into consideration, this plan has been the most satisfactory we have ever tried."

An official of a Fall River cotton mill told me the story of the last example of collective bargaining I will give: "Formerly we had continual labor trouble. After the big strike, eight years ago, the mill owners organized an association and we began to hold conferences with the textile council. When we first met, we were suspicious of each other. The workmen sat in one corner and we in another. Gradually we came together, and now we meet around a table, just like a board of directors, and discuss things frankly. There has been a noticeable improvement in the spirit of the men since this conference was inaugurated. They see we don't make money as easily and rapidly as they supposed, and we are learning their troubles. Just now we are settling, quietly, a difference with the loom-fixers. Of course, there is some friction, especially with the radicals. But good sense, as a rule, prevails."

Mr. Thomas Taylor, secretary of the Fall River loom-fixers one of the careful, hard-headed, honest, local labor secretaries who save labor's cause from its worst enemy, who is the loud-speaking labor-politician - told me of the adjustment he was making with the mill owners. "The textile council, composed of weavers, loom-fixers, spinners, and carders, reached a wage agreement with the owners this spring. It was not satisfactory to the loom-fixers. Now, instead of striking, as we would have done ten years ago, we took the matter up with the employers' association. And now I have a proposal for a raise in pay to present to my union. It won't please the radical element who are always the trouble makers. But it I will satisfy the big majority of the men." This wage adjustment has since been amicably made.

So, you see, a beginning has been made in the getting together. But it is too much to expect that selfish animosities will melt away merely on the voluntary efforts of a few wise employers and a handful of capable, local labor secretaries. Some of these agreements will probably be wrecked by the radicals, in the local

unions. These are constantly fomenting distrust, and once in a while will get the upper hand as among the pressmen of Chicago. Further, the difference in the tone of the unions and their leaders must hamper this movement. For instance, the stove manufacturers can operate on the collective bargaining plan with the molders, but not with the polishers and mounters. If the employer has gone so far as to admit his men into his office, he has not yet reached the summit of social altruism. He still spurns the Public. We are told to mind our own business. Very well, what is our business? Who uses the coal taken from the earth, and the iron, and the silver? Who depends daily on railroad, and telegraph, and gas main? When Mayor Pingree went to Pullman, in 1894, with the requests of twenty mayors of twenty large American cities, every one a railroad centre, urging the Pullman Company to arbitrate its differences, and they haughtily refused, was it the Public's business?

There is developing a social consciousness that will make the individualistic Phariseeism of the last century loom like a dark mountain of barbarism in the background. of the new century. Because every invention and discovery dims the line that separates the Thine from the Ours. Industrial altruism sounds like a Chestertonian paradox. But it's on the way. Lord Kelvin and Thomas Edison have done more for this actual brotherhood of man than ancient religions and mediæval philosophies. Because they, and their kind, have knit the world together industrially, made everybody dependent on everyone. When people rely on a process, or machine, or arrangement, for their daily comfort, they are not going to see that arrangement blatantly interfered with.

We may expect a great deal from this social consciousness. For it appeals to the selfishness of the Public. And a brotherhood of self-ism is potent.

Now, this self interest of the Public is already making itself felt by compelling a full, impartial public inquiry before either side can declare war. The Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act

points the way. Such a disclosure disarms both sides of the advantage of secrecy, and by the time the facts are in possession of the public the heads will be cooled and a definite opinion crystalized. Massachusetts has the beginnings of this kind of procedure. But her statutes are not clear enough on this point of compulsory investigation. The recent elevated strike was publicly investigated soon after it was called. I found the opinion prevalent among Boston workmen that, if the disclosures made by this investigation had preceded the strike, no open rupture would have occurred.

III

To the hopeful signs, I will add the organization of employers. These employers' "unions" foster a spirit of group responsibility and help destroy the poisonous suspicions that competitors have of one another. One of the iron founders told me that when they gathered for their first meeting at Pittsburg, some of the men would not speak to each other because of some bitter experiences in competing for business. I asked a prominent manufacturer in one industry that has had constant labor troubles why they did not organize to handle the situation. Because we are all afraid of one another we may disclose trade secrets!"

Local organizations, like the Brockton shoe men and the Fall River textile manufacturers, will have the best effect on the labor situation, for every dispute must be settled in the light of local conditions.

It is not a drain on the imagination to look for a time when many industries will be organized both locally and nationally, somewhat as the metal trades and the newspaper publishers are organized. Some of these will be organized to fight the unions; and the unions will give them plenty of fighting. Some will be organized, as the stove founders, to see what bargaining will do. Maybe, some that are meant for fighting will, after a whilea long while try negotiating.

At any rate, it is encouraging to see the employers organize. It gives a system to the guerilla warfare. System is a sign of progress. Because bargaining never

succeeds unless it is backed by system on both sides.

