mills, if the city got gay and monkeyed with the question of the dam's insecurity. The authorities were afraid of this private corporation." The writer in the Survey whom we have quoted on the present situation at South Bethlehem has this: "A year and a half has gone by since the strike ended, and some of the people of Bethlehem are still quibbling about the strike being one of non-residents-because some of the leaders of it lived in Allentown, a few miles away. The people have not inquired whether conditions have been alleviated. The citizens of Bethlehem do not know. Instead, they are still ringing the changes on the words 'non-resident' and 'agitator.'"' Here is another quotation bearing on the "public opinion" which by optimistic "Merry Christmas' employing-class writers is expected to work marvels in helping the wage-earners: "But here is an odd thing. Through all the history of the South Chicago plant no delegation of citizens has ever gone to Springfield to secure legislation for a rest-day for the workers. After twenty-nine years, while ministers have sometimes petitioned the company and business men have stood idle, waiting for voluntary action, the company is at last granting a rest-day. Nor in 1906, when forty-six men were killed in the steel plant, did South Chicago citizens leave their business to demand safety or compensation laws. They waited again for voluntary action, and it came-twenty-six years after the first steel was blown at the South Works. Nor have the citizens of South Chicago ever lobbied at Springfield for an abolition of the twelve-hour day, for better housing regulation, improved sanitary conditions, or for any other thing that is vitally connected with the welfare of the 10,000 steel workers who live within their borders. They have waited thirty years for these things, and are still waiting. But when it was the interests of the company that seemed to be at stake, they waited only until the Legislature met again, and then they literally stormed it—until they got what they wanted." The same writer thinks "it is a very serious matter that the [South Bethlehem] Steel Company regards its treatment of labor as nobody's business but its own," and declares "when the men tried to make it their business they were speedily dropped from the pay-roll." Referring to the action of the local ministers on the occasion of the strike, he says: · "The ministers must have been blind, or they never would have published a statement in the local press telling the striking workmen that 'only the officials of the company can accomplish the righting of any existing wrongs.' The officials, mind you, who had discharged five men for protesting against Sunday work, and three more for mentioning that they were dissatisfied. Or they never would have asked the workmen: 'Is it reasonable to expect that by attacking your employer openly and in secret, by trying to destroy his property and his business, you can best persuade him to deal generously and magnanimously with you?' (The italics are mine.)" Rabbi Joseph Silverman, of the Temple Emanu-El, Fifth avenue and Forty-third street, New York, talking in a strain to please his aristocratic congregation, on Sunday, December 24, 1911, sought to create in them "a healthy public opinion," and "severely criticised labor unions which dictate to the men the number of hours that they may work and the amount of work they may perform." He went on: "It is the crime of the day, and it is retarding the march of progress and keeping the men themselves from advancing. We are free men, this is a free land, and we should be allowed our full liberty to develop and thrive on what the Lord our God has given us. "There is no law, nor can there ever be any law, governing equality among men. Nature decides that. Men are born small and tall; strong and weak, and wise and simple. There is no human law that can change nature. Nature has determined that certain men be hewers of wood, and that others be leaders of industries, and we must accept the decree of nature. "There are men who are unscrupulous enough to play upon the credulity of others. There are men who play upon the ignorance of others, and there are men who seek to influence the masses against the Government and society. These men are tyrants, and should be sought out and punished, whether they be at the head of affairs of state, or at the head of their fellow-men in a more humble position." What a depth of significance lies in this statement by a Pittsburgh investigator: "There was a movement against Sunday work in the Pittsburgh district in 1907-8; but its efforts were directed more frequently against drug stores, confectionery and fruit stores, and amusements, than against the United States Steel Corporation, with its thousands of employes then working the long turn." Are readers of the daily papers kept well informed regarding the struggle on the Lakes against the Lake Carriers' Association, alias the Steel Trust, now in its fourth year, which continues as bitter as ever? It is seeking, by use of its industrial power, to impose upon the men a servitude so galling, so immediate, and so complete, that those who have read its socalled "welfare" plan have characterized it as a "ticket-o'-leave" system. Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale, speaking before the Academy of Political Science, in New York, in December, showed what little effect public opinion had had upon the New York bench: "In my opinion, the salvation of labor lies largely in industrial hygiene, and so far as labor unions help industrial hygiene, they deserve the commendation of all who have the good of humanity at heart." "When we consider that many of our Judges still declare that the laws passed to restrict the labor of women are unconstitutional on the ground that in the musty law books of the past (the heritage of the unsanitary ages of the past) there can be found no precedents to justify a discrimination between men and women, we realize how sadly the law is behind the times, and how dearly we have to pay for the neglect of our ancestors to recognize by proper legal usages the physiological difference between man and woman." Syracuse, New York, has recently had a local "social survey," headed by Mr. Shelby Harrison. It wound up with a "Know Your City Week." Thereupon, Editor Thomas M. Gafney, in the Syracuse Industrial Weekly, has this: "At every place where the white light was turned on by Mr. Harrison or his assistants, there was found trade unionism actually doing things-not talking about them. To such a degree was this true that in his résumé of his work Mr. Harrison boldly asserted, in the presence of a very austere and dignified audience in Lincoln Hall on Thursday night, that the work of the trade unions in Syracuse was such that he was constrained to say: 'God bless these trade unions and may they multiply in Syracuse.' This assertion alone, made at the time and place and by the man who made it only after months of a careful social survey, is well worth all the money or effort which organized labor expended in the movement. Not only was the union shown up in glowing colors on this one occasion, but in numerous other instances during the exercises at the court-house in the afternoons and at Lincoln Hall in the evenings." It might be thought, as a consequence of the facts brought out by this Syracuse survey, that hereafter that city should give trade unionism due credit for its uplifting work among the masses. But is this to be so? To which source of information will the "influential people" of the city give credence at any time as to the local labor situation-the conservative press, congratulating its readers in indefinite terms upon the well-being of labor, or the organ of trade unionism, when it is with painstaking conscientiousness relating the exact grievances of strikers in a particular occupation, or revolting against excessively long hours of work, poor pay, tyrannical bosses, and unhygienic workshop conditions? However, it will henceforth be difficult for the Big Press to deceive the unionists of Syracuse in matters relating to their own work. As in Syracuse, the trade union men and women of America are being educated by events to "look to the source" in forming their opinions on all labor matters. For "public opinion," so called-that agglomeration of nebulous impressions in the otherwise occupied minds of circles of people most of whom have been prejudiced against the unions-the workers are coming to care less and less. Read the Labor Press! Child Labor No fledgling feeds the father bird, We are the wisest, strongest race, Long may our praise be sung, The only animal alive That lives upon its young. - Charlotte Perkins Gilman. THE NEW YORK STREET-CLEANERS' STRIKE. IF THE outcome, up to the present, of the New York Street Cleaning Department drivers' strike is to rest as a criterion, municipal employes in the United States are to be denied in their employment all the attributes of citizenship, except the mere function of obeying orders. They are to have no voice in bargaining on matters of hours and wages. They are to be forbidden to strike. They are to have no right of joint appeal for the remedying of grievances. They are to work right along without any legal provision for their protection against changes through autocratic orders in the character of their occupational duties, no matter how serious to themselves may be the consequences. They are to be deprived once and for all of the rights which free men may exercise in forming or continuing a system of contract, and at the same time have no recourse to any constituted authority for their defense in case they suffer from the tyrannies involved in over-work, arbitrary rulings, or departures by their superiors from traditionally just methods. They can not be represented by trade union officials not in the city employ. They are simply to obey orders or get out-but, under penalties of blacklisting and disgrace, they must not get out as a body. At least, this is the state of things in New York today. The facts, both in the general situation of the New York street cleaning drivers and in the particular situation brought about by the November strike, are throughout instructive and significant. The maximum wages of a fully employed department driver is $800 a year, though the amount required in New York City, according to the general consensus of social workers, for a man to raise a family in comfort is $900. Street sweepers receive $780 and stablemen $760. The regulation hours are in theory eight a day, six days a week. Employes in the service for twenty years or more who have reached sixty years of age are granted pensions amounting to not less than half of their compensation when retired. "The practical effect of this pension scheme," in the view of some of the drivers, "is simply to deduct 3 per cent from our wages. Very few drivers reach the age of sixty years in service. The work calls for younger men." The drivers and other employes had grievances previous to those giving rise to the walkout of November 9, but there was no real discontent until night work was enforced. This night work compelled the men to change their mode of living while away from work and their habits as to meals while at work, and to incur additional running expenses, besides losing occasional gifts from householders for services per formed for them beyond regular duties. The drivers, organized as Local No. 568 in Manhattan and No. 500 in Brooklyn in the Teamsters' Union, had in Manhattan about 60 per cent of their number in the union and in Brooklyn