lies in wait for us, we must have the means of determining whether our suspicions are well founded or not. Similarly, the treatment of labor by the great corporations is not what it was in Jefferson's time. Whenever bodies of men employ bodies of men, it ceases to be a private relationship. So that when courts hold that workingmen can not peaceably dissuade other workingmen from taking employment, and base the decision upon the analogy of domestic servants, they simply show that their minds and understandings are lingering in an age which has passed away. This dealing of great bodies of men with other bodies of men is a matter of public scrutiny, and should be a matter of public regulation. Similarly, it was no business of the law in the time of Jefferson to come into my house and see how I kept house. But when my house, when my so-called private property, became a great mine, and men went along dark corridors amidst every kind of danger in order to dig out of the bowels of the earth things necessary for the industries of a whole nation, and when it came about that no individual owned these mines, that they were owned by great stock companies, then all the old analogies absolutely collapsed, and it became the right of the government to go down into these mines to see whether human beings were properly treated in them or not; to see whether accidents were properly safeguarded against; to see whether modern economical methods of using these inestimable riches of the earth were followed or were not followed. If somebody puts a derrick improperly secured on top of a building or overtopping the street, then the government of the city has the right to see that that derrick is so secured that you and I can walk under it and not be afraid that the heavens are going to fall on us. Likewise in these great beehives where in every corridor swarm men of flesh and blood, it is the privilege of the government, whether of the state or of the United States, as the case may be, to see that human life is properly cared for, and that human lungs have something to breathe. These, again, are merely illustrations of conditions. We are in a new world struggling under old laws. As we go inspecting our lives to-day, surveying this new scene of centralized and complex society, we shall find many more things out of joint. One of the most alarming phenomena of the time or rather it would be alarming if the Nation had not awakened to it and shown its determination to control it one of the most significant signs of the new social era is the degree to which government has become associated with business. I speak, for the moment, of the control over the Government exercised by Big Business. Behind the whole subject, of course, is the truth that, in the new order, government and business must be associated, closely. But that association is, at present, of a nature absolutely intolerable; the precedence is wrong, the association is upside down. Our Government has been for the past few years under the control of heads of great allied corporations with special interests. It has not controlled these interests and assigned them a proper place in the whole system of business; it has submitted itself to their control. As a result, there have grown up vicious systems and schemes of governmental favoritism (the most obvious being the extravagant tariff), far-reaching in effect upon the whole fabric of life, touching to his injury every inhabitant of the land, laying unfair and impossible handicaps upon competitors, imposing taxes in every direction, stifling everywhere the free spirit of American enterprise. Now this has come about naturally; as we go on, we shall see how very naturally. It is no use denouncing anybody, or anything, except human nature. Nevertheless, it is an intolerable thing that the government of the Republic should have got so far out of the hands of the people; should have been captured by interests which are special and not general. In the train of this capture follow the troops of scandals, wrongs, indecencies, with which our politics swarm. There are cities in America of whose government we are ashamed. There are cities everywhere, in every part of the land, in which we feel that, not the interests of the public, but the interests of special privileges of selfish men, are served; where contracts take precedence over public interest. Not only in big cities is this the case. Have you not noticed the growth of socialistic sentiment in the smaller towns? Not many months ago I stopped at a little town in Nebraska while my train lingered, and I met on the platform a very engaging young fellow, dressed in overalls, who introduced himself to me as the mayor of the town, and added that he was a Socialist. I said, "What does that mean? Does that mean that this town is socialistic?" "No, sir," he said; "I have not deceived myself; the vote by which I was elected was about 20 per cent. socialistic and 80 per cent. protest." It was protest against the treachery to the people and those who led both the other parties of that town. All over the Union people are coming to feel that they have no control over the course of affairs. I live in one of the greatest states in the Union, which was at one time in slavery. Until two years ago we had witnessed with increasing concern the growth in New Jersey of a spirit of almost cynical despair. Men said, "We vote; we are offered the platform we want; we elect the men who stand on that platform, and we get absolutely nothing." So they began to ask, "What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction." It is not confined to some of the state governments and those of some of the towns and cities. We know that something intervenes between the people of the United States and the control of their own affairs at Washington. It is not the people who have been ruling there of late. Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of a revolution? Because we are profoundly disturbed by the influences which we see reigning in the determination of our public life and our public policy. There was a time when America was blithe with self-confidence. She boasted that she, and she alone, knew the processes of popular government; but now she sees her sky overcast; she sees that there are at work forces which she did not dream of in her hopeful youth. Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue, without conscience, who did not care for the Nation, could put this whole country into a flame? Don't you know that this country from one end to another believes that something is wrong? What an opportunity it would be for some man without conscience to spring up and say: "This is the way. Follow me!" and lead in paths of de struction! The old order changeth-changeth under our very eyes, not quietly and equably, but swiftly and with the noise and heat and tumult of reconstruction. I suppose that all struggle for law has been.conscious, that very little of it has been blind or merely instinctive. It is the fashion to say, as if with superior knowledge of affairs and of human weakness, that every age has been an age of transition, and that no age is more full of change than another; yet in very few ages of the world can the struggle for change have been so widespread, so deliberate, or upon. so great a scale as in this in which we are taking part. The transition we are witnessing is no equable transition of growth and normal alteration; no silent, unconscious unfolding of one age into another, its natural heir and successor. Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom; is making fresh and critical analysis of its very elements; is questioning its oldest practices as freely as its newest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life; and it stands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction, which only frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous coöperation can hold back from becoming a revolution. We are in a temper to reconstruct economic society, as we were once in a temper to reconstruct political society, and political society may itself undergo a radical modification in the process. I doubt if any age was ever more conscious of its task or more unanimously desirous of radical and extended changes in its economic and political practice. We stand in the presence of a revolution — not a bloody revolution, America is not given to the spilling of blood but a silent revolution whereby America will insist upon recovering in practice those ideals which she has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to the general interest and not to special interests. We are upon the eve of a great reconstruction. It calls for creative statesmanship as no age has done since that great age in which we set up the government under which we live, that government which was the admiration of the world until it suffered wrongs to grow up under it which have made many of our own compatriots question the freedom of our institutions and preach revolution against them. I do not fear revolution. I have unshaken faith in the power of America to keep its self-possession. Revolution will come in peaceful guise, as it came when we put aside the crude government of the Confederation and created the great Federal Union which governed individuals, not states, and which has been these 130 years our vehicle of progress. Some radical changes we must make in our law and practice. Some reconstructions we must push forward, which a new age and new circumstances impose upon us. But we can do it all in calm and sober fashion, like statesmen and patriots. I do not speak of these things in apprehension, because all is open and above-board. This is not a day in which great forces rally in secret. The whole stupendous programme must be publicly planned and canvassed. Good temper, the wisdom that comes of sober counsel, the energy of thoughtful and unselfish men, the habit of coöperation and of compromise which has been bred in us by long years of free government in which reason rather than passion has been made to prevail by the sheer virtue of candid and universal debate, will enable us to win through to still another great age without violence. WHAT THE WORLD'S WORK IS TRYING TO DO M BY WALTER H. PAGE Y ASSOCIATES ask that I write what we are trying to do with this magazine, thereby going squarely against the first principle of good editing. That first principle is that every piece published shall be interesting; and in such an article there is less a tale to tell than an explanation to make. The group of men who direct the WORLD'S WORK have a very definite aim, however often they miss it, and we are very much in earnest. Earnestness, mind you, does not mean solemnity, and we try to keep it from meaning dullness. The aim is every reader of the magazine knows it as well as we do so to report and to interpret representative activities of our time as to give the reader a wellproportioned knowledge of what sort of things are happening in the world — in the American world in particular. It may be a political campaign, it may be a woman's movement, it may be the building of a great dam across the Mississippi River, it may be explanations of scientific discovery and of new scientific theories, it may be the industrial progress of the Northwest or of the Southeast, it may be the breeding of better grain or of better cotton, the making of fitter schools, the waste of money and the degradation of men by unworthy pensions — it may be anything typical of the activities of the people and worthy of the attention of thoughtful persons; and in the course of a year the magazine ought to contain articles on all sorts of these important activities. We work in constant conference; for it is all team-work. Every man knows and every man must know what every other one is doing; and in our conferences we decide what volunteer articles we shall accept and we make plans for our outside. friends who help us write such articles, for examples, as Mr. Stockbridge went West to write, and as Professor Orth of Cornell is writing about the labor war. one, It is a cheerful and exhilarating occupation; for we must keep an eye on all sorts of human activities and meet and learn from men of all helpful minds and callings. The real reward of the editorial life is in the friends and acquaintances that one has occasion (and necessity) to make. No sort of active and useful man or woman is foreign to our plans or purposes. Of course not even a much larger group of men than we are could possibly know many subjects thoroughly; but each of us has his own kinds of tasks subjects of social welfare; another, political subjects; another, financial and commercial subjects; another, rural life and education, and so on; and each does his reading and makes acquaintances that lead to increasing knowledge of his group of subjects. Consequently we must go about the United States and see what men are doing. The theory is that at least one editor of the magazine shall visit every section of the country at least once a year, and, of course, at times other countries also. One of the most pleasing compliments ever paid to us was said in half jest by a man who had led a closet-life: "Why, you really regard Wyoming and Louisiana as parts of the United States." The real work of making a "live" magazine cannot be done in an office. There is, therefore, no mystery about the work: the main thing to be said about it is that it is work, unceasing, hard work; but do not forget that it is interesting work. If an article does not interest us, it is pretty sure not to interest the reader; for we are men of different temperaments, of unanimity only in ideals and in purpose, men of different kinds of training, of somewhat different outlooks on life. |