakers in meetings of working-men. When supporters of President Wilson at public meet- ings quoted his watchword, that America was to make the world a safe place for democracy, the speaker could usually expect a laugh from the audience and a sneering rejoinder, ^ * Show us your democracy''; or, *^They have more democracy now in Europe than America has." I have also heard working-men cry out, **Why should I fight for a country where I do not own a shovelful of mudr' A labor leader, Kruse, before the Senate Military Committee, previous to the return of the Army Bill to the Senate for debate, said, **What have my men got to fight for! They have no homes and no country. Why should they be forced to shed their blood for the capitalists T' Their landlessness and helplessness had destroyed their sense of patriotic relation or obligation. Patrimony and patriotism, in their minds, go together. Let us not be too hard upon perplexed immi- grants who come to us with impracticable hopes, in their moments of extreme disappointment. The average American is not aware that America has lagged in the marching column of democracy ; but Winston Churchill wrote in the New York 50 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Times, of December 2, 1917, after visiting Europe : * * Today it is safe to say we have become the most conservative of the nations of the western world. We were once the most radical. ' ' Is Patriotism More Pronounced in a Predatory Class? Besides disgruntled immigrants there were in the United States many working-men who were not keen to enter the war, but who accepted the action of the government and have supported it with their lives, their labor, their savings and with high spirit. If we follow Mr. Veblen's social analysis and divide classes into predatory and industrial, we can easily understand how the industrial, with its long descent or its self-chosen ideals, would be inert toward a military program. Four things in our democracy made it slow to turn to a military settlement : 1. An increasing intelligence and confidence in rea- son. In a popular government force is naturally the last word. 2. ThB association of war with national economic rivalries and capitalistic competition which are viewed unsjonpathetically by wage-earners. 3. The lessening of national egotism and selfishness by the fusion of many races, which tends to destroy racial theories of superiority. 4. The growing sense of the value of life which is a product of democracy. WORKJNG-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 51 Mr. George Louis Beer points out in his book, **The English Speaking People*' (where he urges a hearty rapprochement between Great Britain and America), that international anarchy is the result of the theory of national sovereignty. But this power of the nation to regulate its own af- fairs, free from outside interference, is new and hardly won. For a thousand years the fight in Western Europe was between emerging national sovereignty and the old ecclesiastical control by the Roman Church. This fight nationality won. Then political democracy emerged and controlled the nation. The industrial democracy arose and led the people. Now the working popula- tion of Europe and America are trying to get together, which is the meaning of internation- alism. Under the leadership of Mr. Gompers trade- unionism in America has more and more formally placed itself by the side of the government. The war Socialists joined them. Later even pacifist Socialists took a military attitude. They per- ceived that the Russian working-men were be- trayed in their idealistic hopes, when they fancied that if they refused to fire upon their German brothers, and laid down their arms, the German working-men in the army and out of it would revolt against their masters. In addition to this psychological experience they were convinced of the Kaiser's imperialistic program when Germany continued to attack 52 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Russia after it had thrown down its arms and signed a peace compact. From the deeper view of democratic strength it is a matter for American self-congratulation that all its classes were not responsive to the military situation from one motive — that they were not whipped into line by the government — but in the true spirit of America had to be ** shown.'' Nothing could be a greater guarantee of the intelligent principles leading our common life than this insistence upon an appeal to reason which has finally brought the whole country be- hind the President's policy. At any rate, if our working-people came to the colors in successive waves, depending upon home-made or foreign- made arguments, no one can impugn their loyalty. Labor in England, during the war, has not only come to a new power but to new esteem. The British Munitions Commission, which visited the United States in the autumn of 1917, told me that the labor leaders had been singularly loyal to their agreements to the government. The mili- tary critic of the highest repute in England, Colonel Repington, in an interview at the time of his resignation from the Times, declared: ** Labor has been splendid throughout the war and I have every confidence in labor." (New York Times, January 22, 1918.) The word patriotism comes from the Latin word pater, father, and could be defined in old Roman terms as piety, or filial respect towards WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 53 one's native land or adopted country. But modern patriotism has undergone the same change that family sentiment displays. Children of a hundred years ago feared and obeyed their parents. Children of today hold their parents responsible. The citizen of the past felt his obligation to the state. He now feels the state's obligation to him. This changed attitude, this demand upon the parental concern of the state, is further intensi- fied by a changed view of the meaning and plan of politics. The working-people used to think that all power proceeded from political control. They now believe that real power proceeds from indus- trial control and that politics, little better than a camouflage, conceals this deeper economic control. Politics then being the expression rather than the source of power, the working-men no longer look to it for the benefits promised by parties but demand for themselves an influence that corre- sponds to their economic importance. But the patriotism of the working-men of the world we must admit is founded not so much upon their satisfaction with their countries as they find them, as it is with an ideal that is becoming clearer and clearer to the working-classes of all lands, which they fervently believe their country specially qualified to realize. Not only are they fighting Hohenzollern imperialism but any kind of dynastic, political, or even industrial imperialism, the world over. 54 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Through the smoke of war, democracy has at last discerned its vision of a world government by the honest aims of humanity everywhere. The workers reach out towards all upbuilding human opportunities which their toil, when educated and properly guided, can more than adequately pay for in the increased production of wealth, which the future, organized industrially and democrati- cally, can easily create. If in the past it was land that united us because with our enormous public domain everyone might hope for a home, we must again relate land to the people or unite them by a new property pos- session. Land is only a gauge of security. What our working-people want is security. The labor movement in New York as early as 1829 made radical demands based on the neces- sary exclusion of mechanics from the land. A preamble drawn up by Thomas Skidmore, a me- chanic, lays it down *4n the first form of govern- ment no man gives up to others his original right of soil and becomes a smith, a weaver, a builder, or other mechanic or laborer, without receiving a guaranty that reasonable toil shall enable him to live as comfortably as others.'' Making Patriots by Economic Security All cannot live as farmers on the land but the land can serve all. All cannot raise their own food but there can be food for all. Let us recog- WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 55 nize the fact that the man out of a job, who is left to roam about and waste his time till he finds one, while his family starves, has nothing to be patriotic about. Let us make him a patriot by making him eco- nomically secure. ''Men care but little about the form of government under which they live as long as they are industrially free. Neither politics or religious persecution dislodge the property-owning class. So strong is the tie of prop- erty, of even a little property, that men suffer every sort of oppression rather than abandon their native homes. It is poverty that drives men to dare the unknown.*' * But poverty can kill patriotism today as easily as in the past; if you would develop patriotism abolish poverty. Will Crooks, the London M. C. and M. P., who opposed the Boer War, supports Great Britain in its fight against Germany. The difference to him was the danger in the present war of the Germans violating the English working-man's home. The final compulsion in America that caused the well-to-do to enter the war was their per- suasion that Germany, if victorious, would levy tribute on the United States and when she got ready carve up our country. * Frederic C. Howe, "Privilege and Democracy in America," p. 13. 56 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS If the American working-men do not share the fears of Will Crooks as to their women folk, nor the fears of the American privileged class as to property, why should they then be easily stirred to war? That they have so largely accepted the situation is due to their confidence in the policies of President Wilson ; it is a confirmation of their idealistic attachment to the land of Abraham Lincoln, the emancipated black slave, and the Declaration of Independence. I know ware-earners who have joyfully put their savings for a vacation into Liberty Bonds. The working-people see that there must be something to give order and restraint where mil- lions live together. They also see that ** govern- ment as a rule is a plus quantity,'' but their eyes are now opened by the publicity given to diplo- matic interchange, to the manipulation of govern- ment in the interest of families and oligarchies to an unbelievable extent. They have new reason to fear ^* governing classes,'' secret diplomacy, militarism, and the pushing of successful capi- talism into an aristocratic realm of stupendous waste. The diplomatic revelations of this war have given arguments to anarchy ; for all the suf- ferers can blame *^ government." The exhibition of loyal attachment shown by our working-people has been amazing. Labor or- ganizations have passed votes of approval of the government and promised co-operation. Seven hundred foreign language papers have sent to WOEKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 57 the President assertions of loyalty. No draft riots. No German-American riots. An orderly acceptance of an orderly program. An army of a million and a half enrolled for a war three thousand miles away, which has been pictured to America for three years as little better than a holocaust and which we enter for no material ad- vantage. What higher evidences of patriotism from our working-men do we want? Criticism is not disloyalty; complaint is not sedition. The most devoted families are often those that indulge most openly in plain talk. IV THE AMERICANIZING OF THE IMMIGRANT WORKER Hack and Hew were the sons of God In the earlier earth than now: One at his right hand, one at his left, To obey as he taught them how. And Hack was blind, and Hew was dumb, And both had the wild, wild heart; And God's calm will was their burning will. And the gist of their toil was art. Bliss Cabiian. " Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared, I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal, Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of the past so grand. To build a grander future." Walt Whitman, " Song of the Redwood Tree." " The solution of our problem of immigration finally depends upon the extent to which we are willing to give to the worker a larger share of the wealth he produces. " Abolish poverty, transform deficit into surplus, fill depletion with energy, and the ascribed heredity of the poor will vanish with its causes. No slow elimination of characters need pre- cede the transformation of the servile man into the straight- forward, fearless comrade. His essential characters are not manifest in him as we see him; they are revealed by those descendants of earlier poverty men who have broken the bonds that held them in want. Their constructive imagination, their foresight, their emancipation from superstition and fear, will be his also as soon as he is lifted from his quagmire. He is what he is, not through lack of character, but through the sup- pression of it. A steady surplus will do for him what it has done for workers who have long experienced ease and enjoyed their security in nature. Nothing but the rise of the masses to a plane above uncertainties of income can give to society an im- proving, physical heredity." Simon N. Patten, ■ The New Basis of Civilization, p. 43. CHAPTER IV THE AMERICANIZING OF THE IMMI- GRANT WORKER IMMIGRATION is called by some economists ''• America's biggest problem. For us it is the outward facing side of the world's greatest prob- lem — human migration. Our intelligence about the flow of the foreign-born into America will be quickened if we picture it as part of the endless racial roaming that included in the Glacial period the coming of the negroid races into Europe; in historic times the diffusion from central Asia of the Aryan peoples; the assaults of Hun, Vandal, and Goth upon the Roman Empire ; the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks; the dis- covery and settlement of the western hemisphere ; **the winning of the west*'; the stampede of American farmers to Canada's virgin soils and the eruption of the Southern negroes into the North. Our immigration problem is seen more clearly if we remember that Japan, China, and India ** export labor"; that all Asia's eight hun- dred millions must be spread more equably upon the face of the earth. Russia's land hunger which has absorbed a seventh of the world's sur- 61 62 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS face; Germany's ambition for a place in the sun for her increasing numbers; Great Britain's colonial system with sea-control of trade routes, are phases of race migration which on the sur- face account for the European war. The European war has somewhat confused the subject of immigration in the United States. Already thousands of immigrants, without apply- ing for our citizenship, have returned to their own countries to join the colors, leaving a smaller number of foreign-born persons in our population. Meanwhile, immigration has dropped from 1,197,892 for the year ending June 30, 1913, to 298,826 for 1916. In the midst of these unprecedented conditions, the United States has passed a more stringent immigration law which requires a literacy test. Just now the foreigner does not want us and we do not want the foreigner. Since the Russian revolution a second return wave to Europe of immigrants has taken place. The Russian Jews in America may exchange their remote Zionism for the immediate expectations of Russian citizenship. At any rate, many of them seem to prefer the East with its hopes, to the West with its reality, — for thousands are talking of returning there. Palestine, too, is beckoning afresh the old Zionists. The most impressive sight to be seen in normal years in America is the stream of immigrants coming off ship at Ellis Island. No waterfall AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 63 or mountain holds such awesome mystery; no river or harbor, embracing the navies of the world, expresses such power; no city so puts wings to the imagination; no work of art calls with such epic beauty. But there are spectators who behold in the procession from overseas an invading army comparable to the Gothic hordes that overran Rome, and who lament this meeting of Europe and America as the first act in our National Tragedy, What Is Meant by the Americanization of the Immigrant Worker? To Americanize is to mould into competent in- stitutions the human ideals of the Declaration of Independence ; it is a process to which the native- born as well as the immigrant must submit, and to which the immigrant more than the native-born may haply contribute. Undoubtedly we have a situation unknown to any other nation, past or present. In 1910 the total population of the United States was 91,972,- 266 ; of these 13,343,583 were foreign-born whites ; 10,239,579 were negroes, Indians, and Asiatics. Between 1900-1910, 9,555,673 immigrants came in from over fifty races. Of the native whites forty- seven per cent, are the children of foreign-born parents. Of our entire population 43,972,185 were born of native white parents — that is, only forty per cent. 64 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS The League for Limiting Lnmigration takes a pessimistic view of the future of American ideals under the influence of race mixture and quotes Gobineau : * * America is likely to be not the cradle of a new, but the grave of an old race.** * A volume, **The Problem of Immigration," pub- lished by Professor Jenks and Professor Lauck, ought to modify considerably a pessimistic fore- cast. Both the authors were from the beginning connected with the United States Immigration Commission. They have summed up in their 484 pages the information collected in forty-two vol- umes of the original material published by the Commission. The Conceit of Oub American Superiority Broadly speaking, our apprehension of harm to American ideals from race mixture is nothing but prejudice. Much of our dread of a deteriora- tion of the American stock by immigration is a survival of ancient jealousy and alarm which once characterized the contact of all ** natives'* every- where with all **foreigners.'* The sight of a foreigner meant ordinarily a raid or a war. This is still the case among children today. They revile and attack the foreigner. In America every new race of immigrants has had to fight its way to peace and safety in the community where it settled. Boys and hoodlums insulted it, * North American Review, Vol. 195, pp. 94-102. AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 65 stoned it, stole from it, mimicked it, pulled Jew- ish beards and Chinese pig-tails, while their elders were exploiting it industrially. Another element in our fear is the fetish of Teutonic superiority and the dogma of Latin de- generacy. Races that have produced in our life- time a Cavour, a Mazzini, a Marconi, a Louis Pas- teur, a Joffre, a Bergson, that have fought and defeated ecclesiastic and feudal enemies in their own households, I venture to think have still much to teach us. The stability of the French in their political and military program is the outstanding fact of the European war. As for Italy, American officials there believe its modern progress beyond that of any country in Europe. In the Conference on Immigration held in New York a few years ago, there were delegates scarcely able to speak the English language who orated against later arrivals in this country than themselves and predicted our downfall if they were admitted. In short, each race considers itself superior; its diatribes against other races are sheer vanity. We Americans, in conceit of superiority, are in the same class as the Chinese. In the words of a well-known writer on Asiatic people, ** after an adult lifetime of study of the peoples of the Far East, I find few or no novelties in their history or evolution as compared with that of our own rise from savagery to civilization; nor is their human nature by a hair's-breadth different from our own. What we need 66 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS now to have cast in the world 's melting-pot is the colossal conceit common to the white and the yellow man with more scientific comparative history.'* Demockacy Extends a Standing Invitation At any rate, our republican form of govern- ment is a standing invitation to the oppressed of other countries, and our undeveloped wealth makes a constant demand for strong arms and hard workers. What then can we do? We can- not shut out ^^foreigners'' and still be true either to our own ideals or to our practical require- ments. Nor can we pick and choose. There is no accepted standard of excellence except health, morals, and ** literacy.'' No race monopolizes these. Moreover, there are not enough of one foreign stock, were we permitted to select one as the best, to do the work in the United States which waits to be done. The forms of government under which men live are not stereotyped, and, while some change slowly, others in response to the needs of the people change rapidly. A democracy is the most plastic form and gives freest course to evolu- tionary development. There is, consequently, a natural flow from rigid to plastic governments, which can only be checked by the plastic becoming set. This it cannot do without committing suicide. One of our mistakes (an important cause, too, of our distrust of race mixture) is to suppose AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 67 that our own form of government is fixed and changeless. A republican form of government is created for the sake of making change possible. A democracy should not fear an extension of popular freedom; it should only fear the re- actionary and stand-patter, who have no proper place in such a fabric. A Problem not of Nature but of Nurture The scientific attitude toward heredity is today different from a generation ago. Darwin 's theory of slowly acquired characteristics and of the transmission by heredity of acquired character- istics was attacked by August Weismann, whose germ-plasm theory of heredity seriously weakened Darwin's hypothesis. Then came the botanist, De Vries, with his theory of spasmodic progress, amounting to ** spasmodic appearance of species at a given time under the influence of certain special conditions.'' Francis Galton brought forward the theory of mathematical inheritance, which, modified by Pearson, amounts to this : That of all the heritage which an individual possesses one-half on the av- erage comes from his parents, one-fourth from his grandparents, and so on. Meanwhile, the studies of Gregor Mendel, Abbot of Brunn, neglected for thirty-five years after their publication in 1865, came to light, with a specific body of botanical experiments leading to certain general principles 68 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS of heredity. The essential part of Mendel's dis- coveries is the principle of the segregation of characters in the fusion of the reproductive cells or gametes, and its natural corollary, the purity of the gametes. Mendel did not believe in blends, but in the unit character of heredity. Two theories of heredity are now current : **1. Children show a tendency to revert to a type intermediate between the types of the two parents, or in cases of changes of types to another type, dependent upon the mid-parental type. In other words, the char- acteristics of the parents are blended in the children. *'2. Either the father's or the mother's type, or the type of a more remote ancestor, is reproduced, and cer- tain parental traits may be dominant over others — i. e., one particular trait, either father's or mother's, to ap- pear with greater frequency in the children than the corresponding but different trait of the other parent. ' ' * MendePs law attaches so much value to ** domi- nant'' and so much danger to ** recessive" units that under his theory it would be natural to try to divide races into the old categories of sheep and goats. But even under the operation of his law a mixed race has advantages over a pure race. **The clear lesson of Mendelian studies to human so- ciety is this: That when two parents with the same defect marry — and there is none of us without some ♦ " Change in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants/' by Franz Boas. AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 69 defect — all of the progeny must have the same defect, and there is no remedy for the defect by education, but only, at the most in a few cases, by a surgical operation. The presence of a character in one parent will dominate over its absence in the other parent; . . , the advanced position masters the retarded or absent condition/^ **The mating of dissimilar s favors a comhi/na- tion in the offspring of the strongest character- istics of both parents and fits them the better for human society, ' * * A strong argument for the blending of races. Environment today is considered a most im- portant factor in heredity by students outside the ranks of pure biologists. What a surprising fact — that the intellectual classes among the Mag- yars, the Uralo-Altaic peoples, the Slavs or German races, furnish us with identical measure- ments of trunk, extremities, etc., whereas indi- viduals of the same race differ considerably when once distinctly separated by their occupations! Another fact of similar significance is that the measurements of Austrian Jews correspond en- tirely with those that Gould mentioned in the case of cultivated persons in the United States. The Austrian Jews are not engaged in mercantile work, but almost exclusively are money-lenders, small shop-keepers, lawyers, and doctors.f * Charles B. Davenport, " Influence of Heredity on Human So- ciety/' in Annals of American Academy, July 1, 1909. t Jean Finot, in "Race Prejudice," p. 122. 70 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS We all agree with Professor Ripley that **the first impression from comparison of our original Anglo-Saxon ancestry in America with the motley crowd now pouring in upon us is not cheering. It seems a hopeless task to cope with them, to assimilate them with our present native-born population." But listen further: *'Yet there are distinctly encouraging features about it all. These people, in the main, have excellent physical qualities, in spite of unfavorable environment and po- litical oppression for generations. No finer physical type than the peasantry of Austro-Hungary are to be found in Europe. The Italians, with an out-of-door life and proper food, are not weaklings. Nor is even the stunted and sedentary Jew — the third greatest in our present immigrant hordes — an unfavorable vital speci- men. Their careful religious regulations have produced in them a longevity even under most unfavorable con- ditions. Even to-day, under normal conditions, a rough process of selection is at work to bring the better types to our shores. We receive, in the main, the besjt, the most progressive and alert of the peasantry that the lower classes which these lands recently tapped are able to offer. This is a feature of no mean importance. Bar- ring artificial selection by steamship companies and police, we need not complain in the main of the physique of new arrivals." ^*Tlie great problem for us in dealing with these immi- grants is not that of their nature, hut that of their nurture.' ' * * William Z, Ripley, in " Race Progress and Immigration," in Annals of American Academy, July, 1909, pp. 130-138. AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 71 **We Americans who have so often seen the children of underfed, stunted, scrub immigrants match the native American in brain and brawn ought to realize how much the superior effectiveness of the latter is due to social conditions. ' ' * The races coming to America show power of adaptation. But as this power of adaptation must be slow, we must be patient. It was slow among the best of the early colonists. '^Not merely do the children of immigrants in many instances show greater height and weight than the same races in their mother country y hut in some instances even the head form, which has always been considered one of the most stable and permanent characteristics of races, undergoes very great changes.*' f **But the important fact to be kept in mind is that whatever the cause may be, and whether the change in type is for the better or worse, the influence of the new environment is very marked indeed, and we may there- fore expect that the degree and ease of assimilation has probably been somewhat greater than has been hereto- fore assumed.' ' t The rapidity of the race assimilation in the United States is proved by the absence of racial domination where given races are numerically m the ascendancy. Professor Boaz finds surpris- ing change in one generation. * E. A. Ross, " Causes of Race Superiority," in Annals of American Academy, July, 1910. t"The Immigration Problem," by Jenks and Lauck, 1912, p. 266. tibid , p 269. 