because it was necessary to agree, with reference to the materials under the control of each Executive, that the respective governments would exercise such control over their respective nationals as would prevent them from buying these materials through any channels except those provided for under the direction of the respective Executives.

of the world is to be revealed only by events; but the importance of the results secured cannot be overestimated. It would be an ironical turn of the wheel of Fate should the Thirteenth Century Hanseatic League invented by the Germans be revived in the Twentieth Century in a League of Nations assuming practically worldwide economic

THE

or

HE proposed political League of Nations has been prefigured in non-political organizations whose name is legion. M. Paul Otlet, secretary-general of the Union of International Associations, tells us in the Revue générale des sciences (Paris) that the first international congress (nonpolitical) met in 1840, and that about 2000 international gatherings, of one sort another have been held since that time. There have been formed a great many permanent international associations and bureaus, devoted to the promotion of a wide range of scientific, technological, industrial, social and other objects. Some of these are strictly official, with members appointed by the various governments; others are entirely unofficial; and still others are of a mixed char

acter.

In the year 1910 the need of coördinating the activities of these various bodies led to the convocation of a World Congress of International Associations, and this meeting gave birth to the permanent Union of International Associations. A second congress met in 1913, and the third, but for the war, would have held its sessions in the United States in the year 1915.

The situation following the war marks a new era in the history of international organizations, making it opportune for us to set down a few facts from M. Otlet's long retrospect and forecast on this subject. The League of Nations, if it is consummated, will undoubtedly give new vigor and coherence to international movements in general. M. Otlet cites a plan that has been proposed whereby the League would directly maintain a variety of international establishments, including academies, museums, laboratories, archives, etc., and provide funds for the various international associations.

Apart from the Union above mentioned, there is an International Association of Academies, under the auspices of which there have recently been held "inter-allied" conferences to consider the means of carrying forward collaboration in the different branches of science. For the time being, at least, the Teutonic countries find themselves excluded from the international scientific bodies now undergoing reorganization, but future policy on this subject cannot yet be determined. This is one of the questions to be discussed at a forthcoming Congress of International Associations, to be held in Brussels as soon as circumstances permit.

Some of the problems awaiting consideration by the various international bodies are summarized in M. Otlet's article. These include the question of appropriate standards and units of measurement for universal use; the subject of uniform scientific terminology and an international auxiliary language; the question of an improved and uniform calendar; and numerous other problems to which much attention has already been given. Under the head of "documentation" M. Otlet outlines a project that will arouse much interest in scientific and educational circles. This plan, which has been urged by the Congresses of International Associations, contemplates a system of publications whereby the latest advances in every branch of knowledge would be presented in convenient form. We should have an encyclopedia kept constantly up to date; abstracts and reprints of current literature; scientific directories; chronicles of scientific events; digests of data, etc.; a complete programme of digesting and cumulating knowledge, instead of the fragmentary efforts in this direction that have hitherto been put forth (chiefly, be it remarked, by the Germans).

Lastly, we are glad to be reminded by the article under consideration of the substantial work that had already been done at Brussels, before the year 1914, toward the creation of an intellectual center and clearing-house for the world at large. This appears to be intact and ready to resume operations. In a building provided by the Belgian Government many of the international associations

have their permanent headquarters; there is a collective library, formed from the libraries of sixty-eight associations; there is the vast International Institute of Bibliography, with a collection of eleven million cards arranged by author and subject; there is an international museum, occupying seventeen large halls-in short, an impressive focus of internationalism.

OUR

UR text-books of political economy have encouraged the belief that among all who toil with the hands money is the only thing sought after. Artists and scientists, it may be conceded, find their reward in the joy of achievement-not so the workingman. A few brave souls venture to claim for him the same power (though often latent) of enjoying self-expression. He seldom claims this power for himself.

Even the proceedings of the learned societies are invaded, from time to time, by the humanist, the man who believes that however materialistic the age there is still possible for the individual a certain joy in living and creating. Thus, in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia) for March, Prof. Irving Fisher, of Yale, offers some highly interesting suggestions on "Humanizing Industry."

Among the many rights which the workingman has heretofore only partially enjoyed Professor Fisher regards the right to healthful conditions as preeminent. Many, it is true, do not yet recognize the importance of this right. The labor leaders themselves do not seem to have attached the first importance to it, but, as Professor Fisher points out, health is the workingman's capital, his only important asset. When he loses it, he loses the power to earn his living.