It is, then, on the increasing recognition of the personal element, and in the slow development of the social consciousness, that the hope lies. Outside the pale of personality, in the cold, impersonal atmosphere of the "economic man," there is no hope.

It is the duty of the Public to see to it that neither side shall dominate. The labor leader who told me that domination by the unions would be unendurable was right. Domination means coercion, coercion means eruption; the coerced won't stay under. Domination by the unions. means arrogance; domination by the employers means oppression.

The slow-forming opinion of the public is moving in this direction. There is, for instance, a well established notion that something must be done for aged workmen. Over and over again employers have told me an old age pension must be devised. Ten years ago, you did not hear men in America talk of justice to the superannuated.

So there has, among workmen, developed a strong sentiment for sobriety. There is much less drunkenness among workmen than there was twenty years ago. This is not due to temperance societies. It is due to the sensible, slow-forming opinion of the workmen themselves.

Now, in this way, all great questions are ultimately determined. And whatever industrial equilibrium may be reached must come through the dictum of a united Public conscience.

Meanwhile, we must not forget that, though human experience is variable, it is, after all, rarely novel. Cardinal Manning told the bankers of London: "Once it was merrie England, now it is busy Enland." Was the shift worth while?

And how much progress has the socialconsciousness made since the noble and versatile Cicero, the pagan orator, said: "One thing ought to be aimed at by all men: that the interests of each individually, and of all collectively, should be the same. For if each shall grasp at his individual interest, all human society would be dissolved"?

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BY

Τ'

HE worst element of our legislation is its utter selfishness. This nowhere appears to worse advantage than in the constant tendency to parcel out, district by district, the money carried by the most important appropriation bills, with the very evident purpose of merely helping members of Congress to reëlect themselves. Local and personal interests are advanced without regard to the welfare of the Nation. In Congress to-day it is almost impossible to secure consideration for a bill embodying principles of broad statesmanship because of the insistence of these private measures.

The Secretary of War has recently attracted the attention of the public by his frank and courageous efforts to reestablish the army upon a basis of military efficiency rather than of subservience to local interests and political expediency. The mobile army of the United States is scattered among forty-nine posts. Why has the army been divided into this absurd number of inefficient units? Secretary Stimson replies, "Local and political influences."

Every effort to enforce a rational plan of concentration has inspired an avalanche of protests from private citizens, chambers of commerce, city councils, governors, and members of both Houses of Congress. These army posts are considered an asset to a community because of the supplies purchased for their maintenance, their band concerts, interesting drills, attractive parks. In the language of the Secretary of War, "Against such practical and plainly evident reasons for the maintenance of a post near his home town, the average citizen is apt to attach little importance to projects based on purely military necessity, and in which he is apt to take but very little interest." To the disinterested citizen the idea is manifestly ludicrous that our army should be maintained primarily for the purpose of furnishing a market for the commodities of some particular town or providing band concerts for the delectation of its citizens. Yet this situation is typical of most of our legislation and of the attitude of the majority of the people toward it urging purely local interests at the expense of the public welfare.

The same situation prevails in the various departments and is equally conspicuous in the navy. For years the officials of the navy have sought to establish that branch of the service upon a basis of military efficiency and their efforts have been embarrassed by the selfishness and insistence of local interests. Manifestly a naval base ought to be determined with reference to its natural advantages, its strategic location, the possibility of defense, the size of its harbor, and other similar considerations, all of a military nature.

Now we have eleven navy yards of the first and second class while England, with a navy twice as large as ours, has but six. Yet we do not possess a single navy yard where we could at one time dock a squadron or a fleet. In the debate on the naval appropriation bill of 1909 this question of the multiplicity of petty naval bases was raised by a member of the Senate from one of the Rocky Mountain states. In answer to the criticisms thus projected a member of the Senate from South Carolina frankly said: "It comes with bad grace from men on that side who have been getting their share of chicks and eggs from the National Government to get up and captiously criticise the rest of us who are only doing the same thing."

For years we have been struggling under a vicious system of river and harbor improvements. For instance, the River and Harbor bill of 1910 contained items favoring 296 out of the 391 Congressional districts. This bill was a masterpiece of geographical distribution and a striking tribute to the cohesive power of legislative log-rolling. Even the obstacle offered by mountains of considerable size did not prevent certain portions of the country from being represented in this bill.

Now there are two ways of framing a River and Harbor bill. The popular method of drawing a bill is to make such concessions to all the different states and localities that you will have an overwhelming support for the measure. The other method, and the right one, is to select those projects which would benefit the whole country and then finish them with promptness. The first method is

irresistible. It will win every timeconsult the wishes of the varied localities and projects of the country and they will all join together and pass a bill.