72 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS In America different nationalities are subjected to the same conditions. Each has a chance to make its characteristic dominant. Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the National Museum of Washington, studied the descendants of the old American stock and concludes that there is a strong persistence of racial characteristics, but he finds variableness and diversity to the varieties of their ancestors. He seems, however, to meet Professor Boas's theory of rapid variability in finding the head more variable than other parts of the body — for example, the face, hand, and foot. Such a study, however, does not readily meet the situation, as the older families have kept a good deal to themselves and would not be expected to exhibit the amount of blend that is likely to be seen when the successful members of later racial groups come in large numbers into the Colonial strains. Even then MendePs law would expect to find ** unity*' inheritance rather than blend. The melting-pot would be the effect of institu- tions — of physical conditions, environment, and food ; of education, of freedom of movement from one class to another, socially and industrially, rather than the result of a physiological mixture of the Latin, the Teuton, the Saxon, the Celt, Slav, Hebrew, etc. Professor Earl Finch presents **some facts tending to prove that race blending, especially in the rare instances when it occurs under favorable AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 73 circumstances, produces a type superior in fer- tility, vitality, and cultural worth to one or both of the parent stocks.*' After the war there are possibilities of other and new fields for the sturdy pioneers than those that have attracted them in the past. Asia Minor may be open to immigration by the defeat of Ger- many and Turkey. If Great Britain were de- feated, an outpouring of her citizens as a result of her restricted industrial organization might be expected. If people are free to emigrate and capital is also free, the goal of both will be those countries where there is most profitable employment — where high pay and high dividends will be expected. Migration is the human drift toward opportunity, and that land will receive the largest populations from outside which has the most to offer. In this competition South America may outbid North America on account of larger amounts of unsettled land. Canada may surpass the United States in this race for the same reason. Russia, Palestine, Asia Minor may excite a new cry: Eastward, ho! If more of Africa should come under British rule, it also would be an important center of new populations. Professor T. N. Carver, of Harvard Univer- sity, who has recently discussed this question, sees at any rate for America after the war an immigration of an inferior quality to what it was 74 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS before the outbreak, and, as a result, a more acute stage of our already serious labor problem. But suppose we receive some of the men trained in the European war armies — these ought to show new physical and social force. If rumors from the trenches are to be consid- ered in this question, many of the men in the European armies, who have been gathered in from clerkships and other indoor occupations, ardently declare that after the war they will not go back to their desks, but will emigrate to new conditions favorable for health and independence. There is talk of laws in Europe to restrain emigration in behalf of the upbuilding of ruined industries. On the other hand, when the thirty- seven millions of soldiers now under arms return to civil life, where will they find employment? Hard times may be expected which would compel emigration. America, as the country least hurt by the war, might be expected to be less depressed industrially and consequently to give employment to the largest number of working-people unless in Europe State Socialism or labor control provides work for all. The democratic tendencies in these other gov- ernments may react upon our own in such a fash- ion as to make us more sympathetic with immi- grants who, before they start from home, are already imbued by their own government with democratic ideas. On the other hand, it is a ques- tion whether with the democratizing of European AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 75 governments, emigration from those countries will not naturally be checked. Frederic C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigra- tion, believes that immigration in America after the war will center around the idea of ownership of land. In America in the recent past immigrants have settled in the cities because they cannot do what the earlier immigrants did, namely, acquire cheap land in the West. Two hundred million acres of American land are now held by 250,000 corporations. America to bid for immigration must offer homesteads as Canada has done, as England, Russia, Germany, and other states are in process of doing. Just as wide ownership of small farms in France has been one of the ele- ments of making the French a non-emigrative peo- ple, the breaking up of the great estates owned by the royal families or nobility of European countries will encourage those classes in Europe to stay home which have in the past migrated. **In my opinion,'' declares Mr. Howe, * immi- gration to the United States will be profoundly in- fluenced by the big land colonization projects of the European nations. It may be that large num- bers of men with their savings will be lured away from the United States.'' Mr. Howe further in- forms us that a measure is before Congress look- ing for some similar farm colonization scheme for this country and that the State of California is undertaking a comprehensive investigation of this subject. PHYSICAL BETTERMENT— THE FUNCTION OF THE STATE " To me health is more important than all imaginable phi- losophy; and were it not that Philosophy teaches the recovery of health as her first maxim, she would not avail three straws. * Thomas Cablyle, Letter to Jane Welsh, July 9, 1826, p. 303, Vol. II. " The greatest task of military preparedness is to put the men in good physical condition." Db. Tait Mackenzie, Director-General of Physical Training in the Armies of Great Britain. " It may be seriously asserted that a chief cause for the remark- able achievements of Greek education was that it was never mis- led by false notions into an attempted separation of mind and body." John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 166. CHAPTER V PHYSICAL BETTERMENT— THE FUNC- TION OF THE STATE THE State of New York by recent legislation has led the way in compulsory physical train- ing. It has taken this step in the face of war, indeed as a part of military preparedness. Eu- ropean precedents for compulsory physical train- ing, as for instance in Austria and France, had a similar military origin, except that in those countries it followed defeat. At any rate, America's immediate concern over military efficiency will doubtlessly lead other States of the Union to take care of the physique of its youths. In the United States we need governmental supervision of physical training. The call for the scientific oversight of national physique is pressing. The task is too large for private or even local agencies. Our conditions are unique. We must improve physique under unfavorable conditions — ^millions of foreigners in new lands; millions of farm-born folk in cities. No small part of our problem— the improvement of the American physique — is the acclimatizing of immi- 79 80 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS grants and the urbanizing of foreign peasants and of native farmers. Physical Deterioration Pronounced Among Our City Poor Nothing has surprised me more, in thirty years of parish work in a manufacturing town and in a metropolis, than to discover the wretched phy- sique of the poor. In most European countries, height and weight are slightly decreasing. In England, Tommy Atkins is getting smaller and smaller; before the war, recruits even five feet two inches tall, with a chest measure of thirty- three and one-half inches, were hard to find. Now as to size there are no restrictions. At the outbreak of the Spanish War, at least twenty-five per cent, of our militiamen, as I was informed by the Adjutant-General, could not meet the physical requirements of the United States army. Similar failure of militiamen to meet the physical examination of army surgeons was disclosed in the mobilization of troops along the Mexican border. In the first draft about thirty-three per cent, were rejected for physical unfitness. The physical standards for the United States army and navy are high, nevertheless the de- ficiencies of militiamen might have been foretold from the physique of school children. For in- stance, in the city of New York physical exam- PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 81 ination and supervision are given to school children by the Department of Health. This expert inspection and treatment have done much good and cannot be too highly- praised. But at least two- thirds of the children examined have been found to need a physician *s or sur- geon's care, while of the backward and truant children more than nine-tenths are defective. The New York Globe of August 4, 1917, had the following editorial: **An examining physician for one of the local exemp- tion boards was moved to remark the other day after looking over some draft registrants: *' 'These men are round shouldered, flat chested, flat footed, slab sided, and suffer from hernia, defective hearts, and a dozen other chronic maladies. This is the sort of men we are breeding on the east side. The coun- try need not be surprised or aggrieved. If the nation wishes healthy, upstanding citizens to fight its battles, let it produce such citizens. But if it denies children food, air, and all else that children should have, it may expect just such a harvest as this.* ** There are thousands and thousands of children in the city to-day who are growing up to be round shoul- dered, flat chested, flat footed, slab sided men, with weak hearts and a dozen other chronic maladies. It is not their fault. Opportunity to develop into strong, healthy men is denied them." *'The New York Board of Health estimates that one hundred thousand children in the public schools go insufficiently nourished. '^ (Quoted by 82 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS William G. Wilcox, President of the old Board of Education, and submitted by him in his report to the new Board of Education, at the end of 1917.) In 1910 Professor Irving Fisher estimated that there were twelve millions of children in our schools in immediate need of medical and sur- gical attention, that is to say, three-fifths of our school population.* He further tells us that there are three millions of sick people in the United States all the time, so that ** There is no other measure now before the public which equals the power of health insur- ance for social regeneration. ' * f In Rochester, New York, investigated by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York City, it was shown that **only 50 per cent, of the total sick outside the institutions were in the care of physicians and only 45.3 per cent, of those sick were able to work and were being cared for. ' * A study in Dutchess County made by the State Charities Aid Society found * * that even among the well-to-do 10 per cent, did not receive adequate care; among the middle classes those that could pay for service for a certain time 50 per cent, were not adequately cared for, and among the poor 68 per cent, received inadequate care.'' J * Report on National Vitality. t Tenth annual meeting of the American Association of Labor Legislation, December, 1916. X Dr. Alexander Lambert, Chairman Social Insurance Com- mittee, Medical Association, Tenth Annual Meeting of the Ameri- can Association of Labor Legislation, December, 1916. PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 83 ** Today the burden of sickness and its results is tremendous. Could it be visualized it would be appalling. ' ' * The Causes of Impaired Physique Among Our City Poor The causes of physical deterioration among the poor of the cities are not far to seek. One is overcrowding, another is underfeeding. In 1790 only 3.14 per cent, of the population of the United States lived in cities of over ten thou- sand population ; in 1910 the percentage of urban population was 46.3. In New York State only 3 per cent, are agriculturists. **A cow does not need so much land as my eyes require between me and my neighbor. ' ' Seventy- five years ago Emerson quoted this approvingly. What a contrast to *4ung block'* and other con- gested city quarters today, with their 700 to 1000 souls per acre. A farm laborer in the United States in 1900 could produce five times as much as in 1850. **The introduction of machinery has increased the productive power of each laborer in agricul- ture, so that fewer persons produce more prod- uct; and the consequence has been that a large portion of the population has changed from agriculture to various kinds of manufacture and transportation.''! ^ W. C. Archer, Deputy Commissioner, in charge Workmen's Compensation, New York State Industrial Commission, December, 1916. t United States Census, 1900. 84 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS The city has come to stay. We cannot correct city congestion by spreading its population in the unsettled lands of the South and West, upon our nearer and abandoned farms, or in our suburbs. The city is an economic and spiritual necessity. Men must be in closest association to produce wealth with the least possible waste, and also for that personal contact which, pa- tiently and kindly met, develops, as nothing else can, mind, heart, and will. They must labor to- gether for economic advantage and live together for spiritual elaboration. The increased density of population increases the death-rate. Dr. Newsholme declares : * **The higher death-rates which are usually associated with increased density of population are not the direct results of the latter. The crowding of people together doubtless leads to the rest, to fouling the air and water and soil, and to the increased propagation of infectious diseases, and thus affects the mortality. But more im- portant than these are the indirect consequences of dense aggregation of population, such as increase of poverty, filth, crime, drunkenness, and other vices, and, perhaps more than all, the less healthy character of urban industries. Of the direct influences connected with the aggregation of population, filthy conditions of air and water and soil are the most important. Pov- erty of the inhabitants of densely populated districts, implying, as it does, inadequate food and deficient clothes and shelter, has a great effect on swelling their mortality. ' ' ♦"Vital Statistics," pp. 157, 159. PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 85 Where there is a high death-rate there will be deterioration of physique. Many are attacked by disease who do not succumb, but whose vitality is diminished and who not only carry through life physical weaknesses or blemishes produced by the disease, but impart impaired vitality to their offspring. Class and Race Acclimatization Are Potent Factors in City Physical Deterioration With the growth of industrialism, cities must expand. In the country farms are deserted; in the city mushroom apartment-houses spring up. A majority of the men and women of the United States will soon live in tenement-houses. Our cities are not only filled from our aban- doned farms with people who for generations have been used to the vigor of country labor; our cities are filled with aliens. We are crowd- ing the tenements with foreigners. The Ameri- can farmer's boy, removed to devitalized city air, is trying to breathe and the European peasant in America is trying to keep his health. Class and race acclimatization must go on at once. The farmer is bent upon becoming a fac- tory or mercantile unit ; the foreigner hastens to become an American. This is serious business. If you know any mill town full of foreigners, you have mourned over the deterioration of phy- sique in the second generation. American food, 86 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS hot summers, cold winters, stuffy tenements, play the mischief with ruddy, beefy Englishmen or Irishmen or whom you will. I have been repeat- edly shocked to find among cotton operatives girls of sixteen with full sets of false teeth. Our own ancestors had to fight the climate. The children of the colonists made hard work of survival. Cotton Mather (and he was of the in- telligent, comfortable class three generations from Plymouth Rock) had some fifteen children, of whom only four survived him. After three hundred years we ought to know how to assist acclimatization and how to escape its losses. Underfeeding Is a Factor in Physical Deterioration In England ten years ago, according to Sir John Gorst, thirty per cent, of the population lived below the margin of proper nourishment. In Edinburgh seventy-five per cent, of the school children had disorders due to underfeeding. A German writer before the war could throw in the face of England the fact that one-third of its population lived in the gutter. Astounding as it may seem, war itself has made London better fed and healthier. In the United States there are too many ill- nourished school children, as teachers can testify, who find that empty stomachs make drowsy and dull brains. It is a fallacy due to political PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 87 exigencies to suppose the American working-man fares sumptuously. From observation in the homes of working-men I believe that their food is meager in nutritive value, if not in amount. ** Perverse or defective nutrition tends to retard growth and to delay the characteristic growth periods and also final size attained is thus re- duced/' * While we are shocked at what crowding and poverty can do to destroy physique, we are hav- ing looming illustrations of what air and exer- cise can do to improve it. Nature is struggling always to improve her children. The children of mixed racial marriages in America tend to the physique of the larger parent. **The Anthropometric Committee's study in England found that boys from the better classes at ten were 3.31 inches taller and 10.64 pounds heavier than industrial- school boys and at fourteen were 6.65 inches taller and 21.85 pounds heavier.^' f At Harvard College the aver- age student is 1.2 inches taller and 8.8 pounds heavier than the stipend scholarship men (poor boys who re- ceive help from the College funds) . t "The Fellows of the Royal Society of England and the English professional class, who may be said to rep- resent the greatest brain power of the British Empire, average respectively 5 feet 9J inches, 5 feet 9^^ inches in ♦ " Adolescence," Stanley Hall, Vol. II, p. 32. t " Adolescence," Vol. I, p. 34. X Professor D. A. Sargent, Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900. 88 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS height and 160 pounds weight, while lunatics, criminals, and imbeciles, who may be said to represent the other end of the intellectual scale, if they are not classed as men- tally defective, average in height 5 feet 7 inches, 5 feet 4.87 inches ; and in weight from 147 to 123 pounds. ' ' • Physical betterment, which is the effort of na- ture and the result of increasing knowledge, is retreating today, among the poor of great cities, before unusual conditions. A change from a lower to a higher civilization, from an agricul- tural and handicraft to an industrial manner of life, for the time being, is injurious to the indi- vidual. Evidently there should be improvement in health accompanied by increase in strength and longevity, due to the recent enormous enlight- enment from science, especially in those depart- ments that teach sanitation and the cure of dis- ease. But with the coming of a better hygiene has cropped out a new enemy to health, the over- crowding and underfeeding of the poor in great cities. This deterioration should be temporary and merely a matter of readjustment, as great populations pass from an agricultural to an indus- trial manner of life. Better housing, more play- grounds and parks, more leisure, better food, hap- pier social relations, are essential to the physique of city dwellers. But while these are com- ing something can be done by direct physical training. •Professor D. A. Sargent, Popular Science Monthly, 1907-8. "Physique of Scholars." PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 89 A Free Summer Camp for Public-School Boys One remedy for deterioration of tenement physique is evident. Give at public expense to the poor the physical opportunities and some of the food the rich secure for themselves. A sum- mer camp for boys is no novelty. Camps for the sons of the rich are in high favor. Started about thirty years ago, they have offered such rough out-of-door living, as well as training in physical independence to hothouse children, that they are now innumerable. Why cannot the summer camp be grafted upon our public-school system? It could be approached from two directions: either from the philanthropic fresh-air work which sends thousands of children every summer into the country for a week or so ; or from the side of educational tendencies. The following headlines from the New York Tribune are evidence that the public are well in- formed of the value of the free holidays for mothers, babies, and children taken out of the tenements : MAKING FLESH AND BLOOD 270 Fresh Ani Children Gained 5241/2 Pounds IN Two Weeks Girls Make Best Showing Youngsters Come of Families Averaging Seven^ and of All Nationalities 90 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Ten years ago I pleaded in the North American Review for free summer camps for city youth. By the law of 1916, the State of New York has begun to provide them. The State proposes, says Dr. John H. Finley, Commissioner of Education, ' ^ the most notable constructive program of health education yet undertaken by a State. In prepar- ing the plan for the camp there were three primary purposes in view. These were to keep the boys mentally or physically occupied at all times, to give them such exercises as would produce a strong, healthy body, and to give them such mili- tary training as would enable them to perform intelligently those duties which a soldier might be called upon to perform. *^ There are in the State about 250,000 boys be- tween sixteen and nineteen years old. Under the Act 22,400 boys were enrolled as being subject to military training; the remainder were exempt under that provision excepting those who were actually engaged in *any occupation for a liveli- hood.' Out of these 22,400 boys about one-tenth applied for enlistment in the camp, and 1800 (the camp's capacity) were accepted.'' Dr. Finley and his friends are to be applauded for this first big step in compulsory physical edu- cation. In the same year Massachusetts enacted a similar law and Maryland, New Jersey, and Louisiana **took notice." Of course there is a big discrepancy between a quarter of a million boys between the ages of sixteen and nineteen in PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 91 the State of New York, and the 1800 actually in the first summer camp. But a promising begin- ning has been made. Now let us enlarge the scope of these State camps until we make them industrial as well as military, and extend them to include locations by the sea, in the mountains, and in farming coun- try. Camps on the ocean or large lakes could be the center of instruction for American youth in the management of boats, swimming, etc. Camps in the mountains could be an inspiration for for- estry, woodcraft, lumbering, etc. Camps in farm- ing country, in study of soils, care of domestic animals, and production of crops. All of these things, fundamental to future civilization, are even today an essential and necessary part of military preparedness. Compulsory Physical Training The volunteer work in behalf of physical exer- cise among New York school children, both boys and girls, undertaken by the city of New York in co-operation with the directors of physical cul- ture, has been admirable both in the number of pupils reached and in the variety and excellence of the athletic work achieved. These results have been largely due to the scientific knowledge and devotion of Dr. C. Ward Crampton and to the wide knowledge of amateur athletics and to the extraordinary energy and executive ability of Gustavus T. Kirby. 92 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS The class system of the Y.M.C.A/s gymna- sium, the setting-up exercises of the United States army, Swedish gymnastics, as well as the new regulations for physical training in the State of New York, form models of physical exercise for our American schools, now for the most part given to futile calisthenics for a few moments a week, with the object more of correcting circula- tion between study periods and possibly of cor- recting bad desk postures, than of promoting general improvement in physique with all that it implies. Nor are the benefits slow in appearing. The extraordinary change after three months in the physique of naval apprentices in the Newport Training Station under the nourishing and wise supervision of naval officers is amazing. Why not hold out to these school children who are so anxious for all forms of physical prowess the possibility of even greater development open to all? **I firmly believe,'* H. G. Beyer says, * * that the now so wonderful performances of most of our strong men are well within the reach of the majority of men.'' * CoMPULSoBY Physical Training in Europe In France, Germany, and Austria a compulsory system of physical training is in force in all edu- cational institutions, both civil and military, and * H. G. Beyer, " Adolescence," Vol. I, p. 197. PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 93 has had an influence upon the national physical development. The soldier, after his enrollment, continues a course of physical training with which as a boy and youth he has become familiar, and the main features of which still remain the es- sentials of his military education. Among the schools of England, no special gymnastic train- ing is officially required. The taking of proper exercise is left largely to the individual, much to his physical disadvantage when compared with the corresponding classes in the countries just named, and to the detriment of the military service of which he may ultimately become a part. In 1873 the French Government made physical training compulsory in all schools, and since that time immense improvement has been made in the development of the French. As in the other Continental armies, swimming is taught at all stations where the facilities exist. Some of the gymnastic exercises are accompanied by music. In Austria the highest importance is attached to the physical education of both soldiers and civilians, it being compulsory. In Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland, physical culture is looked upon as necessary as, and also as being an aid to, the mental and military education of the individual. 