Some people say that if his wages were raised, his health would be improved. This is doubtless true, but it is still truer that if his health were improved, his wages would be increased. To improve slightly an individual's health will not necessarily, it is true, nor always, increase that individual's wages; but if we increase, even slightly, the health, and thereby the working power of the nation as a whole, the general wage level will rise. In the last analysis wages depend on productive power, and the workingman's power to produce is dependent muscle and brain, i. e., his health.

on his

The Rockefeller Hookworm Commission, by spending about 65 cents per capita, has made over thousands of Southern whites into able-bodied laborers. Great returns may be expected from investments in factory sanitation, lighting and ventilation, in better food, housing, clothing, sports and amusements for workingmen, and in various forms of health insurance, labor legislation, school hygiene.

etc.

Professor Fisher proceeds to show that the workingman should have not only physical health, but also mental health, and mental health depends on the satisfaction of certain fundamental instincts. A human being whose instincts are thwarted becomes an enemy of society. This has been assigned as the real reason for the I. W. W. "They rebelled, like the small boys of a large city without playgrounds, who break windows for excitement." In other words, the I. W. W. workingman is the "naughty boy of industry." If the energy which makes him destructive had been enlisted for constructive work, he might have made a more useful workingman than his more docile and less energetic brother. Professor Fisher admits that it may be too late to reclaim him now, but he holds that we can at least prevent the making of more of his kind.

Professor Fisher proceeds to name seven major instincts which apparently must be satisfied to make a normal life:

First, there is the instinct of self-preservation. The securing of a living wage must always be the first concern of a workingman. This has always been recognized as basic, and I need not therefore dilate upon it. Furthermore, selfpreservation demands the maintenance of healthy working conditions, the prevention of over-fatigue and the provision of safety devices. No man can do his work well if he feels that it is fitting him only for the scrap heap. Finally, every employe should be assured of a steady job so long as he does his part. If he has to be "laid off" without

any fault of his own, he should have due notice or a suitable dismissal wage. Fear of unemployment dissipates energy.

Secondly, there is the instinct of self-expression, or workmanship. Until modern industry contrives to satisfy this instinct in the ordinary workman, our labor problem will not be solved. I shall consider this below in greater detail.

Thirdly, there is the instinct of self-respect. Unless the workman is made to feel that "A man's a man, for a' that," he will be our enemy, will cherish a grievance, and will become anti-social.

The employer should, so far as possible, use praise for incentive rather than blame. If it is really necessary to call a man down, the rebuke need not be administered before his fellowworkers. The workman should be considered trustworthy until he has proven himself untrustworthy. Rivalry in production involves the satisfaction of the instinct of self-respect.

Fourthly, there is the instinct of loyalty. The universality of this instinct is strikingly illustrated in this war. Devotion to a cause, sacrifice for this cause, heroism if you like, have been shown by soldiers whose whole training has been one of monotonous industry. The instinct of loyalty should be satisfied in industry, as it is in the trenches. The employer often misses a great opportunity to be his workingmen's hero or honored general instead of their task master.

If the men can organize, a team spirit will develop. Collective bargaining and other forms of control of the industry by the men will forestall useless "knocking" and discontent and will develop loyalty instead. Mass activities, group singing, marching in a parade, wearing a button or cheering a baseball team will develop and foster a united feeling.

Pride is an important constituent of loyalty. Workers have a right to expect that their plant is one worth being proud of. Fundamentally, loyalty is based on justice and mutual consideration. The employer who can best put himself in the place of his men best secures their loyalty. Extra work or overtime can, by loyal workman,

be "volunteered" with pleasure where "conscription" might arouse ill-feeling.

The great instinct of love, or of home-making, is a fifth instinct, and one vital for society. The homeless, migratory I. W. W. is an example of what occurs when life is deprived of its satisfaction. A man thinks of his own family as part of himself. His success means their happiness. Any action on the employer's part which affects family welfare immediately arouses resentment. The unrest caused by inability to enjoy family life or by bad instinctive life outside the plant is demoralizing. In a word, conditions of employment should, in every way, conduce to a happy family life.

The workingman's instinct of worship, if we may properly speak of such a faculty as a sixth instinct, hungers and thirsts for righteousness and often is not filled. If his daily work appeals to his whole nature and not merely to a portion of it, the task will be exalted to become really a part of his religion. No man should have to do work which is degrading or which will tend to crush idealism or warp the spirit of humanity and service.