about 35 per cent. When the night work was begun, the men expressed their discontent first to the Commissioner and then to the Mayor. Not getting any satisfaction, in fact hardly a show of a hearing, at a meeting called for the purpose and attended by a large proportion of the union men, a resolution to strike was carried. It was contended by the drivers that they had a right to strike, even though their employer was the city. The reasons they gave were, first, that they had a just grievance, and second, that they used every means to persuade the city officials to give them a just hearing before they went out. Their grievance was that it is dangerous to life. and limb for at least three months of the year to collect ashes and garbage at night. They contended that the Mayor met their complaint with the statement that night work would go on as ordered, and they might strike whenever they chose. Their only choice, they said, was to knuckle under or strike like men, and they chose to strike. When the strike was on, the Teamsters' Union requested a committee of five from the Brooklyn Central Labor Union, two of whom were ministers and three members of different trade unions, to use their good offices in obtaining from the Mayor whatever terms they could. It was the hope of the committee that the Mayor would consent to the appointment of a citizens' committee to investigate the situation. The men said that they were ready to submit to the findings of such a committee, and were in the meantime willing to go to work where they left off. The Mayor was of the opinion that no employe of the city has under any circumstances the right to strike. The city, he said, is not an employer like a manufacturer; the city government is the servant of all the people and does not exist for profit. Therefore, if an employe of the city does not like his work he may quit it, but he can not hold it up. The service of the community must go on. For the Mayor to allow employes to stop the city service is to destroy government. "I would be derelict in my duty as the sworn officer of the laws," said the Mayor, "were I to yield so much as an inch to the threats of the city employes." The Mayor told the committee that for some time he had known that the Department of Street Cleaning was being organized. To this he made no objection. He stated that he believes in unions and has repeatedly helped them. They have done wrong, he said, but the wrongs they have done are not to be compared to the wrongs done by capitalists. He claimed that some men, not employes of the city, came to him and threatened to call a strike if night work was not abandoned. He informed them that they might go ahead and strike, but that no employe who struck would be re-employed by the city. The department was being reorganized; it might take two months to accomplish this, but, he added, the department would go on without the men who struck. As to night work, he said it might easily have been arranged so that the men were divided into day shifts and night shifts and alternated every two weeks, as in other departments where day and night work are necessary. This plan was under the consideration of himself and the Commissioner and would have been soon inaugurated had not the department been disorganized by the strike. A plan also was being worked out to substitute wagons for carts and to have two men on each. "What do you propose?" was the question which he put to the committee of five. They told him that the leaders of the Teamsters' Union suggested the appoint ment of a commission, similar to his Highways Commission, to investigate, and to its findings the men would submit. To this he gave an emphatic refusal. The committee then asked that the employes be retained who proved to the satisfaction of the Commissioner that they were unable to report for duty November 9, the day of the walkout. This proposition he also declined to consider, on the ground that they were all members of the union and as such had agreed to abide by a vote not to report. In these facts the Mayor was mistaken, as the committee knew at the time from the men, and afterward verified, with the Mayor's approval, from the Commissioner. As this was the first offense of men who had been commended for their loyalty and efficiency, and as the five days had not at the time of the interview yet expired in which, according to the charter, the men were subject, not to discharge but merely to suspension, the Mayor could have granted this request without loss of dignity or impairment of discipline. "For this mistake of the Mayor," the committee reported, "he is answerable to the public at large. We believe that the public, when they know all the facts, will regard this refusal of the Mayor as an official blunder. Had he granted this the back of the strike would have been at once broken and all rioting would have ceased. The great majority of the men would have gone back to work." Among the findings of this committee were the following: "That the employes had real grievances. The Mayor's word that plans were under way providing for wagons in place of carts with two men to each is an admission that the work was too heavy for one man, especially at night.” . . . "It is well to remember, however, in this connection that $900 a year have been determined as the minimum living wage in New York City for a family of five, and those drivers are for the most part men with families and need more than their present wage to keep up to the American standard of living.' The committee also found: "That no effort has been made to call to the attention of the fair-minded people of New York the grievances of the public servants in the Department of Street Cleaning, and that no civic body investigated the situation and suggested remedies. We believe that this |