94 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS An Ameeican Precedent for Compulsory Phys- ical Training If we resent or fear to follow foreign example, our impulse need not come from abroad: **In 1790 President Washington transmitted to the First Senate of the United States an elaborate scheme prepared by General Henry Knox, then Secretary of War, for the military training of all men over eighteen and under sixty. The youth of eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years were to receive their military education in annual camps of discipline to be formed in each State, and a military prerequisition was proposed as a right to vote. This plan failed of adoption, as did also the following recommendation, that was urged in the na- tional House of Representatives in 1817 and 1819, 'that a corps of military instructors should be formed to attend to the gymnastic and elementary part of instruction in every school in the United States. ' ' ' * Noah Webster seems to have been the first American of note to propose the institution of a college course of physical training. The Round Hill School at Northampton, Massa- chusetts, under George Bancroft, in 1823, was **the first in the new continent to connect gym- nastics with a purely literary establishment. '' t The Boston gymnasium, opened in the Wash- ington Gardens, October 3, 1826, with Dr. Fol- len as its principal instructor, seems to have been ♦United States Education Report, 1897-98, p. 553. t Ihid., p. 554. PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 95 the first public gymnasium of any note in America. Gymnastic grounds were established at Yale in 1826, and at Williams, Amherst, and Brown in 1827. Between 1830 and 1860 no general revival of interest in school or college athletics occurred; after the Civil War an interest in athletics was awakened by physicians rather than by soldiers. The Economic Advantage of Better Physical Training When a national system of compulsory phys- ical education is advocated, the friends of such a plan will be asked to prove that it has economic value. This is easily shown. Physical better- ment is already recognized as a financial asset. If we may reckon the wage-earners as a third of our population, and suppose them to earn two dollars a day for three hundred days, the value to the country of extending their working careers by only one year would be twenty billion dollars. The actual figures are probably much higher. Our annual bill for sickness is another billion — twice what we spend for education. Physical culture for military service, although undertaken in maturity, is of so large advantage that it reacts beneficially upon the productive energies of society. In the training of recruits it is found that *Hhe greatest of all changes was 96 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS the change in bodily activity, dexterity, presence of mind, and endurance of fatigue; a change a hundredfold more impressive than any other/' A man's economic value today depends with fresh illustration upon his physical powers. Some railway corporations will not tolerate ciga- rette-smoking, and some New York banks forbid the use of alcohol among their employees, on or off duty. The tests of eyesight for color-blind- ness have become in our generation a require- ment of great services. One excuse for child- labor is the early decrepitude of parents in the laboring classes. Physical betterment would pre- serve the vigor of the average working-man be- yond early middle life ; would free him from need of stimulants; would extend the period during which he could support himself and educate his family; would increase the ability of wage- earners to provide for old age; and would en- large the wealth-producing population. Moral Advantages op Better Physical Training A great deal of work that we, in our debilitated and nervous generation, throw upon the moral nature of man ought to be left to the physical nature. We have overburdened the moral and have asked altogether too many tasks of it ; we not only expect it to stand the stress of great crises and to develop higher spiritual traits, but also to be constantly on duty to drag the erring indi- PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 97 vidual away from casual lapses. A normal body should do this. Physical exercise, it is well known, diminishes sexuality. The connection between morality and athletics is recognized in the leading American universities. At Elmira Reformatory the introduction of athletic exercise among the prisoners produced astonishing results, not only in the physique, but the behavior and moral attitude of the men.* To judge from photographs of incoming prisoners (naked), much of their moral delinquency might have been due to their physical plight. Health is the best mentor; a sick, devitalized man is restlessly driven to all sorts of substitutes for strength — to drink, to pleasure, to passion — in fact, to any excitement that momentarily stimulates his energies. Health has no need of narcotics and will hold a man to a proper and reasonable manner of life. To ask the will to keep a neurotic out of mischief is to postpone physical improvement and hasten a final catas- trophe. The problem of crime is simplified by compul- sory physical training. *^Lack of exercise, *' said Miss Agnes M. Hayes, of Public School No. 35, *4s the chief cause of thieving. If the boys had more playground, more air and sunshine, they would not gamble, and it is gambling that leads *New York State Reformatory at Elmira. Seventeenth Year- Book, pages P' and following. 98 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS to stealing. They would rather play football than get down in a cramped position to play craps/* Summer is the season of crime. Law-breaking, like a noxious plant, flourishes with the sun ; even among school children, unruliness increases with the temperature. There are twice as many bad boys as usual when the temperature ranges be- tween eighty and ninety, and three times as many when the thermometer soars still higher. Crime, immorality, and suicide hold high carnival in June, July, and August. If the children who swarm the tenement-houses could live during the summer in the country, under a splendid physical regimen, not only would much actual law-break- ing be prevented, but incipient tendencies toward crime averted. Mental Advantages of Improved Physique Today we can trace physical advantage very far. Professor Mosso, of Turin University, '*We attain in training a maximum of intensity and we keep ourselves, not for an instant only, at the cul- minant point of physical force, but even when the muscles have returned to their natural size after long rest, even for months the beneficent effect of exercise remains. ^ ' * " The Theory and Practice of Military Hygiene," by E. L. Munson, p. 400. PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 99 This benefit is largely in the storage of nervous strength. Charles Mercier, the English alienist, points out that, as states of mind are but the ob- verse side, the shadows, of nervous processes, whatever has effect upon the nervous processes has effect on the mental states. Memory, for in- stance, is on the bodily side the reviviscence of a physical process that has previously been ac- tive. The physical basis of memory is only too apparent to most of us, who can remember bet- ter in the morning than in the evening, better be- fore eating than after, better after exercise than before. At Sing Sing prison it has been recently found by Dr. Bernard Glueck that the work done by the prisoners in the afternoon is of a better grade than the work done in the morning. This, of course, is in complete contradiction to usual in- dustrial experience. Dr. Glueck discovered the reason to be the deleterious effects of the nights spent by the prisoners in their cells. Physical exercise is used today by alienists as a means of mental development. A few muscular movements, tried over and over again, may constitute the first steps of a progressive education and the starting-point of mental improvement. Mental and physical power are normally found together. In our public schools *^The children who make the best progress in their studies are on the average larger in girth of chest and width 100 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS of head than children whose progress is less satisfactory/** Physical Training as a Hygienic Precaution Physical buoyancy, the feeling of worth and serviceableness, goes far to transform life from a treadmill into a delightful opportunity. The brain is directly benefited by muscular exercise and cleared of humors and freakiness. Length of days, that biblical blessing, more likely now to be enjoyed than ever before, is di- rectly fostered by physical culture. **The habit of breathing properly is a great factor in longevity and a roomy thorax and strong heart are no mean allies in resisting invasion by disease. When the latter has actually gained a foothold a few additional cubic inches of respiratory capacity or a small reserve of disciplined cardiac power may suffice to turn the scales in pneumonia or typhoid fever. ' ' f America can show twice as many physicians to population as Great Britain, and four times as many as Germany. In proportion to the gen- eral population, we have seventy times as many doctors as physical directors. We permit this disparity on the theory, perhaps, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Preven- * See also Professor Dudley A. Sargent's " The Physique of Scholars, Athletes, and the Average Student." t"The Theory and Practice of Military Hygiene," E. L, Munson, p. 38. PHYSICAL BETTEilMENT ' lOr tion needs more numerical representation. Gov- ernmental supervision of health and compulsory- physical training will be important factors in any program after the war for greater industrial efficiency as well as for individual and domestic happiness. VI ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW AND THE WORKER "Argument with hungry, ignorant and excited men is obvi- ously a feeble undertaking, but still it is the only method in a free country like this. Certainly the clubs and the police will never put sound ideas into people's heads; on the contrary every blow is likely to make a convert to a ' propaganda of deed.* Even more subtle attacks on more stable ways of meeting eco- nomic difficulties had better not be suppressed." The Nation, March 28, 1908. CHAPTER VI ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW AND THE WORKER IN the past we have too largely turned over in- dustrial disputes in the United States to '* strong-arm * ' squads. Instead of deciding eco- nomic disputes, as we do political and legal differences, by parliamentary or by judicial ma- chinery, we resorted to force. Instead of refer- ring labor controversies to boards of conciliation or to courts of arbitration, we rang up the police, armed bands of private detectives, swore in spe- cial deputy sheriffs, called out the militia and organized ** vigilantes,'' who proceeded to gag discussion, to arrest labor-leaders, to intimidate strikers, to wound and to kill. Force and free speech were thus arrayed. The worker — whether he be foreign or native born — ^became the victim. Forcible contacts with agents of the law, and not with the higher courts, were the means whereby he learned the law and from which too often arose a distrust of the ** Government. " I am not concerned here to justify the so-called ** disturbers of the peace," nor do I wish to de- nounce the so-called ** guardians of the peace.'* 105 106 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS I only point to a dangerous gap in our methods of government, a region of nicest judicial require- ment. The police of our great cities are a body of men to be proud of ; physically as good as the London police, mentally they are superior. But they are being diverted from their sphere; they are being intrusted with discretionary powers that demand higher military and higher judicial qualities than they can be expected to possess. The Reign of the Strong- Arm Squad The roll-call of notable cases, where riot sticks or bullets or bayonets were used instead of brains, now includes New York, Lawrence, Kearny, Perth Amboy, Wakefield, Cabin Creek, in the East ; Spo- kane, Aberdeen, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Calumet, Ludlow, Everett, Bisbee, in the West. In Union Square, New York, in the winter after the panic of 1907, the Socialists having been de- nied the right to hold a meeting in aid of the unemployed, and a crowd incredulous of such a ruling having assembled, the situation was put into the hands of the police. The crowd was trampled by horses, beaten, pursued, and terror- ized, even before a bomb was thrown by an ir- responsible fellow who had a grudge against the police. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, a complicated situation which involved a bankrupt city (whose former mayor had been jailed for public of- THE LAW AND THE WORKER 107 fenses), twenty- two thousand strikers of over twenty non-English-speaking races and suspi- cious of the employers who were believed to con- trol the municipal government, was turned over to assistant police marshal Sullivan and po- lice judge Mahoney, reinforced by a regiment of the State militia. Many arrests were made and brutality was displayed against citizens, two of whom were killed. The strike-leaders were ar- rested as accessories or were indicted for com- plicity. Three of them — Ettor, Giovannitti, and Caruso — after a long imprisonment, were ac- quitted in a trial which showed clearly the flimsy character of the charges against them.* If it had not been for the eloquence of Giovan- nitti and the fear of reprisals at the hands of enraged working-men, it is believed by working- people that the three prisoners would have suf- fered the death penalty. In San Diego, California, a demand by Social- ists for free speech led to a reign of terror pro- jected by police and * Vigilantes. ' ' Colonel Weinstock, a highly experienced ob- server of social conditions, appointed special commissioner by the governor of California to investigate the situation, said in his report: ''The sacred rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, guaranteed under the Constitution, were trampled under foot by men who, in the name of law * " The Trial of a New Society," J. Elbert, 1913. 108 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS and order, proved themselves to be the bitterest ene- mies of law and order. ' ' * Another considerable danger from our use of force in labor troubles is due to the amateurish- ness of our agents. The nervousness of inexpe- rienced police, ** specials," detectives who fear for their own skins more than for the property they are defending, impels them to shoot without sufficient provocation. Of course, the result of this ill-timed and amateur marksmanship is the death of many innocent persons in no way con- nected with the strike. The proceedings of the police in different cities have been as much alike as their uniforms. They have not waited for actual disorder, but they have conjectured from a song, a speech, or a flag that something subversive was going to happen, where- upon they started in and cleaned up the place with riot sticks, horses, and revolvers. To sum up: The police have duplicated on American soil old Russian atrocities. They have broken up meetings, if the theme was uncongenial or unintelligible to them ; upon the plea that such meetings create public disturbance, they have ** beaten up" would-be organizers of labor and have denied Socialist speakers and I. W. W. speakers the right of free speech; they have ar- rested loiterers, pickets, and leaders in time of strikes when no violence had been committed. •Report of Commissioner investigating San Diego, Cal., dis- turbances, H. Weinstock, 1912. THE LAW AND THE WORKER 109 In detail, they have played the fire hose on pub- lic speakers, women, and infants. They have poured lead into defenseless bodies (in San Diego fourteen bullets were found in one pleader for free speech) ; they have trampled women with horses and clubbed children; broken up meetings on streets, in fields, in public halls, and private buildings as if they were Cossacks. They have arrested peaceable citizens on frivolous pretenses, as, for instance, street speakers and their audiences, loiterers and strike pickets, on charges of blocking traffic or of disorderly con- duct, and they have filled the penitentiaries with them. They have tried to break strikes by im- prisoning the leaders on serious charges. They have confiscated reputable newspapers carefully reporting their acts. Furthermore, conservative citizens have aided and abetted the police in their worst violence. Unofficial bands have snatched prisoners, whose only crime was free speech, from the waiting hands of public officials; forced them to run the gantlet, a form of punishment revived from the Stone Age; stripped them naked; covered them with tar; escorted them out of the cities and turned them over to the mercies of the desert. Police and Courts Seem to Conspire Together One of the deep-rooted grievances of honest working-people is that during strikes, in order to 110 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS clear the streets, police magistrates will accept the unsubstantiated testimony of the police against prisoners who have been arrested upon charges of vagrancy or of disorderly conduct, etc., and that these judges ** railroad^' trouble- some pickets or labor-leaders to jail. In this way the police and the courts act together and judicial position becomes merely accessory force ; that is to say, it does not perform the function of sifting evidence and securing justice ; it is only another heavy hand pushing the working-man or labor-leader to prison. The number of working-men fined or impris- oned on these counts is so large that this abuse alone has spread among them a personal com- plaint against our courts. I was astonished, dur- ing a meeting of self-respecting working-people, at the large number of hands lifted up when some one asked how many of those present, women as well as men, had ever been in jail. **A man arrested is a man guilty,'' says Carl Hovey, ** according to a regulation and perfectly sincere police feeling everywhere." Unjustifi- able arrest is a very terrible thing to happen to citizens in a republic. It disfranchises them mentally and creates in them an antagonism to the state in which they seem to have no rights. The working-man sees, too, in this extension of police jurisdiction another evidence that the mas- ter class is adding to its arbitrary power. The opposition of working-men to injunction pro- THE LAW AND THE WORKER 111 ceedings is largely fear of this arbitrary power. For the injunction not only stops intended action, but it throws further proceedings (contempt pro- ceedings, so-called) into a court without a jury. Easy riddance of troublesome and successful of- ficers of the labor army in a time of strife is so congenial to the employers that the judges are naturally accused of collusion with them. Disregard for the Legal and Civil Rights of Working-men Readers of conservative New York newspapers cannot understand the opposition of labor unions to a State constabulary. If they could hear a description of the behavior of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary during the street-car strike in Philadelphia, they would thoroughly under- stand the attitude of the unions. This is also the attitude of the United States Commission on In- dustrial Relations, which reports, in regard to the Pennsylvania State Constabulary: ''The legal and civil rights of the workers have on numerous occasions been violated by the constabulary; and citizens not in any way connected with the dispute and innocent of any interference with the constabulary have been brutally treated, and in one case shot down by members of the constabulary, who have escaped punishment for their acts. Organized upon a strictly military basis, it appears to assume in taking the field in connection with a strike that the strikers are its ene- 112 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS mies and the enemies of the state, and that a campaign should be waged against them as such. ' ' * In the New York Globe of February 14, 1917, was this significant editorial: **If a State police force is established, it should be dedicated to the square deal — its commanders should be as much alive to protecting one sort of rights as to protecting another sort. Free riot is bad, but quite as bad is the practice of denying to men the use of the highways and the dispersal of lawful meetings. Think of such gross illegality as has occurred in Paterson and in Little Falls and the recent deportations from Everett, Washington. When employers get behind the law, the whole of the law, the labor unions are likely to do the same. As long as one element is allowed to pick and choose as to the part of the law to be enforced, so other elements are likely to do the same." The machine-gun firing from the moving train into the tents of strikers at Cabin Creek, West Virginia; the kidnapping and maiming of labor leaders at Calumet, Michigan; the bloody volley of the militia into women and children at Ludlow, Colorado; the rain of bullets shot by a posse of citizens at the I. W. W. passengers on a steamer trying to land at Everett, Washington ; the depor- tation of twelve hundred miners at Bisbee, Ari- zona, by the mine owners and the lynching of Little, a crippled labor leader at Butte, form a * United States Commisaion on Industrial Relations, Vol. I, p. 98. THE LAW AND THE WORKER 113 crescendo of outrage upon the civil status of working-men. The theory of the employers still seems to be that if labor leaders can be killed or silenced, industrial ** unrest*^ will end. Who Are the Greater Criminals? Colonel Weinstock's question in his report to Governor Johnson is being very generally asked : "Who are the greater criminals; who are the real violators of the Constitution; who are the real 'unde- sirables' — these so-called unfortunate members of the 'scum of the earth' or these presumably respectable members of society" — viz., the aiders and abetters of police and judicial outrages? The Boston newspapers at the time of the Lawrence strike published little that explained the attitude of the strikers, nothing that upheld them. An educated man close to both sides of the situation sent a communication to the liberal Boston papers, but it was not published. In California and in Michigan the labor lead- ers accuse the press of suppressing important news. The New York Call, a Socialist newspaper, finds one of the chief reasons for its existence in the fact that it ** regularly publishes news not found in other papers.'' Another form of suppression is the silence of intellectual leaders. Great intellectual equip- ments capable of rational solution of economic 114 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS problems are not heard from at industrial crises. Harvard College, only twenty-five miles from Lawrence, did not concern itself with the ** Law- rence strike'* except to add a rifle corps to the military contingent. The Commissioner of Labor, in his report to the Senate upon the Lawrence strike, presented July, 1912, said: **The average rate of wages for 21,922 textile mill employees was sixteen cents per hour. Approximately one-fourth (23.3 per cent.) of the total number earned less than twelve cents an hour; and about one-fifth (20.4 per cent.) earned twenty cents and over per hour."* In Los Angeles the building trades early in 1910 went out on a strike for an eight-hour day. When the strike had been in progress a few weeks, the labor men wrote a letter to the Mer- chants and Manufacturers Association asking for a peace conference. No reply was received, but the Los Angeles Tunes announced next morning that the communication had been con- signed to the waste-paper basket. A calculated insult began the trouble. One explanation of this stubbornness among employers is that when the older men studied po- litical economy the ^^ Manchester School" and * strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., 1912. — Sen. Doc. 870; 62 Congress, 2 Sess. THE LAW AND THE WORKER 115 laissez faire were dominant. The go-as-yon please economic theory, added to the JefPersonian political principle that the best government is the one that governs least, has shut the minds of many of onr successful men to the newer eco- nomics so largely derived from social values. In their attempt to destroy trade-unions, em- ployers of labor in the United States lag behind the industrial experience of Europe. Trade- unionism has, on the whole, made for industrial peace and patriotic service. When strikes are threatened, it ought to be simpler for employers to explain their position to one or two leaders than to thousands of employees. It is certainly easier in time of strikes to deal with a few rep- resentatives of labor than with a mob of work- men. The contention that all labor-leaders are corrupt is not conclusive nor can it be substan- tiated. The control of munitions manufacture in England could not have been secured by the gov- ernment had it not been for the trade-unions. The Constitutional. Right to Fkee Speech Abkogated Attacks by the police upon freedom of speech are, of course, contrary to law. Honorable Wil- liam Dudley Foulke, when an advocate of an un- popular doctrine had been forbidden to speak in Chicago, wrote to the Chicago Record-Herald protesting. He said that any one abusing the 116 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS right of free speech could be punished for it after the offense, but that to forbid a man in advance to speak, on the assumption that he is going to say something illegal, was a clear violation of the Constitution. **At Dayton, Ohio, Socialist speakers were acquitted by a judge who ruled that the ordinance under which they had been arrested was unconstitutional, since it seeks to make a chief of police a sole guardian of the rights of the people to use public streets for all public purposes except the right of public travel/* The several States of the Union parted with little of their police power in equipping the Fed- eral Government. They now exercise great po- lice power through cities to which they give charters and through the sheriffs of counties. **It is a well-established principle that mu- nicipal police ordinances,'' says Ernst Freund, in his authoritative volume, **The Police Power," page 57, *4ike all other municipal ordinances, must be reasonable in order to be lawful." The question then is. What police power is rea- sonable? Freund lays it down that the right of criticism of existing forms of government is prac- tically unlimited. Consequently, ordinances for- bidding such discussion would be unreasonable and so unconstitutional. After the Union Square bomb the New York Nation said (March 28, 1908) : THE LAW AND THE WORKER 117 ** Force is but a feeble weapon in dealing with unrest and agitation, because it cannot check the spread of ideas. The police may disperse a mass meeting, but, after all, they have done little or nothing. The abhor- rent doctrine runs like a plague through the masses — passed by word of mouth, by circulars, and by the revolutionary press. There is only one way to combat it effectively and that is by reason. If we cannot marshal arguments to destroy the fallacies and the half- truths upon which the structure of socialistic and anarchistic theory rests, our case is, indeed, hopeless." Before the war freedom of speech was being more and more repressed, less ostensibly in the East than in the West, by police interference with public meetings; more subtly by the attitude of the conservative press with its increasing power, by laws for censorship, and by the actions of monopoly agencies. Courtenay Lemon, in The Social War, Febru- ary, 1917, said: **The methods by which free speech is curtailed and abolished fall naturally into five heads: (1) by acts of State legislatures; (2) by court usurpations; (3) by police outrages; (4) by postal legislation and post office department rulings; (5) by the activities of that unique body — a private organization with public powers — the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. "In the State of Washington to say anything 'tend- ing to encourage disrespect for law or for any court' is a crime. It would follow that the law may not be brought into disrespect even for the sake of promoting 118 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS its repeal — the new blasphemy. In seven States we have legislative enactments against 'blasphemy' and thirty-six States have prohibited 'profanity.' In sev- eral States atheists, infidels, and even agnostics are ex- pressly prohibited from testifying, by which every ir- religious heretic is denied one of his most elementary civil rights. Vermont provides that 'a person who defames a court of justice, or defames the magistrate, judge, or justice of said court, as to an act or sentence therein passed, shall be fined. ' . . . " Substitute Brains for Bayonets If the exercise of the police power — that is, whether it is to be violent or reasonable — depends largely upon its administration, if the admin- istration of the police power depends upon social conditions and upon public opinion, then in the last resort police methods are an expression of the public state of mind. A secretary of Commerce and Labor said not long ago before a Congressional Committee: ''The conflict (between capital and labor) is irrepres- sible. If the Government does not find and establish rules by which the development may be intelligently and normally had, then ultimately the expansion and the progress will be had in defiance of rules that do not fit. That has been the story and that will be the story of development everywhere." The American public must be shown simple, ra- tional methods to put in the place of our present THE LAW AND THE WORKER 119 turbulent methods of dealing with industrial con- troversies. These successful rational methods exist. In Australia, in Canada, in England, in Germany, and in America there are govern- mental methods that have lessened the number of appeals to force. There are, too, unofficial ex- periments that have been encouraging. COMPULSOEY AeBITRATION LoGICAL Compulsory arbitration seems logical and to stand on the same basis as our courts of justice, which are compulsory in their action; but com- pulsory arbitration is not favored by working- men. In compulsory arbitration Mr. Gompers, Presi- dent of the American Federation of Labor, sees the possibilities of a new judicial tyranny. In Australia, in Canada, and in England the tend- ency is from arbitration to conciliation. In Canada the Industrial Disputes Investiga- tion Act of 1907 applying to all public utilities has proved very helpful. In these industries it is unlawful to strike or lock out until a Govern- ment investigation of causes of the dispute has taken place. It abandons arbitration, relies ex- clusively on discussion, conciliation, publicity, and public opinion. From March 22, 1907, to Oc- tober 18, 1916, 212 disputes were referred for adjustment of which twenty-one resulted in strikes that were not averted or ended, that is to 120 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS say, in ninety per cent, of the cases, the law's provisions were effective. In the United States the Erdman Act, enacted in June, 1898, provided for mediation proceedings of a purely voluntary character between rail- roads and employees directly engaged in the movement of trains. During the first eight and one-half years following the passage of the law, only one attempt was made to utilize it. Within the next five years, however, its provisions were evoked sixty times. Forty of the sixty-one cases were settled without recourse to strikes, — twenty-eight through mediation, eight by me- diation and arbitration and four by arbitration only. In 1913, the demand of conductors and train- men on forty-two Eastern railroads having met with a refusal on the part of the latter to enter into direct negotiations, the Newlands Law, which had been pending in Congress, was rushed through that body. In general it re-enacted the provisions of the Erdman Law relative to media- tion, creating in addition the offices of Commis- sioner of Mediation and Conciliation and a United States Board of Mediation and Concilia- tion. Under this Board, fifty-six controversies were adjusted between July 15, 1913, and May 15, 1916, — forty-five by mediation and eleven by me- diation and arbitration. The Adamson ** Eight-Hour Law'' of 1916, which stayed for a time the danger of a tie-up THE LAW AND THE WORKER 121 on all the railroads of the country and which has been sustained as constitutional by the Supreme Court, was not called into existence by the occa- sion which brought it before the public. Mr. Adamson, as Chairman of the Committee on Transportation, and his committee had con- ferred for years with the parties to the dispute, and had drafted a bill which they were only wait- ing for a fitting opportunity to present. It was not an emergency bill, but the result of a score of years of study and conference. In New York at the time of **the shirtwaist strike,** Mr. Louis Brandeis devised a preferen- tial union scheme.