Finally, the play impulse must be satisfied to produce mental health. The saying, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is true of the laboring man.

Some instincts are almost inevitably repressed, and, deprived of a wise outlet, are in danger of an unrestrained outburst. Play provides a safety valve. This play should not be frivolity, still less dissipation, but entertainment which will develop physical and mental health and a broadened outlook on life. A long workday makes proper play impossible, and is largely responsible for a man's resort to drink and other perversions of play.

Of the seven mentioned, only the instinct of self-preservation is even fairly well satisfied by the majority of workers. We thrum too continually on this one string. Human nature is a harp of many strings. We must use the rest of the octave.

But the chief weakness in the future [observes the Times] will be in Eastern Europe, and that is why a barrier of new states, to be erected between the Baltic and the Adriatic, will need strengthening by every means in our power. Although France has a particular interest in the west front, the defection of Bolshevist Russia makes it desirable that she should find some substitute on the East for her old Russian alliance, and it must be a great joy to her people that this substitute should take the form of a barrier line of free peoples.

Our own position has many points of resemblance to that of France. The main avenues of the League of Nations' communication with free peoples between the Baltic and. Adriatic will be over the sea, and, therefore, we are anxious about free passage into the Baltic, and also that there should be at its eastern end friendly powers to provide the navies of the League, after they have entered the Baltic, with repairs and facilities of operation.

On the occasion of the presentation of colors to the Czech army in France on June 30, last year, President Poincairé, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Pichon, and the British Minister of Foreign Affairs Balfour, each expressed to the Czechs wishes for their national independence and for the close union of Bohemia with Poland and Jugo-Slavia, and Minister Pichon declared in addition

that those three states are to constitute a defensive rampart restraining German invasions in the East.

The close of the war sees at length the recognition of the truth that the three states of true Slavonians, united closely, constitute the best assurance of universal peace. When this opinion was expressed two years ago, when the war was at its height, in the columns of a Paris periodical, it was the isolated utterance of the thought of only a single writer. A remarkable passage in one of a series of articles (that of August 5, 1916) on the Polish national policy from the pen of the eminent Polish philosopher, Prof. Vincent Lutoslawski, in the French section of the Paris Polonia, read as follows:

The true Slavonians constitute three groups: In the north, the Poles and Ruthenians, united for five hundred years. They conjointly produced the original constitution of the Polish Republic. In the center, the Czechs, Moravians, Lusatians, and Slovaks, who are beginning to form a homogeneous nation, the nearest geographically and psychologically to Poland. Finally, in the south, the Jugo-Slavs, formed through the union of the Slovenians, Croatians, Dalmatians, and Bosniaks with the Serbians.

These three Slavonic nations, together with the Rumanians, who also have Slavonic elements in their blood and in their language, will form an impregnable rampart about the Germans. None of these nations could alone resist the German pressure. The Bohemians particularly, to be independent, absolutely need as a neighbor a great Poland, restored in its boundaries of 1772, with the addition of Silesia and East Prussia, which were lost by Poland prior to that date. The three Slavonic states, with Rumania, would have about a hundred million inhabitants and could furnish the Western alliance of Great Britain, France, and Italy with more than ten million soldiers for the defense of European liberty against all German aggression and against all oriental invasion.

When this opinion was expressed in 1916, it was a very bold assertion, remote from universal recognition. To-day the program of a Slavonic union is penetrating the convictions of the Western governments. For this there were required nearly four years of the war so long did we have to wait for a clear enunciation of the governments as to the future of Poland. During the first three years of the war the Poles were entrusted to the care of the Czar, and only a year after his fall did France and England recognize that independent Poland, with Bohemia and Serbia, will constitute the most effective defense of Europe from German dominion in Asia.

The dispute between the Czechs and the

Poles about the district of Cieszyn in Austrian Silesia is on the eve of a satisfactory settlement by the Peace Conference, and friendship will be restored between the chief Slavonic nations. And among the Ukrainians (Ruthenians), when they shall be thoroughly rid of German influences, there may arise the desire for a close alliance with Poland. Thus, there is outlining as a reality the union of the true Slavonians, with the exclusion of the Muscovites and Bulgarians, on whom nobody any longer relies. This union, says Professor Lutoslawski in the Chicago Dziennik Zwaizkowy, is really a condition not only of the security of Europe and of the conversion to true Christianity of the renegade Germans, but also a necessary condition of the independence of those peoples who are neighbors of the Germans on the east. Only a very close alliance among these peoples can assure their independence and show the Germans that even little nations can defend themselves, when they are united.