In a speech on the floor of the Senate in 1910 I discussed at some length this question of pork barrel legislation as it relates to our river and harbor bills and instanced many items of that bill in support of my contentions. In the first place the financial considerations of maintaining the solvency of the Government compel a limitation upon the amount which may be appropriated in any one year for the improvement of our waterways. Thus, in order to scatter this amount over a large number of districts, the individual amounts are necessarily small. The result is that an improvement which is legitimate and which could be finished within three or four years, and which in the interests of commerce ought to be finished within that time, will be dragged out indefinitely because only a small amount is annually allotted to it. These piecemeal appropriations are in many instances ridiculous. Let me cite briefly two examples to which I then called attention. Something more than $1,500,000 have been expended on the Sandy Bay harbor of refuge in Massachusetts where work has been in progress since 1885. Five million dollars approximately are required to complete this ambitious project. In 1910 the corps of engineers, in charge of all Government works, recommended that $500,000 could be profitably expended there that year. Yet the act provided for only $100,000. At that rate of progress work will not be completed at that point for fifty years.

This policy of piecemeal appropriations encourages extravagance and the adoption of injudicious and wasteful projects merely for the purpose of spending money in the greatest possible number of districts. When you give small appropriations to a large number of items it is an invitation to every Congressman who has a harbor, a creek, a well-developed spring, to come in and ask for an appropriation in these bills. It is a very simple matter to come to Congress and secure $100,000 on a project that will cost a million cr two millions. One hundred thousand is not regarded as a very

large sum. It is considered that one Congressional district ought to have that much recognition of the fact that it is on the map and that its member is active. here in Congress. When the $100,000 is appropriated, it is very easy to come to Washington again and say: "What! Will Congress, after it has committed itself to this great project, although costing a million dollars or more, drop it after $100,000 has been spent and let the money expended be buried in the sea?"

In this way I have seen the most unwarranted and extravagant enterprises undertaken apparently not so much to improve our waterways as to put the Government's money into circulation in the various Congressional districts in order to improve the chances of the different members of Congress for reëlection.

FREIGHT AT $806 A TON

The Red River, in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, is another example of ill-advised improvements. The Government has expended about $3,000,000 on that stream. For the last year traffic over this stretch of 476 miles below Fulton Harbor, aside from the saw logs which could be floated without any improvements, was 10 tons of grain, 16 tons of provisions, 26 tons of fish, and 10 tons of ice. In all, 62 tons were carried on these 476 miles of river. The River and Harbor bill of 1912 carries an appropriation of $50,000 for this stretch of the Red River. That is at the rate of $806 for every ton of merchandise or grain carried on that river the preceding year. The amount expended for the year is practically eight times as much as all the value of the merchandise and freight carried. Two years ago it was 835 tons, and now it has dropped to 62 tons.

It would, I think, be a long step toward bettering conditions if those who propose these improvements had that responsibility which comes from paying a portion of the expense in short, if local communities. were forced to share, with the general Government, the cost of such projects.

It takes a rare form of courage to meet public opinion and to oppose it when it is wrong. It is difficult to resist the plead

ings of constituents or to withstand the urging of associates in the House and Senate who have favorite projects to advance. It is human nature to follow the line of least resistance.

We will never have a rational system of public works under present methods. The proper way is to take up each item according to its merit, irrespective of location, regardless of the insistence of communities or of members of Congress, and courageously to adopt it and finish it. I know from the experience of twenty years how difficult that is. I know the amount of attack and abuse incurred by those who favor that method. Pungent paragraphs, cutting cartoons, and misrepresentations of motive appear in newspaper columns, and resolutions of condemnation are frequently received from public and semi-public organizations. River and Harbor bills are to-day judged not from the number of meritorious projects included but rather from the distribution of their largesses. That bill is considered ideal which is framed to please the largest number of people and to cater to the selfish demands of the largest number of communities.

About two years ago, in a speech at St. Louis, President Taft, taking an optimistic view of the situation, said:

But I do think we have now reached the time in the history of the development of our waterways when a new method ought to be adopted. This improvement by the irrigation of arid and sub-arid lands, and all this conservation of resources, is not for the purpose of distributing "pork" to every part of the country. Every measure that is to be taken up is to be adopted on the ground that it is to be useful to the country at large and not on the ground that it is going to send certain Congressmen back to Congress, or on the ground that it is going to make a certain part of the country, during the expenditure of that money, prosperous. The method

I am in favor of is this: That we should take up every comprehensive project on its merits, and that we should determine, by every means at our command, whether the country in which that project is to be carried out is so far developed as to justify the expenditure of a large sum in carrying out the project, and whether the project will be useful when done.

And yet the scandal of our river and