* **The preferential union shop was designed to meet the impasse arising from the insistence of the manu- facturers upon an open, and of the union upon a closed, shop. Under this arrangement the manufacturers bound themselves to maintain union conditions as to hours, wages, etc., and to give the preference to union members in employing and retaining workers. On their side the unions bound themselves to admit on reason- able terms all workers who should apply for member- ship, to enforce the discipline of the shop among their members, to restrain them from unauthorized strikes, and generally to see that they lived up to the terms of the protocol. ''During the year ending December 11, 1911, this machinery had been utilized for the settlement of 1,418 * See U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, whole number 146. 122 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS grievances, of which 1,283 were brought before it by the unions and 135 by the manufacturers." The shirtwaist protocol was effective for five or six years in preventing serious dissension in the industry and settled through its committee thousands of complaints without recourse to strike or lockout. Owing to a change in the of- ficers and a new policy of the Employers* Asso- ciation, and consequent grievances on the part of working-people, there occurred a long and bit- ter strike and lockout in the Spring of 1916. This resulted in a revised agreement, believed in some respects to be better than the protocol as a means of keeping peace in the industry. Great Britain, **the nursery of peaceful meth- ods of adjusting labor difficulties,** has made great strides in rationalizing labor disputes. ' * The most important factor, however, in the progress made along the lines of conciliation has been the atti- tude of the British labor unions themselves. Article 3, Rule 1, of the by-laws of the General Federation of Trade Unions reads: 'It is the purpose of the General Federation to promote industrial peace, and by all amicable means, such as conciliation, mediation, refer- ences, or by the establishment of permanent boards, to prevent strikes or lockouts between employers and work- men, or disputes between trades or organizations. Where differences do occur to assist in their settlement by just and equitable methods.* The British Federation of Trade Unions has, as a rule, acted up to the very spirit of this by-law.' ' THE LAW AND THE WORKER 123 Why Court Disaster? The United States with its many legislatures, its regurgitation of the doctrine of States' rights as attempted in California and Idaho, cannot ex- pect to give quick relief to a critical situation. On the contrary, we in America have more dan- gerous conditions, more serious infractions of in- dividual liberty, and at the same time more po- litical rigidity. What can we expect, then, except disaster unless we turn our backs upon a further appeal to force ar.d apply reason to our indus- trial problem! I find industrial engineers affirming that much of the trouble between employers and their work- men is due to the employers not knowing their job. Even when factories or workers are well organized by experts, the heads of the corpora- tion often ruin the whole organization and spoil results. If the employer is not infallible and the employee is not reliable, they must either develop a new co-operation from within or yield to a su- preme power from without. Under the commissionership of Arthur Woods in the city of New York, a new relationship be- tween the police and citizens was cultivated; one full of significance both for the better under- standing of the function of the police and for sympathetic and intelligent treatment of dis- turbances of public order. 124 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Not only were the police instructed to handle crowds with patience and with intelligent percep- tion of the rights of citizens, as to street-speaking, et cetera; but the police actually tried to make friends of the boys in the congested districts who have always had too many reasons to regard the police as their natural enemies. The Junior Po- lice League numbered some 4000 uniformed lads. These exchanged an ideal of depredation for one of civic service — the hero gunman for the hero **cop.'' During the garment makers' strike in the spring of 1916 and the car strike in the autumn, the attitude of the police was such as to win the approbation of the strikers themselves. While the labor unions and the representatives of the working-men in general are firmly set against compulsory arbitration, yet some method of enforcing a judicial settlement of strikes may appear from a quarter different from that in which it has been looked for. The Adamson Eight-Hour Law and its discussion in committee point to a view clearly held by Congress that it may exercise nation-wide power over labor dis- putes. Besides boards of arbitration and con- ciliation, with State or Federal power, Congress itself, as representing all three factors of labor disputes — capital, labor, and the public — seems likely in the future to exert an influence amount- ing to compulsory arbitration at what might be called its source. THE LAW AND THE WORKER 125 The attitude of attention and of co-operation displayed by President Wilson toward labor ques- tions is keeping them within the protection of government concern and remedy, where they be- long, and where alone they can safely be answered. VII UNJUST LAWS AND HOW TO REMEDY THEM " I fear that the many outrages of labor organizations, or of some of their members, have not only excited just indignation, but at times have frightened courts into plain legal inconsis- tencies, and into the enunciation of doctrines which, if asserted in litigations arising under any other subject than labor legis- lation, would meet scant courtesy or consideration." Chief Justice Cullen of New Yobk, Attitude of Courts in Labor Cases, George G. Groat, p. 32. " The true grounds of decision are consideration of policy and of social advantage, and it is vain to suppose that solutions can be attained merely by logic and general propositions of law which nobody disputes. Propositions as to public policy rarely are unanimously accepted and still more rarely if ever are capable of unanswerable proof. They require a special training to enable anyone ever to form an intelligent opinion about them." Judge Holmes, Attitude of Courts in Labor Cases, George G. Groat, p. 32. "Justice is essential to a program of self-preservation. The only way that America can protect itself, that the rich and the poor can protect themselves, is by doing justice." Prof. T. N. Carver, Essays in Social Justice, p. 32. " Bentham's Utilitarianism, after superseding both Natural Right and the blind tradition of the lawyers, and serving as the basis of innumerable legal and constitutional reforms throughout Europe, was killed by the unanswerable refusal of the plain man to believe that ideas of pleasure and pain are the only sources of human motive." Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, p. 13. CHAPTER VII UNJUST LAWS AND HOW TO REMEDY THEM A New York judge who halted for a moment in Broadway recently to gaze up at a sky- scraper, was prodded by a policeman and told to ^*Move on.'' He moved on. His dumb obedi- ence illustrated the attitude toward the law of the average American, who, while he may fume or grumble or prevaricate, nevertheless accepts a law pretty much as if it came from Sinai. There is a good deal of English law-abidingness inborn in the old-time American, hence his aston- ishment and alarm when he hears his laws chal- lenged as fundamentally unjust. But that is just what is happening today. Our laws are disparaged, even scoffed at, by large numbers of our fellow-citizens. For some years President Samuel Gompers, vice-president John Mitchell, and Mr. Frank Morrison of the American Federation of Labor, one of the largest bodies of working-men in the country, were under serious charges of con- tempt of court. The redoubtable Mr. Gompers is reported to have offered as his solution of the 129 130 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS matter the impeachment of Judge Wright. Shortly before we entered the war Mr. Gompers publicly declared that if laws were passed which forbade working-men to strike, they would not obey the laws, — **You may make us law-breakers, possibly, but you are not going to make us slaves. ' ' * The Socialist Party, in its Chicago platform, calmly recommended the dissolution of the United States Senate and of the Supreme Court. If in the large, as represented by their unions and programs, the people flout the law, their dis- respect is even more apparent when they speak for themselves. The working-men's label for our government is a ** plutocracy,'' **an oli- garchy," **a government by injunction" — one of tyranny, not of law. He laughs at law and quotes you the kidnapping of Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone from Colorado into Idaho, and its subse- quent ^legalization" by the Supreme Court, which found it could not inquire into the circum- stances of a kidnapping by civil officials. Or he echoes Mr. Gompers 's seditious regret, **What we should have done then was to have pursued the kidnappers." ** Disregard for law is fast becoming an Ameri- can characteristic," is the finding of the National Education Association in a report on a system of moral instruction for the public schools. * Before the Public Service Commission of the State of New York, New York Times, February 8, 1917. UNJUST LAWS 131 President Taft, in a speech at the Academy of Political Science, in New York, referred to the '* lighter regard for law and its enforcement in America as compared with England, and a con- sequent less rigorous public opinion in favor of the punishment of crime.'' President Hadley, of Yale, urges as a cure for our present low standards of public morality a higher reverence for law, which he thinks the country sadly lacks. A growing disrespect toward law in a people noted for their legalistic attitude toward their problems is significant. The Revolutionary War originated in legal controversy. The long corre- spondence between the United States and Ger- many before we entered the war illustrated our devotion to legal considerations. An ambassador from a great empire told me that with one of our recent presidents he could never get outside a legal discussion of subjects. Americans are legal-minded, yet they are show- ing disrespect for the law. Under such circum- stances there may be something the matter with the law or with its administration. This light regard for law is a new condition of things in America, especially this bitter, working- class feeling against the law — unless we compare it to the antagonism evinced by the abolitionists toward the slave-laws in the years before the Civil War. The working-people today in Amer- ica are not behind the laws; they do not regard 132 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS them as their laws, but as the laws of ^^ hostile interests/' It follows naturally that they dis- trust their law-makers and even their courts. That was the meaning of their demand for the initiative, the referendum, and the recall (even of judges). These new instruments, they hoped, would rescue their lost share of political power; would resurrect democratic government and re- instate justice. The dissatisfaction of our working-classes with the blind goddess must not be confused with the mob spirit that often sweeps away * * our best citi- zens '' when a negro is concerned, nor with the legal play of *^the criminal rich.'* It is not the anarchist's revolt against all law, or the well- understood unpopularity of the law with crimi- nals which the early American poet Trumbull wittily hit off : ''No man can feel the halter draw With good opinion of the law." There are thousands of critics of our laws and courts who are neither masked and cowardly fiends, nor rich law-breakers, nor anathematizers of law, nor criminals; but progressive citizens possessed with a humane passion for a pro- founder justice. Even the dean of one of our leading law schools before a body of lawyers, including ex-President Taft, is reported to have said that *Hhe free democratic government that UNJUST LAWS 133 prevailed here was neither free, nor democratic, nor a government.'' Laws and Courts Against Workers Working-men are convinced that both laws and courts are against them. They are astonishingly well informed, too, as any one who hears them talk can testify, about legislation and about judi- cial decisions that affect their class. They are not, in the commonly accepted phrase, ** deceived by agitators and demagogues,'' nor are they stirred by ** vague unrest." Their complaints are clear and specific. The laws and the courts are against them, but are for their employers. To begin with, the working-people see that proposed legislation in their favor or for their protection is fought by wealth. A recent New York fire commissioner's order for more fire escapes upon factories was fought in the courts by the manufacturers. The law requiring owners of tenement-houses to put running water upon every floor of the tenement-houses was bit- terly opposed as unconstitutional even by a great religious corporation. The present Tene- ment-house Law was fought in rather a disorgan- ized way by the vested interests, which have since organized most effectively. The efforts of or- ganized labor to secure an eight-hour day on all public works was also bitterly opposed. The fight waged at Albany in the legislature, against 134 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS the bill limiting the working-hours for women and children to fifty-four hours per week, and also against the law bringing mercantile estab- lishments more fully under the control of the De- partment of Labor, are other instances. Then, again, laws beneficial to working-people are passed, but are not enforced. Referring to the enforcement of the New York building-laws, the Wainwright Committee on Employers and Liability says: * * It was repeatedly brought out in the testimony pre- sented to us that those sections of the labor-law deal- ing with scaffolds, the covering of floors, the fencing of shafts and openings, and the protection of workmen are flagrantly violated, particularly in New York City.'' The laws, it is further claimed, are interpreted by the courts in a fashion hostile to labor. The following is a partial list of important decisions by high courts. ** Refusing to haul cars a conspiracy. T. A. & N. M. Ry. vs. Pa. Co., 54 Fed. Rep. 730, April 3, 1893. Taft, Circuit Judge." ** Quitting work is criminal. Same, April 3, 1893. Taft, Circuit Court." ''Arbitration unconstitutional. Supreme Court of U. S., in Adair vs. U. S., decided January 27, 1908, 208 U. S. 161." ''A strike is unlawful. U. S. vs. Cassidy et al., 67 Fed. Rep. 698, 185." UNJUST LAWS 135 ''A workman considered 'under control.' T. A. & N. M. Ry. vs. Pennsylvania Co. et al., 54 Fed. Rep. 746, March 25, 1893. Ricks, Circuit Judge.'' ''Effort to unionize shop unlawful. Lowe et al. vs. Lawler et al., 208 U. S. 274, February 3, 1908." "Unlawful to threaten a strike. John O'Brien vs. People ex. rel. Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Co., 216 111. 354, June 25, 1905." "Unlawful to ask reasons for discharge. Wallace vs. Georgia, Carolina & Northern Ry. Co., 94 Ga. 732, June 18, 1894." "Legal to jail a man a month without trial. Oregon Supreme Court. Longshore Printing and Publishing Co., Appt., vs. George H. Howell et al., 26 Ore. 527." "Constitutional to discharge a man for belonging to a union. Wm. Adair vs. United States, 208 U. S. 161, January 27, 1908." "No remedy for labor except personal suit. Massa- chusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Dianah Worthing- ton et al., Appts., vs. James Waring et al., 157 Mass. 42L" The Right to Strike Curtailed by the Courts ' ' Every argument that strengthens the conviction that a temporary prohibition of any sort of strike is per- mitted by the Constitution is a stronger reason for the opposition of labor. The reasons lie, furthermore, deep- rooted in the history of industrial struggles. Workmen have not been free very long to make demands for im- proved conditions or to enforce such demands. One hun- dred years ago a concerted movement for higher wages constituted an illegal conspiracy and was punishable as such. In America the application of the common law of 136 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS conspiracy to the activities of labor unions was slowly weakened by the decisions of courts. In England the modification was accomplished by statute. In this re- spect the English workers are better off, for, depend- ent as the American workers are upon the decisions of the courts, they are controlled by liberal and reac- tionary decisions alike. Strange as it may seem there is developing a tendency here and there on the part of the courts toward a more illiberal attitude with respect to the activity of unions. A man was freer to strike in Massachusetts fifty years ago than he is today, and the only difference is in the attitude of the courts. In West Virginia a few years ago a court held a miners* union to be an illegal conspiracy. In Arkansas within a year a court has held that a union in striking was illegally interfering with interstate commerce. ' ' * Another complaint continually heard among working-men is that laws passed by the people's representatives are nullified by supreme courts, and that the courts thereby assume legislative powers. L. B. Boudin, in the Political Science Quarterly, f puts the matter clearly: **Each case is supposed to stand *on its own merits,* which, translated into ordinary English, simply means that each law is declared 'constitutional' or 'unconsti- tutional' according to the opinion the judges entertain as to its wisdom. Since there are no longer any set rules by which the judges can be guided, since they are left to determine the propriety and wisdom of laws ac- cording to the canons of politics and statesmanship, * The Survey, January 27, 1917, p. 479. t Volume 26, pp. 238-70. UNJUST LAWS 137 they naturally exhibit those differences of opinion which we expect to find in legislative bodies.** Another fact that weakens the popular confi- dence in the judiciary is that our highest courts rarely pronounce a unanimous decision. The ** dissenting opinion** has educated the American citizen. He does not forget that he is nominally governed by majorities, but he has come to be- lieve that on the bench the opinion of the major- ity need not necessarily be in accordance with justice. Nor ought justice, he thinks, in a court of nine, like our Supreme Court, to depend upon one man. The people are confused, too, by the conflict of opinion between different courts. Let me cite a case prolific of amused comment: In the year 1910 Basso, a bootblack, in the basement of one of the business blocks of Rochester, refused to serve Burks because the latter was a negro. The law of the State of New York requires full and equal accommodation in hotels and ** other places of public accommodation.** The question, there- fore, was: Is a bootblack-stand a place of ** pub- lic accommodation'*? The first court said, **no'*; the second, **yes**; the third, **no**; the fourth, **yes, but.** Immunity op Wealthy Criminals The immunity of wealthy criminals has helped to disillusion the man of the dinner-pail. The as- 138 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS sistance given by the legal profession to ambi- tious and desperate men in securing, through our legislatures, statutes favorable to their enter- prises, but deadly to public interest, has con- tributed to destroy the people's respect for the majesty of the law. They discover, let us say, through * investigations'' that a great wrong has been done. Millions of money cannot be ac- counted for; vast expenditure is recorded with- out adequate showing in property values; what seems a gigantic robbery has been perpetrated at the expense of the public; yet, to the amazement of the simple-minded, the officials and owners of the corporations, who are well known, show no signs of fear and eventually go unpunished. A famous district attorney explained to me how this happens. He took some matches from a match-stand on the table we were sitting at, and arranged them as you see the lines in this dia- gram: He said: * * Suppose each one of these matches to be a law. Sup- pose, then, our friend, whom everybody believes to have committed great frauds, is undertaking to carry out plans that these laws oppose. He approaches one of the laws and finds that it stands firmly in his way like UNJUST LAWS 139 a fence. If he were to lay his hand upon that law or try to jump over it, he would immediately be nabbed and prosecuted, probably successfully. But he doesn't so much as lay a finger on the law. Under the guid- ance of his legal adviser, he merely passes along in front of it until he finds a way around. He thereupon proceeds in a similar fashion to find a gap between other laws, through which he just as freely progresses. Very likely he is again confronted by further obstacles, but he merely repeats the same cautious and success- ful tactics. He does not interfere with the law, for that would render him liable, but he gets around the law. If, finally, he runs up against a law which, as far as can be seen, has no hole in it, and really bars his way, he has only to secure or to call upon powerful political backing, to pass a bill favorable to his objects, which his legal adviser actually draws up, and so he proceeds — always according to law.** A Class Contkol of Law The working-people, furthermore, through their most 'trusted representatives,'* who to our shame it has to be admitted are labor-leaders, persistently demur at the class spirit in which the law is administered. High executive officials, courts, and law officers, it is contended, are swept along by this class bias, consciously or uncon- sciously, into grossly illegal action. A case in point was the arrest of McNamara. In a letter addressed by Victor L. Berger (the first Socialist Member of Congress) to the Com- mittee on Rules of the House of Repre3entatives, 140 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS McNamara's arrest, leaving out of consideration his guilt or innocence, was declared in every par- ticular to be illegal. ~~* ' McNamara was not a fugitive from justice, and the Governor of Indiana did not take the trouble to make sure of the facts. The police judge had no proper juris- diction, since the law specifically provides that the ac- cused shall be brought 'before the Circuit, Supreme, or Criminal Court/ The police and private detectives who made the arrest had no legal right to do so, since the law provides that such arrests must be made by a sheriff or constable. The seizure of McNamara's pri- vate papers was illegal. The Indiana statutes (Sec. 56, act of 1905) define the right of Search and Seizure. No such act as McNamara's abduction is therein per- mitted. Amendment 4 of the Federal Constitution was also violated.