The example of the ancient Union of Poland with Lithuania and Ruthenia [observes Professor Lutoslawski] is a model for the broader union joining Poland, restored in her former boundaries, with Bohemia and Jugo-Slavia. It is not a question here of the domination of some over others, but of an understanding and of a common defense of the liberty common to all of them. It is necessary at last to understand once for all that political liberty is such a treasure as can only be kept together with one's neighbors, helping them sincerely; whereas every nation that should want to secure its own liberty at the expense of its neighbors, would expose itself to slavery.

Free people should be fair in relations with their neighbors and not aim to abuse their freedom for the restriction of the liberty of their fellow-men. This lies at the very heart of the question-that he cannot be free who oppresses others, nor even he who passively acquiesces in others' injury, when he can prevent it. A free nation should have the willingness to perform the greatest sacrifices to save the liberty of every oppressed nation, as every act of oppression, if it do not meet with opposition, becomes a menace to those who themselves do not yet suffer oppression and look indifferently on the oppression suffered by others.

The world war has revealed on a gigantic scale the solidarity of the peoples prizing their freedom. It has been recognized in England that the independent existence of France is an indispensable condition of English freedom. It has been recognized even in America, Australia, and South Africa that if freedom should be stifled in Europe, it would not be able to hold out anywhere. But nowhere is this solidarity of the nations thirsting for liberty so necessary as among the Slavonic peoples, who separate the Muscovites and Germans. For these peoples there cannot be liberty without the closest solidarity.

IN

PROF. F. W. TAUSSIG

(Chairman of the Tariff Commission)

N the Price-Fixing Committee of the War Industries Board, created in March, 1918, Prof. Frank W. Taussig, of Harvard, Chairman of the United States Tariff Commission, served as a member. This committee was one of the three governmental agencies that attempted to regulate prices during the war, the other two being the Fuel Administration and the Food Administration. Professor Taussig contributes to the Quarterly Journal of Economics (Harvard) an interesting account of the Government's experiments in price-fixing, as conducted by these three agencies.

It appears from his survey that Government price-fixing during the war was not uniform in its objects, and, instead of being guided by established policies, was in the main opportunist, "feeling its way from case to case." Of the three agencies, Professor Taussig finds that the Fuel Administration, dealing with a single commodity, was able to proceed with most system and method. The Price-Fixing Committee had a wide range of operations and was slowest in developing a general policy. In fact, the

Committee never did more than approach a principle of action gradually and tentatively, and it is pointed out that this self-restraint was on the whole most wise, since new situations and problems were sure to arise, for whose disposal no rule could be laid down in advance.

As it turned out, regulation came to an end almost immediately after the conclusion of the armistice. No new price agreements were made and those in effect were permitted to lapse as they expired. In almost all cases prices had been fixed for periods of three months, and as each period came to its close, no further action was taken, and thereafter the free play of market dealings again set in. Most of the agreements terminated late in December, 1918, or on January 1, 1919; a few held over for a month or two in 1919.

Since the experiment was not carried through to the end, or with system or consistency, Professor Taussig considers the lessons to be drawn from it far from conclusive, as regards fundamentals, and qualified even within the limited range to which they apply. He says in concluding his article:

So far as the experiment went, and so long as it lasted, the outcome seems to me to have been good. The rise of prices to be expected from inflation of the circulating medium was not prevented; but then no endeavor was made to achieve this sweeping object. There is nothing in all the price experiences to prove or disprove the contention that, irrespective of legislative or administrative fiat, general economic forces must work out their general effects. But that the impinging of the forces was in some degree affected and curbed seems undeniable. Food and fuel prices were prevented from fluctuating as widely and soaring as high as they would have done in the absence of regulation. A result of the same kind, and apparently not less in extent, was secured for other price-regulated articles.

The traditional statement of economic formula gives them an appearance of greater rigidity and sharpness than is warranted by the premises on which they rest. Supply and demand, monetary principles and monetary laws, are customarily formulated in exact terms, with an appearance of mathematical sharpness. The qualifications which must attach to these "laws" in any concrete application or predication, familiar to the welltrained economist, leave abundant room for some exercise of restraining and deliberated action. No doubt there are limits to which such action must be confined; but they are not narrow limits, and within them much was done which proved of advantage to the country.