*' The fact that McNamara was proved to be guilty does not justify illegal action against him either by the police or by the courts. In short, the working-man contends that long after the destruction of monarchical forms of government, class-control still goes on even in a democracy; that far from *^the majority govern- ing for all,'' Mr. Taft's artless assumption, in reality a capitalist minority governs for itself alone. This skeptical position held by the peo- ple is fortified by the recent findings of econo- mists who discover that aristocracies or power groups have an inevitable tendency to re-estab- UNJUST LAWS 141 lish themselves under new names, even in repub- lics, and that everywhere dominant classes make the laws in their own interests. Justice and Right Conflict in Practice Finally, the people perceive that justice and right are not identical. If you hear no other com- plaint voiced by the working-classes against their employers, you will hear the accusation of hypoc- risy. They do not practice in business, it is charged, the altruism of their religious faith, but look out only for number one, protecting them- selves behind laws, against the plain promptings of humanity. What is more, the people do not understand justice which is only the grist of legal machinery. Merely to receive the benefit of the law is not, in their opinion, to receive justice, which might well be, to their way of thinking, something better than the conclusive decision of the court of last resort. For instance, a vice-chancellor in Jer- sey City refused to consider the ** common sense'' argument urged repeatedly by a litigant, and re- plied, **I never knew that the Court of Equity was supposed to supply sense to litigators. All it has to supply is justice.'' But, somehow or other, ** common sense" and **a square deal" are popu- lar synonyms for justice, and describe the only kind the masses believe in. The confusion of legal and moral ideals is not 142 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS strange, nor purely the result of ignorance. Not only is ideal right what the unsophisticated im- agine to be the aim of the law, but it is actually what philosophers have depicted as justice in a true republic, and what, historically, the law of the Greeks, more nearly than Roman or English law, strove to display. The law of Moses, too, knew no distinction be- tween right and justice; there was only one law. Indeed, we may have the Bible largely to thank (or shall I say to blame?) for the persistent con- fusion in the popular mind of the moral and the legal. Simple minds in England and America have for centuries been fed upon the idea out of the English Bible that justice should be the same thing as right. To the common people, for in- stance, Solomon is not only the most splendid of kings and wisest of men, but the most just of judges ; yet how candid and convincing his judg- ments! Ought we to be surprised if, after gen- erations of picturesque Bible teaching, the people seem to have got it into their heads that justice should be identical with right? Law Should Accommodate Itself to the Right The American working-man, then, like Henry James 's American princess Maggie Verver, is dis- concerted by **the discovery that it doesn't al- ways meet all contingencies to be right.'' The something more, over and above being right that in UNJUST LAWS 143 the case of the working-man has to be considered, is the law ; but owing to his straightforward way of looking at things, it is not to be imagined that right, in his opinion, should accommodate itself to law, but that law, as a matter of course, should be fitted to right. The relation of justice to right needs much clearing up, more than has been given it, more, of course, than I have room for here. Even jurists who have studied the fundamentals of the law are on this point obscure. One school finds the origin of the law to be custom, and conse- quently the judge, as **an expert upon custom,'' dispenses not only justice but also right; that is, as understood by his contemporaries, since he is their spokesman. The other school finds the origin of law to be the sovereign power. In their view, justice and right meet within the definition of the institutions of the day. In a monarchy governed by the theory of the divine right of kings, justice and right proceed from the imperial will, and are as infallible, theo- retically, as that which proceeds from Deity. In a democracy governed by the theory of social con- tract, justice and right are identical for the rea- son that the citizen, when he receives legal justice, gets all the right coming to him under his contract ; in fact, all the right his contract knows anything about. But the educated proletariat is asking for more than that ; it demands a closer compatibility 144 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS between justice and right, and would be perfectly willing to go outside the breast of the judge, or the will of the sovereign, or the contract of the citizen to find it. The working-man, perhaps, naively expects law to stand for that which among the Athenians the Goddess Themis em- bodied — abstract right as well as law and order. Possibly we can find the relation of legal justice to moral right by a bit more of analysis and a his- torical glimpse. If law deals with what **is,'* and morality with what ** ought to be,*^ then we can easily look back to a time when human in- telligence was so undeveloped that its customs or laws entirely satisfied it. Usage went as far as conscience saw, because a very simple custom summed up their social and psychological expe- rience. What was and what ought to be were of necessity one and the same thing, because the mentality of the time could not think them apart. With increasing intellectual scope, a later schism would be inevitable. Law Should Mobilize Society Creatively After all, what the working-man wants is not abstract right, which would be less human than old custom and would depend upon the vicissi- tudes of the metaphysical theories that estab- lished its standards. The working-man is seek- ing a positive ground for law in racial advantage as revealed by modern science. In short, the UNJUST LAWS 145 working-man, instead of always looking back- ward for his legal authority, proposes to look forward, and is declaring that whatever looms as for the best interests of mankind must be right and should be law. The object of the law, as he sees it, is not merely to prevent in- jury, but to create all sorts of new and higher values. And why cannot the present without arrogance claim to be self-sufficient in knowledge and con- duct? The tendency to explain every advance in moral position by reference to the past has been commented upon by Sir Henry Maine as **a curi- osity of human nature." Mankind has seemed ashamed to see in its own times reasons for, as well as evidence of, advance. But we have now entered upon a new era whose characteristic is that it will honor the present. Its methods will be to illuminate an old science by the new sci- ences; it will let light into law by opening win- dows from law into economics, hygiene, psychol- ogy, etc., etc. **The Rule of Reason," as now applied in jurisprudence, must eventually appeal to arguments discovered in the broadest prospec- tive advantages to mankind. Charles Ferguson says : ''That day is at hand in which it would be possible for a lawyer to stand up in court and say, 'I admit that I am not in line with the precedents; but I ask judgment on technical grounds. The law exists to mo- bilize the creative forces of society; and I am able to 146 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS show that the case of my client is in line with the sound rules of city building. ' " * Put the People Behind the Law Nothing can be more threatening to a democ- racy than for the rank and file of the people to lack respect for their lawmakers and to harbor suspicion of their courts. From animadversions against the law, the step is an easy one to viola- tion of the law; from lack of confidence in legal methods, the way is not a long one to their over- throw. The activities of our courts, on the other hand, are not so far removed from popular feel- ing that dissatisfaction among the masses with the attitude of the bench can be allowed to con- tinue with no fear of consequences. Supreme Court decisions have, in the past, been momen- tous, as many men now living can testify. The Dred Scott decision helped to bring on the Civil War. We must remember, too, that we cannot expect the people to reverence law in the abstract ; an abstraction cannot long retain the allegiance of a democracy. They will respect only beneficent laws and good law-makers. How can the people be put behind the law? What remedy can we apply to the increasing hos- tility between classes in our republic? Let us look first at simple and partial remedies. * " The University Militant," p. 31. UNJUST LAWS 147 Tell the People About the Law The people could be put behind the law to some extent by making them better acquainted with the law. This would be a method for which we have precedent in American history. The colonists knew their Blackstone. **The Men of 76'' waged the Revolutionary War more upon legal techni- calities than because of actual physical griev- ances. The orators of the Revolution could boast that every patriot was an embryo lawyer. After the outcome of the war, it was again the wide- spread knowledge of English law that made pos- sible our Constitution. Voices are continually heard today in people's assemblies and forums, often in broken English, expressing respectfully a pathetic desire to know more about the legal machinery of this country. They ask how laws are made ; how State and na- tional institutions can be changed. Lacking this knowledge, is it unnatural that ignorant or sus- picious or aggrieved working-men, especially those from overseas absolutism, still fancy them- selves in the hands of tyrannical forces? Why could not evening classes in the law be opened for working-people, where they might be- come widely acquainted with the subject-matter of law, and, at any rate, with their legal rights? Besides night schools for adults, law could also be taught in the high schools — and, perhaps, in the last year of the grammar school. Such law- 148 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS studies in the public schools would give, too, a dignified and intelligent approach to citizenship. The Twelve Tables were used by the Romans as a schoolbook for their children. If the Americans were to use the Constitution even as a *^ reader,'* its nature, at least, could be explained to future citizens who would learn that the Con- stitution is not a hard and fast contract between the States and the Federal Government — in other words, a dead document — but that such an agree- ment embodies, of necessity, the living law of the land, and consequently contains within itself an organic principle of growth which accounts for the constructive interpretation which, to the eyes of the uninformed, looks like constitutional revi- sion at the hands of the judiciary. Every child in the United States ought to be taught that the Constitution is not at any rate a boundary-stone, but more like a guide-post, and most like a tree well-rooted in fertile soil. Popularizing the study of law would do some- thing to correct the people 's attitude, for a knowl- edge of the law ought to disclose legal means out of alleged difficulties. Two prominent Socialists of my acquaintance were greatly surprised **to be shown'* by a lawyer friend of mine how many of the things their party demanded could be ob- tained under existing laws. UNJUST LAWS 149 Tell the People About Each New Law There is another method by which the people could be rallied behind the law. Suppose bills of the first importance in Congress and in State legislatures had public hearing before great popular audiences, where the bills could be ex- plained by their promoter and questions might be asked and answered. Public discussion is the es- sence of peaceful progress in a democracy, but it is rarely afforded in legislative debate, which is too often only a demonstration of power be- tween contending forces, with as little honest con- troversy as is shown in a tug-of-war contest — worse still, a tug-of-war when an anchor-man's palm has been ** greased. '* With more public dis- cussion we should need less public investigation. Honest public education about pending measures would have a tendency to prevent special legisla- tion hostile to public interest, and would develop among the people sympathy for law-makers and approval of their work — the agreeable confidence that the laws enacted were their own laws. In the State of Washington printed copies of proposed laws are placed in the hands of citi- zens, which gives them an opportunity to study them before they are finally voted upon. This, at any rate, is a frank invitation for co-operation and is far different from the practice in Eastern States, where citizens' committees have to keep agents at their capitals to watch for *^ jokers" 150 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS and corrupt legislation, which those favorable to such undertakings attempt to have passed while the public are kept in the dark. Eliminate the Jargon of the Law Again, why cannot laws be drafted in such clear language as to be intelligible to anybody who can read and understand English? A deal of litigation would be unnecessary and much dis- trust of the law avoided, if in every legislature there were an official sufficiently a master of the vernacular to frame bills whose phraseology would not itself be a source of misunderstanding. **Half the perplexities of men,'' says the Duke of Argyll, **are traceable to obscurity of thought hiding and breeding under obscurity of lan- guage.'' Even the New York Times is irritated at the delays and misunderstandings due to the obscurity of legal language, and editorially de- clared, **It would be well if the slang and jargon of the law could be reduced to terms of our com- mon speech." Broadeb Education for Legislators and Lawyers We must ask our legislators — so many of whom are lawyers — and our judges as well, to know something more than the law. Laws are framed and tribunals determine justice, not only accord- UNJUST LAWS 151 ing to legal, but also according to political, so- cial, and economic principles. The judge who be- lieves, with our new political economists, that poverty can be abolished will hand down differ- ent legal opinions from his associate who still holds that poverty is God's judgment on inca- pacity. At a meeting of the Association for Labor Legislation, Professor Ernst Freund declared that in his opinion a systematic study of indus- trial hygiene would revolutionize the attitude of the courts toward labor legislation. But hygiene is not the only study besides law which a lawyer ought to know. Biology, history, and sociology would teach him that all material things and all human institutions are plastic to evolutionary forces ; that law is no exception, and must still further change. If the people believe that the laws and the courts are against them, and if they demand a change, then one of the first things to be done is for the conservative classes to get used to the idea that change is not necessarily catastrophic. Thirty years ago I was walking across the quadrangle of a theological seminary with the foremost educator in America. As we passed the library I made some remark about the oblivion that quickly envelops most religious literature. **Yes,'' said my companion, '^the minister's li- brary soon loses its value, but so does the doc- tor's. Only law stands unchanged." Today an 152 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS authoritative writer upon the law freely admits to me that the fundamental laws of property are changing. Yes, even the laws of contract — that stronghold of conservatism — are undermined. The theological library and the law library may not be approaching a common obsolescence, but those concerned with law must acknowledge that unexpected changes in their science are under way. But change does not spell disaster. Changes take place in our institutions long before they are named. A name does not make a change danger- ous. Lowell was a good constitutional lawyer when he wrote: '*We shape our courses by new risen stars, And still lip-loyal to what once was truth Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. Change is the mask that all continuance wears To keep us youngsters harmlessly amused.'* Out of the midst of the Supreme Court itself comes testimony to the change our laws are un- dergoing. Justice Holmes encouragingly re- marks : '*that it is unavoidable that judges base their judg- ments upon broad considerations of policy, to which the traditions of the bench would hardly have toler- ated a reference fifty years ago.''* The fight for the confirmation by the Senate of the President's nomination of Mr. Brandeis for * " The Common Law," p. 78. UNJUST LAWS 153 the Supreme Court was the people ^s fight to put into the Supreme Court a proven exponent of the living law. The action of the court since then has justified the instinct of the people. The curbing of patent monopolies; the extension of the anti-rebating clauses of the interstate com- merce act; the women's minimum wage and men's hours of service laws of many States, sus- tained by the decision upholding the two Oregon statutes ; the upholding of the constitutionality of the Adamson Eight-Hour Law by one vote, — all of these important Supreme Court decisions are significant advantages of a living, rather than a literal, interpretation of our Constitution. Mr. George Gordon Battle, after a valuable re- view of notable decisions affecting labor, con- cludes that, on the whole, they tend to become more sympathetic, and are disposed to take into consideration public policy.* This applies to labor legislation, not to strikes, which we saw were at present adversely dealt with. As a result, perhaps, of war alarms, reaction against labor unions has appeared in judicial de- cisions. President Frank J. Hayes, of the United Mine Workers of America, at the biennial conven- tion of his organization at Indianapolis, in Jan- uary, 1918, referred to the action of the United States Supreme Court sustaining the injunction * " Address before the People's Forum," p. 16. See also George Gorham Groat, "Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases." Columbia University, 1911. 154 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS which prohibits his organization from soliciting employees of a coal company to become members of the organization, and said : *'In this crisis the Sherman anti-trust act, and other Federal statutes are set aside to permit the formation of exporting trusts and similar pools, some as if by administrative action and some by express congressional laws. It seems, however, to be declared an open season by the Federal judiciary for hunting labor unions ; and this convention should not adjourn without taking some decisive steps for laying before Congress the situation raised by these decisions and of securing legislative assurance against their repetition." WORKING-CLASS CoNTROL AS UnJUST AS CAPITATi- CLASS Control We cannot put the people behind the law merely by taking power away from the capital- istic class and by giving it to the working-class. Our problem would not be solved by transferring political power from the capitalistic minority to the proletariat majority. Working-class control would only swing the pendulum to the other ex- treme and give us working-class justice, just as now we have a capitalistic justice. And we are well enough aware that one control, if we are talking about arbitrary exercise of class power, would be as bad as another. A working-class control would be as unjust as a capitalistic con- trol, for it, too, would be one-sided. The working-class outlook, on the whole, it has UNJUST LAWS 155 unfortunately to be noted, is not broad, and some of the decisions adverse to labor we are obliged to account for (and this is admitted by labor men themselves) as the result of innnature legis- lation undertaken at the hasty and querulous call of labor. Some working-men blame their own class for the adverse judicial decisions, and even contend that most of the labor laws declared un- constitutional have been declared so justly. The trouble with the laws, they say, is not so much with the courts as with labor itself, or its legal representatives ; for the trouble is in the instincts of the working-class. The instincts of the work- ing-class are to procure some sort of legislation that will protect them, and that will injure, some- how or other, the corporations, by giving small business advantage over corporations. Much of the legislation in the interest of labor has, as can be seen, discriminated against corporations and also in favor of local labor as against race and nationality. Not only was it easier for the courts, but incumbent upon them, to declare such legislation unconstitutional. The fault may lie in the wrong instincts of the working-class, or in the attempt on the part of legislators to satisfy labor by passing some sort of legislation in its favor, but of such a nature as to make the dec- laration of its illegality certain. "W. S. Carter, president of the Brotherhood of Loco- motive Firemen and Enginemen, spoke from the heart 156 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS recently when he said in addressing an audience of brotherhood men : * Congressmen have long since learned that to oppose the designs of the wealthy men of the United States is to bring upon themselves an avalanche of political opposition that surpasses in its intensity and efficiency even Prussian militarism. When members of these brotherhoods can readily be hired by the funds con- tributed to a political campaign by these same wealthy men to defeat for election congressmen and others who fought for the legislation objectionable to wealth, let us not be too quick to condemn congressmen. . . . When working people are politically honest and have sufficient political intelligence to distinguish friends from foes, much of which they now bitterly complain will dis- appear.' *' * Naekow the Gulf Between Stability and Progress If capitalistic control of legislation is intol- erable, and if working-class control would be no better, must we not look for a mean between capi- talistic control and working-class control; that is to say, for relation between the two that will give to neither undue power? "Descriptively speaking, the ideal basis for law, using the word in the narrower sense, would be one which would result in obtaining the greatest good for the greatest number by securing exact justice between man and man, and between man and the state. This, *"Is Labor for Labor?", the Evening Call, January 16, 1918. UNJUST LAWS 157 as we know, was the generic basis of the common law."* The complaint of the people today is not only against precedent or prejudice ruling in place of justice; their complaint is not only of undemo- cratic influences and ignorance vested with judicial authority. They complain of the idea current of justice, that it is founded upon property right, upon sovereign rights, and not on a modern humane estimate of man and his needs in a demo- cratic state. But we need not only humane contact with our social and economic problems ; we need also intel- lectual contact. A democracy should never forget the warning of John Stuart Mill: **The future of mankind will be greatly imperiled if great ques- tions are left to be fought out between ignorant change and ignorant opposition to change." Sir Henry Maine noted the conflict between law and progress. **Law,'' he said, **is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people de- pends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.'' * Judge Lindley M. Garrison, " Ideal Basis for Law," p. 11. VIII ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING AMERCANIZATION ? "... private munificence moved by the spirit of high public duty has never been shown on a finer scale than by American plutocracy working in a democratic atmosphere. Materialist, practical, and matter-of-fact as the world of America may be judged, or may perhaps rightly judge itself, everybody recog- nizes that commingled with all that is a strange elasticity, a pliancy, an intellectual subtlety, a ready excitability of response to high ideals, that older worlds do not surpass, even if they can be said to have equalled it." Viscount Morley's Recollections, Vol. II, p. 109. "He conceived it to be a fundamentally mistaken policy to use the surplus good of each generation to repair the wastage that it wrought. ... He soon perceived that it was in the political field and through political agencies that his cause must advance." Joseph Fels' Life, By Mary Fels, p. 79. CHAPTER Vni ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING AMERICANIZATION ? AMERICA must deal gently with its rich men; -^^^ they are a natural American product like big trees, tall grain, and mammoth vegetables. Our virgin soil and virgin forests, our water power, minerals, coal and oil, had to fall, under a system of private ownership, into somebody *s hands. The possessors of these bounties of nature are our rich men. Then, too, the growth of cities, under our fac- tory and our mercantile system, which diverted to city life hands that had been supplanted on the land by wonder-working agricultural machinery, increased land values mechanically and enriched landowners. The private ownership of the machinery of production; the exploitation of new mechanical powers ; the competition of machinery with human labor ; the bargaining with labor on an individual and commodity basis, again produced rich men. But, after all, the rich pay a heavy price, — blindness, hatred, and fear. An inheritor of great wealth, under the obses- 161 162 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS sion that every one is after his money, makes no close friendships but from youth to age wanders over the world in his yacht, suspecting every one he meets. A young man representing enormous interests responded to the summons of the Indus- trial Commission expecting fully to be assassi- nated. An American banker, a companion and benefactor of kings, could say to a companion at luncheon : * * I never have any fun. I am worried all the time ; ' ' and again to a friend at a funeral in a New York church: **I wish I were in that coffin. ' ' How THE Rich Can Help There are three ways in which the rich can assist the adjustment of the poor, particularly the foreign-born, to American institutions and can co-operate in their Americanization. 1. As taxpayers and law-makers; that is, as contributors to the income of the community and as designators by political influence of the way the corporate wealth shall be expended. 2. As benefactors; that is, by direct gifts of money to objects and institutions which they philanthropically establish and develop. 3. By representing ideal Americanism ; that is, by their personal influence. Are the rich Americans then aiding the adjust- ment of the poor and foreign-born to American institutions in these ways — as taxpayers and law- ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 163 makers; as benefactors and philanthropists, as model Americans? The wealth of America in July, 1917, was esti- mated as $240,000,000,000. Of course, the figure is changing all the time and just now has been increased by war profits. Our wealth is possessed, for the most part, by less than five hundred thou- sand persons, if we take the number that paid the federal income tax. How is this vast wealth used directly for the benefit of the poor? What is wealth doing, for instance, to prevent the grossest evidences of maladjustment, such as disease, pov- erty, vice, vagabondage, crime? The Fight Against Disease Wealth is not helping conscientiously the peo- ple's fight against disease. The mortality tables depend upon the tax rates and these are fixed to please the pockets of the rich. I shall not forget my astonishment when a New York alderman told me that the amount of sickness in New York de- pended upon the Board of Estimate and Appor- tionment. I had supposed that *^God in his wise providence ' ' had something to do with it. No, the life and death of the poor are in the pocketbooks of the rich. For the money at the disposal of the city government depends upon the amount that the taxpayers' associations, the real estate interests, the city contractors, the public utility companies desire the city to expend. Some years ago a street 164 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS cleaning commissioner in New York asked for an extra appropriation — as I recall it, some $86,000. He did not get it until he had made the city under- stand that the piles of filth on the East Side would not **stay puf but would dry and blow germs of disease into all parts of the city. Remember, too, that half the disease and death in the United States is preventable and that pre- vention is purchasable. **That a well-to-do class, properly fed and clothed and with opportunity of leisure, will be less susceptible to disease and death than a poverty-stricken class, ill-fed and overworked, has been repeatedly shown by statistics.^** **Hard times increase the death-rate.'' When General Gorgas was asked how to improve health condi- tions in the United States he is reported to have replied: ** Raise wages.'' Are the rich inclined to raise taxes or wages as a health measure? As for American poverty, it is officially stated that fifty per cent, is due to sickness. A good deal of the remainder depends upon causes like de- ficiency in industrial education, lack of employ- ment, lack of industrial insurance to support fami- lies in times of sickness, lack of old-age insurance. Developing and Eliminating the Defections Below the ranks of the poor who struggle indus- trially with varying success to keep their heads •Report on National Vitality, pp. 22, 23. ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 165 above water, are the paupers who have become submerged. *^Very few of the paupers are so solely because of misfortune/^ says Henry H. Goddard, in his great book on ^^Feeble-Minded- ness/' ** Investigations of our almshouses show that a considerable proportion of inmates are mentally defective. They were defective children. Their parents and grandparents were defective — some of them. They should have been looked after in these earlier stages of the problem.'' Society should have protected them. Within three years a New York judge said to me: ** There is no place in the State to which I can send a defective until he has committed a crime." The defectives in Dr. Goddard 's tables are in many cases suspiciously connected with children's diseases or with what are called the social dis- eases, — again matters over which society can exer- cise control. Dr. Prince A. Morrow, who was our greatest au- thority on social diseases, said, *^The extermina- tion of social diseases would probably mean the elimination of at least one-half of the institutions for defectives.'* American wealth is not fighting poverty seriously. Vice is largely associated with defective phys- ical and mental conditions. One significant record comes from Geneva, Illinois, made by Dr. Bridgman. She found that of 104 girls in that reformatory, committed for an immoral life, 97 per cent, were feeble-minded. **This does not by 166 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS any means indicate that 97 per cent, of prostitutes are feeble-minded, because it is only natural to expect that the feeble-minded ones would be the ones to be caught and sent to institutions. This figure, nevertheless, gives some idea of the preva- lence of the feeble-minded in this traffic. ' ' * Fifty per cent, of feeble-minded is authoritatively said to exist among women of the street.f Vagrants Vagabondage is a very serious maladjustment to social conditions; it seems to fly in the face of settled social life, more even than crime and vice. The vagrant, however, is often an honest working-man who has left home to better himself and has never successfully established economic connections in the fields of his ambition ; too proud to return home a failure he drifts along until he finds himself a tramp — a hobo. Day laborers, too, in hard times, easily fall into the ranks below them, — of vagrants. Striking workmen are often arrested and sentenced as vagrants to the satisfaction of conservative interests. I stood at the application window of the Munici- pal Lodging House in New York one winter night, as the homeless applied for beds. To my surprise the majority were soldierly-looking men around * Henry H. Goddard, " Feeble-Mindedness : Its Cause and Con- sequence," pp. 15, 17. t Supra. ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 167 thirty-five years of age. There seemed to be many foreign-born, to judge from the records, who had been in this country five years, but who had never got regular employment, never ^^ caught on,'' industrially. Laziness is now scientifically diagnosed as ab- normal and a sign of disease. The collapse and dispersion of a family as a result of sickness and unemployment is being here and there studied and provided against; but the whole problem of vagrancy should have Federal supervision. The problem of vagrancy seems particularly suscep- tible of great improvement at the hands of a national system of labor bureaus.* Crime Preventable As for crime, Dr. Glueck, the psychiatrist at Sing Sing, reports that 87 per cent, of the men he has examined since August, 1916, might just as properly be in the wards of hospitals as in the cells of Sing Sing ; that 28 per cent, are defective and 12 per cent, insane.f Again, a condition that better social organization could have pre- vented. A teacher of trades to prisoners in one of our city prisons told me that if trades were taught in our public schools by which boys could earn their living, there would be much less crime. ^^But vagrancy and crime are, * " British System Labor Exchanges," U. S. Department of Labor Bulletin No. 206. t Dr. Bernard Glueck, Mental Hygiene, January, 1918. 168 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS to a surprising extent, due to lack of employ- ment.'' * In other words, a more social use of the wealth of the community would change every figure in this list of pernicious enemies of national effi- ciency — disease, poverty, vice, vagabondage, and crime. Abe Gifts Made in the Right Direction? Are rich Americans making gifts which con- tribute rapidly to the adjustment of the poor! Are their benefactions melting down inequalities and peculiarities brought from other countries and classes ? There seems to be no limit to the amount Ameri- can millionaires will give to colleges, medical schools, technical schools, art museums, and libraries. These are undoubtedly great instru- mentalities for civilization and education; but they are not immediately powerful elements of assimilation for the rank and file of the popula- tion — nine-tenths of whom never go to school be- yond the age of fourteen — and have little time for museums and libraries. The sum-total of gifts, over a thousand dollars each, contributed in America in 1900 amounted to $62,461,304. In 1906 these gifts amounted to $106,000,000; in 1909 to $186,000,000. In 1916 the ♦ Dr. W. D. P. Bliss, " Unemployment," U. S. Department of Labor and N. Y. Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Report for the year ending September 30, 1916. ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING I 169 total for gifts over $50,000 each was $65,000,000. There are many who think these enormous sums are more than the rich should be expected to con- tribute for the benefit of the poor. The rich men of America who made these gifts deserve high praise. But we should notice that little of this money finds its way to the slums of great cities to fight poverty in any hand-to-hand fashion. After all, while the gifts of rich Americans to great foundations seem in a lump sum to be large, the amount is small when the needs of one hun- dred and one millions of people are considered. Even in our greatest cities, where there are the largest benefactions, the hospital equipment for the care of the poor is entirely inadequate. Mean- while, it is found by a careful inquiry by the medi- cal profession that the working-classes cannot pay for fifty per cent, of their medical attendance. If in such concrete and well-understood directions as sickness and hospitals the gifts of the rich are not meeting the requirements, we may easily surmise that other philanthropic provisions are not likely to be adequate. As benefactors the rich of America exert prob- ably less influence upon the poor, especially in the direction of Americanization, than has been sup- posed. While in England Macgregor computes that fifteen per cent, of the advantages received by the working-man are not paid for by his wages, but proceed from philanthropies, government in- 170 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS stitutions, etc., the amount in America must be very much less both because we are more widely spread out, and because our benevolent institu- tions have a shorter history. Could it also be because the English philanthropy is figured in larger sums? A New York multimillionaire said to a friend of mine: *^Do you know, if America contributed to the Red Cross Fund in proportion to what Canada has contributed, that instead of a hun- dred millions we should have given a billion and a half. We Americans are * pikers' in the matter of giving. ' ' Then he added significantly : * ^ I am not going to be a piker, *' and proceeded to spend over a million for an original and constructive public service. Tyranny of Wealth and Its Conservation Wealth and its conservation represents on the whole old age and its fears. In the nature of the case, therefore, wealth cannot assist the adjust- ment of the worker because it is the coming up of the worker to greater power that it dreads. Wealth's fears are best served by labor's weakness. There is a psychological ground upon which we can base the statement that wealth will not assist poverty to the extent of making it a competi- tor or until it becomes independent and self- sufficient, which is the very essence of Ameri- ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 171 canization. The psychological antagonism of the younger generation to the older, which is a fun- damental attitude, out of which flow great social consequences, shows itself in political theories and practice. This revolt at authority of the father is the source of revolutionary programs in states where the rulers force the authoritative attitude upon the people. The Czar was the Little Father and his subjects were his children, with the result that Russia was a breeding place of anarchists, nihilism, socialism, and all manner of attack upon his ^^papaism.*' But the attitude of czar, kaiser, emperor, of aristocracies or junkerdom, is not confined to the individual or classes so named; it pertains and clings to groups that have great stakes to lose and fear their weakness as being in the numerical minority — groups that consume by their standards of life incomes that could give comfort, education, and culture to thousands of working-people and their families. Rich Americans who add to their wealth by monopoly, by privilege, by corruption — legislative, judicial, and police — represent in a democracy the authority and tyranny of the old world which we Americans are at war to displace. There are probably rich men in America as much dis- turbed by our citizens as the Czar was by his sub- jects. Rich Americans under this view retard the constitutional adjustment of the immigrant and of the working-classes and hasten a revolutionary adjustment. America cannot cure anarchism by 172 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS deportation; for it is not entirely an over-seas product. Rich Americans, for the most part, have no con- ception that their country has problems that their money won't settle; troubles that philanthropy, the police, and Billy Sunday cannot cure. They will give millions for education and medicine but not a cent for changing the rules of the political and business game or for new social and economic ideas. They will endow universities, not for the country's good, but to produce more successful men like themselves — more money-makers. The rich seem to have little conception of the organic problems of society; the economic foundation of the government, or of a nation which is a brother- hood and not a mere Camarilla for the distribu- tion of privilege. Pebsonal Influence of the Rich in Cities Are the rich by their personal influence assist- ing Americanization? In considering the rich American and his influence we must look particu- larly in cities, for that is the place which permits largest expenditure, widest contact with many sides of life, and where the rich and poor rub elbows. Cities have been called ulcers. They swell and fester on the surface of human population, which is only healthy in its sparser distribu- tion. They are full of filth, poverty, and vice. ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 173 They breed criminals. They graduate thieves, murderers, and pimps as naturally as universi- ties graduate scholars. This is not the worst. Cities not only produce vice and crime, they also consume virtue. More horrible than a disease, they appear like dia- bolical personalities which subsist upon the strength, health, virtue, and noble aspiration pro- duced in the country. A city is a Moloch, the fagots of its fires are human bodies and souls. A great city like New York furnishes graphic examples of discontent in one family, composed of factory and of office workers, all restless over prodigal display of wealth, seen close at hand. Such a family group shows in itself the ease with which the feeling of the fundamental dissatisfac- tion at the distribution of attractive things may arise. In one picture it displays not only the social desires of the ** soft-handed'' city worker, but also the discontent of the laborer, — made all the more prominent by close contact with the lav- ishness of **Big Business,'' and of moneyed ease. Cities Aee Funebal Pyres for Human Bodies AND Souls Cities are, therefore, considered abnormal, es- pecially by minds keen to beauty, and by hearts easily wrung at the sight of suffering. The truth is, however, that a city is the school of the spirit. Spirituality grows in cities by means of 174 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS the variety and complexity of human relation- ships. If the city is a school of the spirit, why have the great cities of the past been the seats of a depravity that can never be disassociated from them? Because they have neither seen nor have they fulfilled their higher intention. Cities have been misunderstood and abused. They have been treated as a rich field of plunder for the few, rather than of spiritual relationships for the many. Mr. H. G. Wells predicts a future popu- lation of forty million for the city of New York. Does this mean despair of human nature, or the souPs best chance of service and knowledge? Vice Flourishes While Riches Increase A police force cannot be corrupt without the support of **big interests, ^^ which are benefited by lenient police administration. Since both political parties in our larger cities are financially supported by individuals or cor- porations that expect favors or that fear harm from office-holders or from legislation, it is our rich men in great cities, and not the ignorant vot- ers, who are responsible for bad government. We have not **as good a government as we deserve,'' but we have as good a government as money can buy. Now the more we pay in bribery the worse the government is. The higher the bribe the worse the service. A government manipulated by pri- ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 175 vate corporations is doomed. It becomes a battle- field for giants, who shelter themselves behind the patriotic devices of great parties while the people perish. The competition of business and of profes- sional life is so fierce, and the prizes for success in great cities so fix the attention of the hardest workers and most competent men, that generally these have no time for politics. The unskilled and less equipped men enter the neglected and deserted field and cultivate it. The politician makes money by cultivating the opportunity of ofiice, just as the business man makes money by neglecting it. Both think of money and not of the city. The business man indeed is, in a way, more culpable. If he is so intent upon gain that he will enjoy the privilege of institutions favorable for his purposes, but will lift no honest finger to pro- tect them, he is morally lower than the man who at least keeps these institutions running — even if he charges a heavy salvage for thus rescuing the abandoned ship of state. There can be no doubt, too, that the hot pur- suit of wealth is a baneful example. We see it politically and socially. The politician is ap- proached for a favor which has a money value for the recipient. Why should he be making other men's fortunes? He therefore asks the question which is the motto of all corruption, **What is there in it for me?'' If a rich man may lie about his taxable property, why may not 176 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS a politician lie if it is worth his while? At any rate, some of the methods of the rich in secur- ing and protecting their property are openly used as excuses for these corrupt political methods. The ability and integrity of a metropolis are continually being drawn upon for the manage- ment of great enterprises. The reformer or the interested citizen finds it difficult to consider the vested interests intrusted to him and at the same time consider the city's welfare. He soon for- gets his independence and becomes dumb to the entreaties of friends who implore his assistance in purifying the government. Suppose he does take part in such movements. The clique he at- tacks immediately attacks his corporation. Cabeless and Extravagant Wealth Forgets Social Obligation The careless use of money breeds vice and crime. In connection with a hotel robbery in New York, the manager of the hotel said that it was very difficult to find honest hotel servants, espe- cially waiters. They saw so much money squan- dered on dress, food, and drink that they came to regard the rich as fair prey. They feel to- wards the rich as a thief feels towards a drunkard asleep in a doorway ; why leave him to throw away his money or for some one else to rob. The records of the United States Department of Commerce, previous to the European War, ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING! 177 show importations of '* precious and semi-pre- cious stones*^ amounting annually to nearly fifty million dollars. Even in 1916 importation of jewels amounted to over forty millions. New York is the city to which, as to a Mecca, the rich from all over the country come. They have put money in their purse, and they are in New York for a good time. Their banners read, ** Money is no objecf **The best is none too good.** A friend of mine, a New York broker, received a message from important men in another city announcing that they were coming to Manhattan for a couple of weeks. The telegram ended: ** Can't you put us on to something for our ex- penses T* My friend knew of a stock that was being marked up, and ** bought** some for the dis- tinguished visitors. They **made** ten thousand dollars. We can easily understand how these men could spend ten thousand dollars in two weeks when the money came in such a fashion. In addition to this large transient population of rich pleasure-seekers, there are the many success- ful rich from other cities who come here to live. New York is a pleasanter place than San Fran- cisco, Butte, Chicago, or Pittsburgh. They come for pleasure. But pleasure for the rich is only to be got through wide social connection. The expenditure of these great fortunes levied by New York, is, with some splendid exceptions, in the direction of social impression. The shorter purses 178 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS are always crying out at the advance in prices made by the appearance of Pittsburgh fortunes, or munition fortunes, and the higher figures the new millions are willing to pay for clothes, horses, houses, servants, motors, yachts, or old masters. Remember, too, that few New Yorkers live within sight of their shops, stores, mills, or mines. The human toil associated with the production of wealth, and the pathetic disparity between the lives of his working-people and his own luxury, ordinarily tend to restrain a man's extravagance at the mint of his fortunes. This restraint is re- moved when, as in New York, the sources of wealth are distant, as is the case especially with those who have migrated from the scenes of their successful struggles. Extravagance in New York has not the conscientious check of the memory of toil. The greasy operative, the grimy miner, the sweaty iron worker, the bloody ** packer,'' the panting stoker, can all be forgotten in the evening sheen of Fifth Avenue asphalt, and in the social remoteness of fashionable quarters. Another thing is to be observed. Since social advantages and pleasures are largely the aim of these migrant fortunes, the city and its affairs are no more thought of than if the owner were in Paris or in Rome. The negative example of neglect of civic responsibility, added to the posi- tive example of vice-breeding waste, seriously accuses the rich of a certain class in New York. There are one or two other ways, channels of ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 179 real and harmful influence, by which the rich in New York, in a degree that cannot be said of other cities in America, affect the poor. There is no city in the world where all classes of men and women are so well dressed. Such an outward appearance of comfort and even of elegance is not a disadvantage. The most salient impression of the first Sound Money Parade was produced by the fact that up Fifth Avenue were marching one hundred and fifteen thousand men, ununi- formed but all remarkably well dressed. Twenty years later the Preparedness Parade of 1916 gave the same impression of unexampled prosperity. When we note, as we are forced to in New York, the extremes of feminine fashion, and its expense; when further we perceive shop-girls emulating their customers, we discover the peril- ous range of vicious temptation for the poor girls who love to display mock finery and arti- ficial complexions. There is another influence not free from its contribution of misunderstanding between classes in our great cities. This is the effect produced by those who figure as well-to-do in the eyes of the world, but whose relation to servants and trades- people is marked by closest economy. The rich are too careless about their servants ; as the num- ber increases accommodations decrease. Besides this phase there is another, that of neglected bills. Expensive tailors admit that in their ex- orbitant charges they have to consider and in- 180 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS elude the loss from slow accounts, and from those who love to wear the best without paying. This effect of the apparently rich upon the poor is decidedly unfavorable. The poor lose money and respect at the same time. The Tenement House and Maladjustment As land values increase, which they must do in a growing country, and especially in a metrop- olis surrounded by water, the rental value of the land must increase. As land values mount up, the buildings which cover land grow larger. The tenement-homes grow smaller, and children are crowded into the street. That mediaeval death by torture — the room which came together and nar- rowed itself in every dimension upon its victim — is a reality today in New York. The mechanical pressure is rent. The tenement-house problem in our American cities is one that wealth has studied but has not solved. In New York philanthropic building com- panies cannot use land that costs more than $10,000 a lot (25 ft. x 100 ft.). This limitation forces model tenement building far uptown — ^be- yond the congested districts. The size of the pri- vate house lot, the normal unit, has bedeviled the tenement-house construction. The attempt con- tinually being made to house many families in place of one, on a 25-foot lot, has resulted in covering too large a percentage of the lot ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 181 and in banishing light and air from interior rooms. American cities might well learn of Glasgow, London, and Berlin the advantage of municipal dwellings built on large areas with play space, kindergarten-rooms, up-to-date laundry facilities — in fact, everything that makes for the health and convenience of the family, yet at a moderate rental. In the city of New York approximately 2,866,000 —that is to say, about 650,000 or 657,000 fami- lies — are living in apartments for which they pay under $25 a month rent. This rental means about one-fourth of an income of $1,200 a year. But a rent much below $25 a month in a congested part of the city will not secure bathrooms and rooms for families with several members. Overcrowded, dark rooms and bad ventilation are friends of the saloon and of all the vicious and criminal influences that make the saloon their club- house. Here then is an eminently suitable field for community wealth to be expended in a fashion to assist the Americanization of the poor — par- ticularly the immigrant who on landing finds his home in the lowest grade of tenements. To pro- vide good homes is surely to help Americanization. The tenements are largely owned by the rich and could be bettered. But here, too, business considerations prevail. It is claimed the land downtown will be needed so soon for commercial purposes, that it would be throwing money away 182 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS to build, meanwhile, improved tenements. The city grows by such great strides that these fore- easts are plausible, though often mistaken or mis- applied. Even after learning the lesson of complete in- dividualism taught by diminished land values; even after passing zoning laws, New York in order to utilize old residences for tenements is willing to go back on fifteen years of progress in its housing program. Putting the Question Faibly The responsibility of the rich for the poor is not merely a critical responsibility, that is to say, not a question merely involving the injurious effect of riches on any side of the social fabric. The relation of the rich to the poor extends to the question of the value of philanthropic effort, the rich man's usual recommendation as a cure for social and industrial ills. The relation of the rich to the poor extends also to the roots of law and justice as, after all, possibly founded in group power, privilege and in class legislation rather than in the dictates of common humanity. The rich, as landlords much concerned over taxation, can be regarded as controlling the hous- ing problem, the school system, the money spent on public health and, in general, the rate of civic improvement. Above all, the private ownership of public utilities fundamentally affects the in- ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 183 come and the administration of municipal gov- ernment. ^^ After the war/* says the National Municipal League, *^you will hear the cry of efficiency and economy in government louder than ever, espe- cially when cities begin to broaden their functions and exercise new ones in coping with new prob- lems. But they should be foreseen.*' Is it not the duty of the rich, who should be especially well educated and experienced, to take the lead in the new glory of American cities? If the rich American has not conspicuously assisted the newcomers to this country in their adjustment to its ideas and institutions, he may have earnestly supposed that his principles and his labors contributed to the best interests of the country. As a standard by which to measure his contribution, I would suggest a sentence from a play by Ferdinand Lassalle: '*We owe ourselves to those great purposes for the accomplishment of which generations are sent into the world as workmen. I have done what I could. I feel relieved and happy like one who has honorably paid his debt.'* Have rich Americans paid this debt? American democracy has not learned Nietz- sche's lesson: *^Life is that which must ever sur- pass itself." Like a rabble sacking a palace it wastes valuable time putting on the clothes and 184 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS accouterments of courts and kings, parading for self-inspection through the hall of mirrors, or calling to each other in childish envy or de- light. When shall we recover ourselves and quit this masquerade of the old world? When shall we found a new world of **folks,'* all participating in the fruit of man *s struggle with nature ? Dem- ocracy like life is that which must * * ever surpass itself/' IX THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE AND COMPETITION "It is no baseness for the greatest to descend and look into their own estate." Bacon, on Expense. " There is enough food wasted daily in New York to give argu- ment to an army of anarchists." Sib Herbert Beerbohm Tree. CHAPTER IX THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE AND COMPETITION rpHE Commercial Economy Board appointed by ^ the Advisory Committee of the Council of National Defense has the task of cutting down waste in the distribution of all commodities dur- ing the war. The Board hopes to obtain the co- operation of citizens in reducing waste. How important, therefore, it is that we should know the directions in which the country is waste- ful. For instance, Mr. Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank of New York, is quoted by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in his pamphlet, * * The Personal Relation to Industry, ' ' as saying : **I have seen the statement that in a single year the loss that could be attributed to labor disturb- ances in this country totals more than a billion dollars.'' If the recommendation of Mr. Gompers to La- bor is accepted and carried out, — namely that there should be no strikes during the war, — this annual billion dollars will be saved, a very tidy sum, especially in war times. As war is fundamentally an economic drive for larger means of wealth, or for defending what 187 188 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS we have, or to secure better terms for our trade, — ^wages, profits, and prices can make war or peace. Suppose that the United States finds itself at a loss, after the European struggle is ended, be- cause the warring countries have greater indus- trial efficiency and can undersell it. Suppose Asiatic markets are closed to us. At any rate, suppose cheaper Asiatic labor going into manu- facture can undersell us, we shall be forced back upon efficiency and the saving of waste for pros- perity or into war with countries beating us industrially. All the ** isms'' which make the capitalists have bad dreams — anarchy, socialism, communism, and the rest, — are merely devices thought of by the poor, or their champions, for giving them more opportunity, for providing a richer and more interesting life. If, therefore, a republic like America can discover ways of bringing these results to pass without the aid of any of these terrifying isms, such information ought to be heeded. The United States could pay Great Britain's war debts out of its annual waste. We waste in easily controlled directions an amount of property equal to what our people earn. We squander every twelve months more than the combined resources of the central banks of England, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Japan, and Germany. If this amount could be THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 189 saved and distributed pro rata to our people the inadequate income of the average working-man ^s family would be changed to one that placed him in a class of economic independence. Moral Obligations to Prevent Waste A nation has no right to permit the degradation of its working-classes, their inadequate educa- tion, their physical deterioration, when amazing amounts of property are carelessly allowed to perish. A nation has a moral obligation to pre- vent waste in the interests of those who lack the necessaries of life and the social opportunity which is built upon substantial income. The saving of waste is, in fact, so large a sub- ject that it runs quite beyond the items of value which are carelessly destroyed. The whole prob- lem of individual as well as social life is prac- tically the preservation of its potential energy and the prevention of waste. The new psychol- ogy, which sums up in the word ** libido*' the various energies of the individual, can be studied in its relation to the direction of this expenditure. The problem of the individual is to preserve the libido from diffusion and to direct it to the high- est strength and most valuable use. Good and bad, right and wrong, are defined by this direc- tion or misdirection.* Our personal life problem is prevention of waste of vital forces. * Compare William White, " The Mechanisms of Character Formation," p. 320. 190 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Waste Due to Poor Organization and Method ** Already we are beginning to see that, in the light of its possibilities, industry today is inconceivably wasteful. The raw product is won from the earth, it is transported hundreds of miles over expensive railroads, it passes through ten or twenty different manipulators, is manufactured, and passes again through an in- finitely complicated series of operations to the ulti- mate consumer. The great water-power resources of this country are said to be not one-seventh developed. Yet their primary power alone 'exceeds our entire me- chanical power in use, would operate every mill, drive every spindle, propel every train and boat, and light every city, town, and village in the country.' " * The Waste op Mental Power Two tabulations of men of genius have been made which have been received by scientific men as of considerable authority. Sir Francis Galton, taking one hundred Englishmen of recognized ability, found only four per cent, to be from the working-class. M. Odin made a study of 6,382 men of genius in France. ** Labor*' was repre- sented by nine per cent. The contrast is so sharp between labor and the upper classes as to lead Monsieur Odin to exclaim ** Genius is in things, not in man.'' Classified, Odin's list is as follows: * J. Russell Smith, " Industrial and Commercial Geography," p. 398. THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 191 Nobility 25.5^ Government officials 20.0^ Liberal professions 23.0^ Bourgeoisie 11.6^ Manual laborers 9.8^ Only a little over one-fifth of the talented were produced by the two lower classes. These figures confirm the observation of those who have to do with the poor, such as clergymen, social workers, etc., who find unusual latent ca- pacity locked up in conditions of life and of occu- pation from which it cannot win opportunity for its development. When it is remembered also that ninety per cent, of the school children of America go no far- ther than the grammar school, it can be seen how little is done to develop by education the latent powers of the mind. Furthermore, when it is observed that the method of secondary and uni- versity education in America has little in it ex- cept formal studies supposed to develop the powers of thought, — little for thought itself upon the problems of life, we are not surprised at the comparatively small production of ability distinguished enough to be called talent or genius in gigantic populations of tens of millions. **The rational and causal in education are hardly ever appealed to.'* When education really brings out what is in our youth, democracy will make mag- ical contributions to civilization. 192 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS ''But by waste I mean (says Henry W. Nevin- son) the multitude of boys and girls who never get a chance of fulfilling their inborn capacities. The coun- try's greatest shame and disaster arise from the custom which makes the line between the educated and the un- educated follow the line between the rich and the poor, almost without deviation. That a nature capable of high development should be precluded by poverty from all development is the deepest of personal and national disasters, though it happen, as it does happen, several thousand times a year. Physical waste is bad enough — the waste of strength and health that could easily be re- tained by fresh air, open spaces, and decent food, and is so retained among well-to-do children. This physical waste has already created such a broad distinction that foreigners coming among us detect two species of the English people. But the mental waste is worse. "Boys who might become classical scholars (he writes) stick labels onto parcels for ten years, others who have literary gifts dear out a brewer's vat. Keal thinkers work as porters in metal warehouses, and after shoul- dering iron fittings for eleven hours a day, find it diffi- cult to set their minds in order. . . . With even the average boy there is a marked waste of mental capital between the ages of ten and thirty, and the aggregate loss to the country is heavy indeed. ' ' * Defense of Waste Waste is even a defended part of onr industrial system. In some manufactures, as, for instance, cotton spinning, it is cheaper to permit waste and to speed the machinery, thereby securing larger * Henry W. Nevinson, "Essays in Rebellion," p. 82. THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 193 product, than to go more slowly with a smaller production and provide time for the operatives to save waste. The shutting down of works when competing businesses consolidate is a common loss of pro- duction. The burning or destruction of crops where there is not a good market in order to produce high prices is a common practice. Excessive freight and commission charges discourage pro- duction. Not long ago Jersey fishermen dumped into the sea 1,000 barrels of fish weighing 250 pounds each, because the freight and commission charges would not be met by the price of the fish in New York. The pigeon-holing of invention, or the rejection of inventions, by companies in control of given outputs, and having capital invested in old ma- chinery, is responsible for enormous waste in terms of possible product. Invention is the method by which the world advances in its power over nature; to throttle invention is to kill progress. Causes of Waste Our theory of ownership permits every one to do as he wishes with his property, even to destroy it, and does not encourage a general co-operation, except for personal gain. Whatever justification may be offered for this 194 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS waste, the destruction of the values involved limits the amount of wealth at the disposal of the community, and this limitation of wealth is con- sciously accomplished by the wealth-producing class. The present organization of business con- siders waste or suppression of production to be legitimate. The curtailing of economic waste under a competitive and private ownership sys- tem seems well-nigh impossible, and its advan- tage when secured is too largely added to divi- dends, not wages. Extent of Oub Economic Waste The following is a significant collection of items of annual waste in the United States, which I have picked up in casual reading : * 1. Waste through Carelessness and Ignorance Natural Resourcea Soil erosion $ 50,000,000 Flood and freshet 238,000,000 Non-use of water power 600,000,000 Poor Method Lumbering, waste of by-product . . 300,000,000 Mining, waste of by-product 55,000,000 Fuel 500,000,000 Fire losses 235,000,000 Cost of insurance 250,000,000 Fire prevention 450,000,000 Forest fires 50,000,000 In smoke, by poor stoking 600,000,000 Gas 45,000,000 Inefficiency in national. State, and daylight municipal work 300,000,000 Preventable Diseases of Livestock 93,000,000 Insect and Animal Pests Rats 100,000,000 Rodents (exclusive of rats) 110,236,000 Insects 420,000,000 * See Appendix. THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 195 2. Waste through Faulty Economics Transportation Losses Railroad mismanagement 600,000,000 Transportation accidents 25,000,000 Careless handling of fish, eggs, fruit 40,000,000 Decay and loss in transit 1,000,500,000 Labor Maladjustments Occupational diseases 1,000,000,000 Industrial accidents 13,000,000 Unemployment 3,500,000,000 Strikes and lockouts 1,000,000,000 Domestic inefficiency 300,000,000 3. Social Waste Personal Extravagance * Cheap shows 60,000,000 Tobacco 825,000,000 Alcohol 1,600,000,000 Chewing gum 15,000,000 Drugs 27,500,000 Patent medicine 75,476,032 Soft drinks 107,536,000 Confectionery 178,000,000 Food in families 1,012,777,750 Defective Classes Backward pupils 26,000,000 Feeble-minded 85,000,000 Insane 135,000,000 Disease Preventable disease 1,000,000,000 Death of children 2,627,300,000 Illiteracy 1,500,000,000 Homicide and suicide 40,000,000 $21,189,325,782 Besides the above forms of waste, amounting to $21,000,000,000, there are others of enormous cost, such as: the care and unproductiveness of criminals, care and unproductiveness of alco- holics, care and unproductiveness of drug fiends, fatigue from overwork, over-capitalization in the United States, industrial inefficiency, bankruptcy, undeveloped land in cities. A. M. Simons in an article, ** Wasting Human 196 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Life,** quoted in a pamphlet by J. Pickering Putnam, gives the following summary of wasted wealth : Summary of Wasted Wealth Using imperfect machinery $ 3,000,000,000 Twenty-five per cent, of factories idle, could pro- duce 5,000,000,000 Waste of coke ovens 50,000,000 Restriction of patents 2,000,000,000 Manufacture of useless and harmful articles 1,000,000,000 Imperfect methods of agriculture 18,000,000,000 Maintenance of fences 1,250,000,000 Lands used for horses 1,000,000,000 Multiplied production through application of power 27,000,000,000 Bad roads 1,000,000,000 Marketing of farm products 4,500,000,000 Advertising 2,000,000,000 Fire and insurance (unnecessary) 500,000,000 Military and naval expenditures 600,000,000 Unemployed 8,000,000,000 Individual kitchens and housekeeping plants .... 1,728,000,000 Possible production of nine million people need- lessly killed 18,000,000,000 Sickness exclusive of nursing by families 1,000,000,000 Extending average productive life twenty years . . 10,000,000,000 Total $105,628,000,000 Sidney A. Reeve puts our waste from com- petition at $25,000,000,000. These figures are founded upon census returns — production com- pared with advertisement, office upkeep, salaries of traveling salesmen, et cetera, in fact, all devices for securing a profit, not creating products. There Are Many ** Worst Forms of Waste'* Various ** authorities ' ' have their private ** worst forms '* of waste. Mr. Hoover reckons the waste in every Ameri- THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 197 can family to amount to $50 a year. According to the census of 1910 there were in America 20,255,555 families ; accordingly there is an annual family waste of $1,012,777,750. Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agricul- ture, states that the prize waste of the champion wasters, the world's greatest single preventable economic leak, is barnyard fertilizer. Professor Irving Fisher warns us of the eco- nomic waste of preventable disease; the money value of increased vitality. Estimating the num- ber of the preventable deaths at 800,000, and each life as an industrial loss of $1,700, an annual pre- ventable loss is shown of $1,360,000,000.* **The average length of life at the close of the sixteenth century in Europe was only between 18 and 20 years ; at the close of the eighteenth a lit- tle over 30; today it is between 38 and 40 years. At least fourteen years could be added to human life by the partial elimination of preventable diseases.'* Daylight saving in the United States for the five summer months 1917 (in the lighting bill alone) would have yielded $140,000,000.1 It would also have left unused one million tons of coal. * Report on National Vitality, Irving Fisher, p. 119. t Marcus M. Marks, Munigipal Review, 1917, pp. 466-467. 198 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Coal Waste $500,000,000 — Inefficient Power Plants Largely to Blame, Says Manning ** Washington, July 15. — According to Van H. Man- ning, Director of the United States Bureau of Mines, fully a half billion dollars was wasted last year in this country through the inefficient use of coal. Mr. Man- ning said this waste was continuing at an even greater rate and at a much larger penalty to the country, be- cause of the increase in the price of coal. ** 'Last year the United States mined six hundred million tons of coal, the greatest production ever wit- nessed in the world, and of this amount we wasted one hundred fifty million tons, or twenty-five per cent., through inefficient use. *' *As an example, in the modern, efficient power plants of the country 20 per cent, of the heat in the coal consumed is converted into power, whereas in the small power stations the efficiency frequently drops below 10 per cent. The average efficiency of all steam power plants in the United States is probably 5 or 6 per cent, of the energy of the coal. If it were possible to elevate the average efficiency to the maximum attain- able, about three times as much energy would be available.' '' Waste in Time The New York Telephone Company, July, 1917, printed an advertisement in the New York papers which stated that the Bell System handles thirty million telephone calls a day. **If on each of these calls an average of one minute could be THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 199 saved by more efficient use of the telephone, thirty million minutes more could be devoted to produc- tive work. This would be a tremendous contri- bution to national efficiency. It would mean a saving of 20,833 days of twenty-four hours each — a saving of fifty-seven years every day!*' Waste of Hiking and Fieing One of the greatest sources of industrial waste in America is what is picturesquely termed ** hiring and firing.** America has to keep a sur- plus of labor idle to take places constantly being vacated on account of the maladjustment of the worker or the misunderstanding of the boss. This is largely due to a lack of early training which quickly adapts the worker to his job; in part it is due to the aims of women workers which to some extent are outside of success in their particular vocations and lead to endless change of position and calling. Mr. Magnus W. Alexander, engineer of the General Electric Company, at the twentieth annual conference of the National Association of Manu- facturers, said that in his opinion hiring and firing represents the greatest leakage in modem business. Twelve metal factories in six different States were carefully studied. **The factories took on during the year 42,571 employees, or 22,031 persons more than were abso- lutely necessary. Each of those 22,031 persons 200 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS cost the factories from $50 to $200 each, for broken tools, spoiled work, the reduced rate of produc- tion, and the additional office expense incurred through the necessity for the maintenance of an extra clerical force to keep track of the temporary workers and the hiring of foremen and assistants to instruct them. Altogether, it was computed, the unnecessary engagement of 22,031 employees caused the factories in question an aggregate loss of $831,030/'* The Waste of Casual Labor ** Casual labor is the greatest of all maladjust- ments. A man who changes constantly from job to job, with periods of idleness between, comes to every job demoralized, unskilled, unsteady, and unfit ; but casual labor, as the matter now stands, is still demanded in some industries. It is con- venient for employers. It is the employer in the first instance who needs readjustment.'* t But it is the casual laborer, being at the bottom of the industrial scale, who first enters the ranks of the unemployed in seasons of industrial de- pression. In the winter of 1913 and 1914 it was estimated that there were nine millions of people in the United States out of employment. This was a waste amounting to $13,500,000 a day for several months. Perhaps the worst phase of the position of the * Industrial Conservator, N. Y., April 25, 1917. t Edward T. Devine, " Misery and Its Causes," p. 131. THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 201 casual laborer is that no one regards him as worth consideration except at harvest time or in seasons of prosperity. He easily gravitates, it is sup- posed, into the yeggman, semi-criminal, or crim- inal class. But out of his flesh and blood the country to a large extent recoups itself when in periods of economy it retrenches. A class which is absolutely essential to the salvation of crops and to the building of railroads, wharves, reser- voirs, etc., has a moral claim upon the com- munity to be given at least a livelihood between hurry call periods of national expansion. The Army as an ABSORBEti of Waste Military organization while itself a form of waste in its killed and wounded — in its absorp- tion of national wealth for its support, munitions, etc., — on the other hand utilizes waste. The first volunteers are likely to be men of leisure, sportsmen, men out of work, individuals who are maladjusted to their surroundings ; even the hoo- ligans, apaches, and toughs; superfluous priests in countries overridden by the clergy — at last even small tradesmen as unnecessary distributors of produce. In fact, the army takes in, consciously or unconsciously, many classes of consumers who are disclosed in the glare of war as forming no indispensable part of the productive energies of the state. Unless a man contributes needed power to one 202 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS of these departments of the state he is a man with- out a country. He is a waste product. He is un- assimilated under a military or even a social organization of the state. The Significance of Waste Heard in war-time! **I can't imagine what a billion is.'* A good way to grasp the significance of a bil- lion is to picture all the people in the United States who travelled upon all the railroads east, west, north, south in a prosperous year, ending June, 1916, and all the rides of the commuters. The number was 1,005,683,174. To understand our gigantic annual waste let us put the cost of waste against other figures : Total amount waste in United States at least... $21,000,000,000 Total capital of railroads in United States 20,000,000,000 Total bank deposits 20,000,000,000 Great Britain's war debt, estimated to Jan., 1918 19,466,000,000 Manufactures of United States 25,000,000,000 Savings 6,000,000,000 Agriculture 9,000,000,000 Known amount of incomes in United States, 1916, above $3,000 by 375,515 persons 1,999,788,864 Cost of educating 22,902,153 children year end- ing June, 1914 565,077,146 it[ The Committee on the Standard of Living thought it was a safe inference, from data in their possession, that an income under $800, however earned, is not enough to permit the maintenance of a normal standard for a family of five persons in the city of New York, THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 203 1910. Nearly one-third of all the families studied by the committee with incomes from $600 to $800 were underfed. The average expenditure for clothing was less than necessary. The furnishings of apartments were inadequate. ' ' * Fancy the blessings for such a family if there were an addition to its income of $1,000 a year, its pro rata share of the national annual saving of waste from carelessness and ignorance: it would be lifted into the class of economic inde- pendence with all the blessings of additional edu- cation, nourishment, leisure, and recreation. The question of waste ranges in immediate practical importance from the saving of military energy and mental penetration, by regulating camp alcohol and prostitution, through the saving of coal, food, etc., to the levying of super-tax upon great incomes. Advocates for the rich claim that they consume little more than do the poor, — mean- ing that three meals a day and clothing are the limit of consumption and, after all, the difference between **eat and grow thin** and **eat and grow fat** ought not be 80 per cent, super-tax. These apologists for the consuming power of the rich, who would reduce it to breakfast foods, for- get the cost of what is vulgarly called * * style, * * or fashion. Ostentation and extravagance enslave and waste the labor of thousands of personal attendants who set the stage upon which wealth plays its part. The imprisonment of the Czar, * " Misery and Its Causes," Edward T. Devine, pp. 107-108. 204 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS we are told, left thousands of servants without a situation. Then, too, there is *^the vicarious expenditure'' of those connected with wealth — the women and children. Let us end with Veblen's trenchant analysis of wealth and waste. **In an industrial com- munity this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation, and this, so far as regards the western communities of the pres- ent, is virtually equivalent to saying that it ex- presses itself in some form of conspicuous waste. The need of conspicuous waste, therefore, stands ready to absorb any increase in the communi- ties' industrial eflficiency or output of goods, after the most elementary physical wants have been provided. **The popular reprobation of waste goes to say that in order to be at peace with himself the common man must be able to see in any and all human effort and human enjoyment an en- hancement of life and well-being in the whole." * * T. Veblen, " The Theory of a Leisure Class," pp. 98, 110. MENTAL ADJUSTMENT THROUGH ORGANIZED EFFORTS FOR FREE SPEECH "An undesirable society ... is one which internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of experiences. A society which makef; provision for participa- tion in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through inter- action of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic." John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Chap. VII. " We must insist in every instance that the parties come into each other's presence and there discuss the issues between them, and not separately in places which have no communication with each other." From President Wilson's Address to the Convention of the American Federation of Labor, Buffalo, November 12, 1917. "Let us speak thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. And let everything break up which — can break up by our truths! Many a house is still to be built! — Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra. CHAPTER X MENTAL ADJUSTMENT THROUGH ORGAN- IZED EFFORTS FOR FREE SPEECH nPHE hardest time to keep liberty alive is during ^ a war for freedom. When a column of fire is guiding the victorious armies of truth and jus- tice, a pillar of cloud seems to be obscuring truth and justice from those left at home. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the two antennae of democracy, but they are hard to protect even in a democracy. The Con- stitution of the United States grants freedom of speech : * ' Congress shall make no law respecting an establish- ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press ; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ' ' * Police regulation with its power to prevent dis- turbances of the peace and disorderly conduct easily negatives freedom of speech; and in war- time not only does government censorship largely suppress it but militaristic control and influence give it no quarter. * Constitution of the United States, Amendments, Article 1. 207 208 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Suppression obeys a psychological law, and is followed by the emergence of the suppressed in- stinct or energy in another form. Free speech, if denied street corners and open places, flees to halls; refused the use of halls, it seeks the back rooms of clubs ; prohibited all expression, violence becomes the only outlet of these pent-up moral forces. The Forum Hears the Cry of the Expropriated The purpose of the Open Forum movement is to afford the freest opportunity for the busi- ness man and the laboring man to arrive, by open discussion, at a better understanding of the vital questions affecting their relationship ; to discover the drift of industrial progress ; to guard against the menace of unjust industrial development; to forestall, by reasonable and humane ways, the settlement by sterner methods; to do its part to- ward the essential end that **the arrogance and whip of Capital and the distrust and evil weap- ons of Labor be laid aside, so that their hands may be free to join in the grip of a common interest. ' * * A brilliant critic of American life, H. G. Wells, with a clairvoyant perception of conditions in this country, has declared: '*The American community is discovering a secular extinction of opportunity and the appearance of pow- * Joseph S. Auerbach, North American Review, December, 1905. MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 209 ers against which individual enterprise and competi- tion are hopeless. Enormous sections of the American public are losing their faith in any personal chance of growing rich and truly free, and are developing the con- sciousness of an expropriated class. ' ' * But Mr. Wells makes no discovery. He is merely an observer like others before him. **What wrong road have we taken/' asked Emerson in 1848, *Hhat all the improvements in machinery have helped everybody but the opera- tives? Here they have incurably hurt.'* Thirty years later Henry George startled complacent America by asking why poverty persisted while wealth increased. His unpalatable formula, **the poor are growing poorer and the rich are grow- ing richer,*' was made more agreeable by Carroll D. Wright, who explained that as the poor were not improving their condition at the rate the rich were advancing, the distance between them was increasing. Without doubt it is becoming vastly harder, as John Mitchell points out, for a work- ing-man to advance beyond his sort of job or out of his class. **The fact which is most full of meaning at the end of the nineteenth century,'' wrote Professor Macgregor in his ** Evolution of Industry," *4s the existence of an absolute surplus or human residue which is pauper in fact though not in name" (page 106). Individuals are not wholly to blame for this con- * H. G. Wells, " The Future in America," p. 81. 210 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS dition of things; industrial evolutionary forces, not understood until the mischief was done, are also responsible. We can see now that the working-man under the financial handling of the modern factory system lost his status; that his wages practically buy off his interest in the firm ; that machinery and joint stock companies con- tributed to push apart employers and employees, and that **the nineteenth century in working out of the idea of power by means of combination has stratified and classified the people to an enor- mous extent. ' * * So economic analysis confirms and explains the separation of classes that condi- tions indicated and that statistics proved. Evidently these processes of class separation, as inhuman in their effects as war itself, cannot go on indefinitely without a catastrophe. In America they have already led to bloodshed. We are constantly presented, here in America, with working models of civil war. ** Habit alone, *^ says William James, **is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.*' But habits can be changed, especially under the incentive of starvation or injustice. These deadly clashes, which breed a worse ha- tred than that which gives rise to them, cannot be banished from our attention by calling them mere exhibitions of an industrial unrest as old as the Pyramids. The exodus of the Hebrews from *Macgregor*8 "Evolution of Industry," p. 56. MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 211 Egypt was a strike in which the workers did not return to thair work, but migrated. The French Revolution was a strike which cost the employers their heads and their status. Nor can we for- ever ** jolly *^ the laborer by telling him that he possesses luxuries that kings of old did not dream of. Jauntily to talk about the inevitable- ness of industrial unrest does not harmonize class differences. The question is, What is going to stop this pulling asunder before it is too late? What is going to bring the hostile industrial forces of our national life together 1 What is go- ing to make us really one people — in sympathies, ideals, and institutions'? The labor question, of course, is a nuisance ; but we can say of it what Emerson said of the question of slavery: **It has a right to be heard and the people plagued with it until something is done. ' ' We are safe in saying that the desired results of industrial peace and of national unity are not to be secured by improving coercive machinery. To destroy trade-unions; to organize State con- stabularies ; to deny free speech or give it impos- sible definition ; to increase the list of offenses for which arrest is equivalent to conviction; to rob working-men of adequate political representation, is not a solution of our problems of class es- trangement. 212 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS Capital, Politics, Church, and Education Shun Labor Nor are we encouraged to look for intellectual and sympathetic leadership where ordinarily some leadership is expected. Our most powerful financiers and captains of industry are not ashamed to testify on the witness stand that they have not studied the problems involved in the present issues — that they do not understand the labor question. Naturally, therefore, they can- not offer any help. Our political parties represent in their primary differences not economic, but constitutional posi- tions. They are essentially conservative; even their liberalism is considerate of the small capi- talist rather than of the proletariat. The New York Constitutional Convention gave no heed to the memorial and recommendations of the labor organizations. A great newspaper even taunted the labor men with their inability to retaliate. I discover no friendliness in ordinary American politics toward the problems of the working- classes. This is Mr. Wilson's strength. The clergy notably display a more human sym- pathy with the working-man's economic prob- lems, but officially the churches are timid, and their laymen are too often reactionary. In the churches there is being developed a new economic orthodoxy which enfeebles their contribution to the labor problem. Some high ecclesiastics go so MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 213 far as to declare that the procession oflife with its most exalted spiritual vision is passing along outside the Church. On the other hand, there are some who quote Jesus to the effect that the divi- sion of wealth is not a religious problem. Colleges do not teach economics and sociology in a fashion to meet the situation. There are a few professors to whom many people are indebted. But our colleges have neither led public opinion on the labor problem nor qualified their graduates to deal with it. The trustees of one of our lead- ing universities have declared publicly that eco- nomics should teach only what is agreeable to capitalists. The working-people are well aware of the hos- tility of the capitalistic classes and institutions. They look for no help outside themselves. They have been deceived and disappointed so often by pretended friends that they resent help from out- side their own class; to accept it has become a mark of class disloyalty. Some Volunteer Agencies In default of constructive help from accredited leaders in business, politics, religion, and educa- tion, volunteers have come forward with new agencies which attempt to correct destructive in- dustrial tendencies; to bring together the ex- tremes of democracy; to spread a more hopeful theory of human nature than that upon which 214 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS conservative fears are reared, and to broaden the reach of economic education. University settlements, founded about thirty years ago, set out to bring the culture of Eng- lish college cloisters to London slums. ''They are homes in the poorer quarters of a city where educated men and women may come in daily personal contact with people.'' Fred- eric Denison Maurice's Working-men's College, founded in 1860; Edward Denison 's attempt to make his home in the East End of London in 1867 ; Arnold Toynbee 's residence in Whitechapel with the Rev. S. A. Barnett of St. Jude's in 1875, and the building of Toynbee Hall in 1885, mark the steps, and at the same time disclose the col- lege and church impulse, that led to the rise of university settlements. In 1883 the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford be- came Rector of St. George's Church, New York. Before taking charge of the parish or forming especial plans for carrying it on, he had a survey made of the neighborhood. He then founded such organizations as seemed to him suitable for meeting the racial, local, or class needs of his parish. This was the first scientific diagnosis of parochial work that I am aware of, and it devel- oped a group of social institutions around it that gave the name ''institutional church" to St. George's, and to the large number of parishes since then more or less modeled upon it. The essence of institutional church work is MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 215 home extension. It undertakes to make up for the poverty-stricken, limited, and often vicious surroundings of the tenement-house by supervis- ing entertainment, encouraging education and physical culture, — in fact, by doing for the chil- dren and youth of the poor what a well-to-do family would like to do for its own. Afterward came the social settlements which attempted more complete co-operation with what- ever initiative the slums themselves disclosed. They recognized how much the working-man is trying to do for himself, and proifered their as- sistance. They put educated and friendly energy into existing popular institutions. They aided neighborhood agencies, school boards, health boards, libraries, the use of parks, labor unions, advantageous racial customs, etc. More recently, community centers have organ- ized a neighborhood club in the schoolhouse. Freed from racial, religious, and political antag- onism, the schoolhouse, because a patriotic and neutral institution, is their rallying place. They have created a self-governing citizens' movement, taking in not only grown-ups, but young people of both sexes. Games, dancing, athletics, evening classes, lectures, political ad- dresses, ** movies,*' etc., are provided. Started in Rochester, New York, there are now scores of these community centers in the United States, es- pecially in the West. The importance of the community center has become so widely under- 216 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS stood that a training school for leaders has been established in New York; national conferences have been held, and in the spring of 1917 the State of New York ordered school boards to place schoolhouses at the disposal of community center groups in the interests of Americanization. The Open Forum as Common Ground The Open Forum is another undertaking to provide a common meeting-place for the rich and the poor, free from traditional impediments; to bring together in a humane atmosphere the ex- tremes of society. Like the agencies we have been considering, the Open Forum bases its ac- tion not upon dogmas, traditions, or precedents, but upon the urgent needs of the present and an intelligent view of the future. Nietzsche says: **The important question for you is not where did you come from, but where are you going r* Walter Lippmann condenses this into his maxim: ** Substitute purpose for tradi- tion." The new psychology tells us that **a philosophical study of living beings shows that they may be graded according to the amount of purpose they manifest.'' * But where are we go- ing! What should be our purpose? Is it not safe to say (if we pay attention to the lessons of industrial evolution) that the world is moving toward a greater democracy, toward the spread * L. E. Emerson, Psychoanalytic Review, October, 1915, p. 425. MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 217 of freedom, opportunity, and wealth — in fact, toward the highest development for the largest number of human beings by means of the mate- rial and spiritual advantages of self-government? CooPEB Union The Open Forum, although a new device for amplifying social and industrial conditions, has had an interesting history: The People's Insti- tute was established in 1897 and offered in Cooper Union, at the head of the Bowery, New York, a strategic meeting-place for ideas and men. Charles Sprague-Smith, the founder, con- ceived the plan while a professor of comparative literature in Columbia. He discovered in litera- ture the story of the common laws of social progress, and he longed, as he told me, to get his hands directly into the material of human life. So he gave up comparative literature and set about arousing enthusiasm among the people for a freer, fuller existence. At the People's Institute, lecturers of wide reputation addressed East Side audiences of thirty nationalities. The audience could ask questions, but could not make speeches. The lecture was often preceded by music and recita- tions, but not by recognized religious exercises. Later a clubhouse was founded and many valu- able forms of social service undertaken. The invited speakers, under the grilling of an 218 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS astute and well-read democracy, were taught never to make a statement which they could not back up; they also learned the protective value of a good chairman (Mr. Sprague-Smith) who would not permit them to be put into too deep holes by the audience, although he could not pre- vent them sometimes from jumping in them- selves to their own chagrin, and to the amuse- ment of their tormentors. Professor Charles Sprague-Smith, philologist, poet, educator in good will, champion of the people, died in middle life as the result of overwork in behalf of this great undertaking. The Cooper Union meetings maintain the high standards set by him. The Public Forum The '^Public Forum (Inc.) of the Church of the Ascension" was founded in 1907 by the Rector of the parish and the Rev. Alexander Irvine. If crowds will listen to soap-box orators on street corners; if workmen in factories will give part of their precious noon recess to listen to Y. M. C. A. speakers, should not religious bodies, which control more good auditoriums than anybody else, and have less use for them, offer hospi- tality in their churches to such groups, and if necessary organize these opportunities under fa- vorable conditions? The Public Forum under- took to make a church a shelter for what might otherwise have been open-air meetings of all MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 219 sorts and conditions of men, interested in dis- cussing modern social and industrial ideas. It was a frank attempt by a church to find out what working-men, according to their own showing, wanted, and what they considered to be the duty of the church. The Public Forum audience may debate the subject as well as ask questions. Since the founding of this Forum, numerous churches in New York and the neighborhood have opened similar Forums — notably the Church of the Holy Trinity, in Brooklyn, of which the Eev. J. Howard Melish is Rector; the Church of the Messiah, where the Rev. John Haynes Holmes is Pastor, and the Free Synagogue, under Dr. Stephen S. Wise. Even as far away as Houma, Louisiana, St. Matthews (Episcopal) Church has established a Forum. There is also a Forum in Starr King^s old parish (Unitarian) in San Francisco. Church Forums received the endorsement of the Universalists at their Chicago Convention of 1914. Ford Hall Ford Hall, on Beacon Hill, Boston, was founded by the Baptist Union in 1908. It offers a plat- form of a broad and sympathetic type, it pub- lishes a paper of its proceedings, and carries on social work. It permits the audience to question the speaker, but it does not invite speaking from the audience. The Ford Hall meetings, through 220 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS their extension committees, have been instru- mental in establishing in New England munici- palities, towns, and schools more than thirty Forums, modeled more or less closely upon Ford Hall, but with distinctive undertakings described by the specific conditions of their position. Mr. George Coleman, who is responsible for Ford Hall, has exceptional clearness of vision and breadth of sympathy. Other Forums The Labor Temple was opened by the Presby- terian Board of Missions, at Second Avenue and Fourteenth Street, New York, in an old building that was formerly a parish church. Owing to its situation on the East Side, and the close connec- tion between its founder, the Rev. Charles Stelzle and the trade-union movement, in which he thoroughly believes, and also because it spe- cializes in labor matters, the Labor Temple has developed a highly unified work, now in charge of Rev. Jonathan C. Day, and keeps very closely in touch with a large number of working- people. The Labor Forum is a still later and different type of Forum. It meets in a public school- house. It has no religious exercises or motives, nor is it neutral (as radicals regard the Church Forums). The Labor Forum is the announced advocate of the working-classes. An enthusiastic, MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 221 devoted, and self-sacrificing leader, Mr. Carl Beck, is responsible for its origin and excellence. Schoolhouses are used by many other Forums, notably by the Bronx Open Forum under the leadership of the Honorable Edward Polak, the Civic Forum of Brooklyn, and the vigorous Fo- rums of the Brooklyn People's Institute. In addition to Forums which use the English language, there are Forums that use Italian and Russian — as the ^'Foro Italiano, a Ford Hall dirimpetto la State House '* in Boston, and a Rus- sian Forum in New York. Another type of Forum is **The Hungry Club*' of Pittsburgh. According to its able and enthusi- astic Secretary, Charles C. Cooper, **The Hungry Club" is the only organization of its kind in the world. **Its membership consists of several hun- dred business and professional men who *want to know.' It has no constitution nor by-laws. It has no formal organization. It has no business sessions and no regular officials. It never takes a vote. It never endorses anything. It is Pitts- burgh 's Open Forum for the presentation of both sides of public questions." The Forum has proved particularly attractive to recent immigrants. Its democracy corresponds to their native ideal — an ideal too often destroyed by their early experiences in their adopted coun- try. The Forum helps them to some discrimina- tion in fixing blame for their ill-treatment; it of- fers them a mouthpiece for the woes they ran 222 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS away from on the other side of the water and for those they have run into in America. There are some three hundred Open Forums actually in operation; as many more groups are seeking organization. Forums have been con- sidered such admirable agencies for popular edu- cation in current public problems, that in some States where constitutional conventions are to be held, Forums have been founded as preparatory schools for discussion and study of constitutional questions. Indiana has more than a hundred such Forums. Arkansas is likely to follow this lead. The Open Forum National Council has offices in Boston ; it maintains a speakers ^ bureau and pub- lishes a monthly magazine — The Community Forum, Some fifty of the Forums in and around New York are incorporated as The Congress of Forums, which forms a part of the national organization. Breaking the Shackles of Silence In spite of the diverse elements which make up the membership of an Open Forum, it would be a mistake to suppose that it is a Cave of Adul- 1am, made up of malcontents, * * down-and-outers, ' ^ and blatherskites. In fact, nothing could be fur- ther from the truth. The questions asked and the speeches made MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 223 from the audience of the Public Forum give sur- prising evidences of knowledge, seriousness, and ability. The Forum is a device by which the people be- come articulate. ** Silence is for the poor,'^ de- clared Lamennais, the French priest, who labored for the freedom of the working-classes within the Roman Church, and was driven out of it. Any institution that gives voice to the poor is an emancipator, for it breaks their worst shackle — silence. The cause that can be heard is in a way to secure its ends. A people that is articulate is on its way to victory. Open Forums offer, as does nothing else today, an opportunity for the poor to be heard — a timely instrument just now when free speech has been so much abridged in public places. Dread of free speech has come to such a pass that the hall in Paterson which burned down after Emma Goldman spoke in it was considered by many religious people to have been directly destroyed by divine wrath. Our na- tional optimism inclines us to avoid serious prob- lems ; our easy material progress renders us for- getful of underlying difficulties. We are irritated at criticism of our institutions. We club and jail unpleasant prophets. The May Day Labor Pa- rade in 1914 had this banner; **You may jail our leaders, but you cannot jail our ideas.'* America must offer more safety valves to such explosive truths, to such suppression and injustice, espe- cially when assailed by the new slogan of Privi- 224 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS lege: **You may have the right, but we have the power. * ' Much of the present-day labor trouble is caused by the disappearance of the old-fashioned employer of labor who was successful in building up a business because he knew his men and how to treat them. The absentee employer is an eco- nomic danger. The striker is in revolt against hidden forces, not against persons, for he does not know them. The Open Forum, by contriving a better acquaintance between classes, helps this situation. One violent radical told me that he learned in the Public Forum that capitalists were human. The Open Forum Combines the Unr^ersity and THE Town Meeting A Public Forum unites the university with the town meeting. An expert is called in to lead the conferences; then the people thrash out the sub- ject in open debate. The Forum is giving back to America the town meeting which the growth of cities has robbed it of. A defect of democracy is its distrust and neglect of the expert, and its substitution of the grandiose notion that one man is as good as another, for all the purposes of the state. In America this disposition, at once ignorant and in- jurious to democratic institutions, was fostered by the pioneer life in colonial America, which was MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 225 so simple in its requirements as to be satisfied by the rough-hewn ability and independence of indi- viduals; and later, by its agricultural pursuits which did not permit the holder of the plow to leave his fields indefinitely for legislative and po- litical service. Today, with quite a different order of society, the traditions of these earlier periods have persisted, especially among politicians, in the face of the growing need of experts and in the face of the great scientific and mechanical developments of our time. Democracy must become used to experts, must desire them, and enthusiastically place them in commanding positions. I know of no better place to cure this shyness of the people toward specially trained ability than the Forum plat- form, where the expert can not only instruct his audience on a specially selected subject of cur- rent importance, but will patiently and good- naturedly answer scores of questions, will listen to a public discussion by the audience, and in a friendly and wise way sum up what has been said. Perhaps the Forum is a better fashion of pre- senting the university to the people than is the so-called university extension movement, which too largely deals with purely cultural subjects and depends for its speakers upon professional teachers and lecturers. The Forum chooses cur- rent subjects of importance, and gravitates to ** burning questions''; it then selects the most distinguished expert upon the topic whose serv- 226 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS ices (generally gratuitous) it can command, and this often involves going far afield from academic reputations, who is then brought to an eager audi- ence already schooled in the technique of social and economic literature. At a time when the town meeting, which accord- ing to Ralph Waldo Emerson was the school of our early democracy, has fallen into disuse owing to the greatly increased number of our popula- tion living under city charters, the creation of a body of persons, rich and poor, educated and un- educated, holding all manner of political views — brought together for the discussion of important problems, is returning one of the best elements of democracy to wide and frequent use. Open Forums are not only harmonizers and educators of classes into a truer social unity. Their practical accomplishment also may be valuable. This is important to observe, because critics of Open Forums rarely notice the inevi- table demand of Forum audiences for emotional relief, not in talk alone, but in beneficent social activity. They pass resolutions, send memor- ials, appoint committees, and carry on humane works. An officer of the Public Forum (Inc.) led to Al- bany the committee whose labors resulted in the appointment of the New York Factory Commis- sion and consequent legislation. The Public Forum organized the first democratically run com- munity center in New York. MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 227 The Prison Committee of the Public Forum brought to the attention of officials abuses in the Penitentiary and Workhouse, which are in proc- ess of being remedied. The Legal Committee provided volunteer counsel in the Woman's Night Court for defend- ants too poor or too ignorant to secure it for themselves. The Relief Bureau offered a daily ministry to prisoners — especially women — discharged from BlackwelPs Island. The Employment Bureau for nearly two years was a valuable neighborhood contribution. For the year ending June 30, 1917, it secured for its applicants 1,900 situations. Why Tie up a Forum with Religion? A question I frequently hear is : Why have the Open Forums (good enough things in themselves, no doubt) been conducted in consecrated churches and church buildings? What has religion to do with economics? In spite of an imposing list of advantages, why tie up this new undertaking to religion; why call meetings at which economics are talked in churches; why hold these on Sun- days? Economics are teaching the Church of today so much that the Church may well show some appre- ciation. In fact, if economics can inspire reli- gion, then there is a natural relationship between 228 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS them. The present humanizing of the dismal science is giving new faith to the Church. The brotherliness of international labor unions and of Socialism is helping the Church to recover the vision of a world of peace and good will. The multiplication of food and clothing — their easy preservation and transportation — are leading the Church to believe that poverty can be abolished. The organization of vast numbers in effective labor point to new unity and effectiveness among the devout. The loyalty and self-sacrifice of the working-people for each other is a new Pentecost — a new outpouring of spiritual energy which speaks in strange tongues, but tells of holy things. In spite of the temporary recessions of the war, these movements are today the brightest encour- agements to humanity. A better understanding between the rich and poor is a moral as well as an economic question. The rich must perceive how unfair it is for them to waste human labor in frivolous amuse- ment, unnecessary possessions, and injurious con- sumption. Short of the winnings of roulette, some American business men seem to think one dollar is as good-looking and respectable as another. Why should workmen worry then be- cause they expect pay without giving good work or full time ? If they could get the dollar for ab- solute incompetence and for no work at all, they would only be securing what political jobs, corpo- MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 229 ration salaries, speculative pools, very often pro- vide for their favorites — pay for no equivalent. There is no more profoundly moral question than what a man does for his income and with his in- come. The relation between income and service must become one of the great themes of religion. XI THE ECONOMIC INFLUENCE OF RELIGION "The sooner we think straight we shall will straight." Henry H. Goddard, Feeble-Mindedness : Its Causes and Consequences, p. 407. "The ultimate value of every institution is the distinctively human effect — its effect upon conscious expression." John Dewey, Education and Democracy, p. 8. " With science, the old theology of the East, long in its dotage, begins evidently to die and disappear. But (to my mind) science — and maybe such will prove its principal service — as evidently prepares the way for One indescribably grander — Timers young but perfect offspring — the new theology — heir of the West — lusty and loving, and wondrous beautiful." Walt Whitman, quoted by John Addington Symonds in Walt Whitman: A Study, p. 142. "Where wants and needs coincide economic and moral values are identical." Prof. T. D. Carver, Religion and Social Justice, p. 36. "Character is the result of longevity, health, income, and knowledge, not of particular biologic traits." " Service, conformity to natural law, and growth are the basic ideas of true civilization." Prof. Simon N. Patten, Culture and War. CHAPTER XI THE ECONOMIC INFLUENCE OF RELIGION CAN religion help the working-classes? The radical unhesitatingly replies: **No!'* In the socialist movement the workers derive from its founders a tradition of atheism. Besides this tradition, still influential, socialism preaches the materialistic interpretation of history. Beyond these two arguments for the unpopu- larity of religion among working-people there are others less theoretical. The priesthood in social evolution has been associated with the military and governmental class as its supporter and de- pendent. Today it is believed to stand in the same relation of support and dependence to the capitalistic class. For example, working-people complain that the pulpit preaches only what capi- talism approves. Further than this, working-peo- ple see plainly enough that the conspicuous tenets of the prevailing religions — as, for instance, the Golden Rule: *^ k^ 40105O UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY