workmen's compensation act is pretty bad on us, and if you come you must sign a paper that you do not intend to make any claim.' The man may sign the paper, but it is ultra vires, of no account. The law says distinctly that contracting out is not provided for, and any contract that may have been entered into and that takes away from the man or those dependents his right to compensation can not be entertained by a

court.

If, however, there is an actual scheme whereby the employers suggest to the men: Now, you are earning 30 shillings a week; if you are injured the most you will get will be £1 per week; if you like to pay so much a month, we will contribute so much a month, and this scheme will be for your benefit;' the man may enter into such a scheme if he does so perfectly voluntarily. But no scheme can be put in force that is not approved by the registrar of our friendly societies, a government official; and no scheme can be entertained that does not make the benefits to the man greater than the £1 compulsory amount. That is, what the man pays must bring him an extra, and not serve to relieve the master of of his responsibility. Shop clubs may exist so as to help the men; shop clubs can not exist to relieve the employer.

He

If a man joined any such scheme he would be bound by it and must contribute. can, however, withdraw at any time. The master can withdraw, too. But whatever happens, contract or no contract, the law has made a contract that requires no adherence upon the part of the man, and no sanction on the part of the employer. Ipse facto, if you employ a man, his life is in your hands, and you are responsible.

You have to recognize, gentlemen, one thing very clearly, that so long as a civilized society depends upon an elective representative body to make its laws, so long have you got to take a chance, and a very big chance, too, that a passing passion, a sweeping movement may carry men off their heads and may make them act not as men but as excited enthusiasts and as irresponsible beings. These things happen when a man thinks everything is going toward those who have and nothing is coming to those who have not. We have a little Socialist movement going on in England today, but not much. The reason that it is not much is that the trades unions

of England, the men representing the trades unions in parliament, are men absolutely against the Socialistic movement.

Cultivation of Good Feeling Between Employers and Workmen.

to

If you do not educate your men having some kind of good feeling toward you, if you do not recognize that they are human beings as much as yourselves, although employed by you, and taking your money and dependent upon you, the time will come when their unthinking votes will be caught by some claptrap orator who will make them do things that would set the country afire and check everything that you call good. You must lay hold of the men while they are reasonable if you want them to act in an emergency. You can not educate a country up during a sweeping election. Men's opinions will be formed before that day if they have any opinions at all. But the great difficulty lies with the man on the outside, who does not belong to one or the other party, but is the wabbler, whom you can get on the one side or the other; and that great unthinking mass controls the government of the country. It is an extraordinary thing to say, but it is absolutely true: Men do not turn over in England from being Liberals one time and Conservatives another. But the mighty body of men who do not think very much at all, these men can be swayed and brought to bear by the passing sensation of the hour. If you take those mennot at the passing sensation of the hourand treat them properly in their works, treat them properly as individuals, treat them, not as so many hands, but as so many human beings in your employ, you will make your country better as we are making our country better.

The country will be held and must be held by the people that haven't money. The people that govern the country are not you rich men. It is the great mass of voters that govern the country. Therefore, it will pay you, putting it on the lowest platform, to get the men on your side. You can only get them on your side by treating them fairly not by an occasional 'bean fest' as we call it in England, a kind of a feast holiday-not by giving a tea party now and then; that is cheap. Give them your good will all the way through; know your men

as you know your motor car. You know the peculiarities about that car of yours, and you know the difficulties about it. You study it, and you lie awake nights sometimes over the car. Lie awake nights about the homes of your people, about their wives and families to do them good. Get the men, the people of this wealthy country with you, and America will be as she claims to be, the land of liberty, the land of the free. Liability for Disease Contracted Through Conditions of Employment.

Now, there is another thing; if a man is killed in the works you can see it. If a man has his fingers cut off it is too painfully apparent. But what about that girl going out of that match factory, her eyes red and a blue tint over the mouth. You know she can not live long. No; but she works at a match factory and takes the risk. Matches can not be made with phosphorous without that risk.' Can not you make matches without phosphorous? Yes; but

it costs more. Lives are cheap; the substitute for phosphorous is dear.' That is all over in England today. We have said to the employer, 'If you employ girls or men in any kind of employment that causes injury to health you shall pay just as much as if you injured them by cutting their limbs off or killing them.' The act that commenced on July 17th last says: 'Any person employing another and giving that other a disease during the course of his employment shall be responsible for the consequences of the disease.' That is law.

And what is the result?

Fans are being put up in factories to take away the fumes that previously killed people. To those of you in the fan industry that is good. Other things are being done to take away the poisonous fumes coming out of the melting pots in brass foundries. It is no longer a chance to get consumption to be employed in some works now, because they have taken away the germbreeding stuff from the works. It is cheaper to take it out than to run the risk of paying for the lives of men and women. If a person during the course of his employment falls ill with some kind of disease that he has never had before, and a doctor certifies that it arises from the course of his employment, the certificate is sent to the master, and he will contribute to the servant precisely what he would have con

tributed if it had been an accident, and for the same period. That is, if it is total disablement, he will pay £1 per week for life; if it is death, he will pay three years' wages.

And, there is this: A man comes into a factory; he has been discharged from another place, where the employer knows what is happening and has sacked all the men that are liable to have this disease. Presently the germs of the disease contracted in the other place develop and fructify and the man pretty soon is ill. The employer says, 'Well, he can not have been long enough with me to have got that.' 'No,' says the law; 'we have taken care of that. The man with whom he was last must pay as well as yourself; he will pay proportionately for the time he was with him and you for the time he was with you.' There is no escaping; life injured is to be just as serious as limbs injured. Life destroyed by internal poisoning is to be just as serious and just as certain of compensation as life destroyed by a falling block.

What does this law do? It takes away from the home the sting and the worry of 'father is dying, dying by inches.' The members of that family know what is coming, 'father is dying by inches; when he can not work the people that have caused his death will have to pay us.' That is the law of England today, and it is being carried out.

Think these things out and see how they will fit some of your works in which the conditions are poisonous. Don't you think that your men in this country are alive to what has been done in England? Don't you imagine that the people working here in this country in what we call noxious trades, know the conditions under which their fellows are protected in England? Start this movement yourselves before labor organizations start it and compel you to do it. Set yourselves to give what by and by you will be forced otherwise to give. Let it be voluntary on the part of the masters of America rather than a demand on the part of the men. If that is done you will rivet good feeling, and you will weld your men to you as you otherwise can not do.

There is another thing: the right of men to take care of themselves individually, of course, is recognized; but what chance has one man got before a board of directors

around the table in a carpeted room, while he, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, comes into a place he has never been in before, and the like of which he has never seen, to be catechised? What chance has he got? None. He would lose his head if he came into the room, and make a bigger ass of himself than ever if he attempted to say anything.

not hit somebody else as well as the man.

There was a law which said if three or four men went to their neighbor and said, 'Jack, there is a strike on down there. You don't know anything about it, but they have been doing some very dirty tricks down there and we are stopping out until they put that right.' The law said, until last year: How many men with you?' 'Four.' 'That is a conspiracy. Get those

ing.

The right of the men to be represented, the right of the men to join in bodies and to have their unions is recognized as a perfectly lawful right today.

It is also recognized that when once they are so banded together you can no longer, when there is a trade dispute, say to the men, 'Now look here, you have got a lot of money in your society, you have been paying it in for years, we will get it for your acts in strikes'-as they did say in one decision by one of our courts a few years ago. The railway company went after some of the men; the men hadn't any money, of course, individually. 'Ah,' but they said, 'look at the society; it is a pretty rich society; the funds have been paid in for years. Said the men, 'Yes, but what is that money for? That money is a death fund. It is not a work fund. It is a fund to help us move from one place to another, if we lose a job.' 'Yes,' they said, 'it is a strike fund, too, and you use it for strikes.' 'That is true, but you are not going to take away some of the money that the people up in the north of England have paid in, for something we are doing, are you?' 'Yes, we are,' and the judge said they could and they did.

We have altered that; it is no longer possible now for any action of any kind to be entertained by any court against a trade union as such. You can go against the men for any wrong they do and punish them individually, but you can not touch the union as a whole. Some of my opponentssome of my friends, too-have said about that, 'That amounts to legalizing anarchy.' It is not legalizing anarchy. All associations of men stick by their associates, and if the individuals do any wrong they are just as much liable to be punished by the law, whether they belong to an association or not. Then why go after the association as well as the men? Hit the man but do

away,' and it was done. That was the law of conspiracy. The law now says: 'The law of conspiracy shall not hold against trades unions,' and 'peaceful picketing is legal.'

That is a pretty strong thing to say: peaceful picketing is legal.' But what does it mean? The mere attending by men at a place to give information or to seek information, or to advise a man to or not to abstain from working, is no longer to be held as an offense against the law unless the men do something against the ordinary law. If the men assemble on the street so as to block all the street every man could be arraigned for making a nuisance, blocking the traffic or doing something which tends to make a breach of the peace; but they can not be hauled up any longer for merely going to a man's house and saying, 'There is a strike on down at the works. I wish you would keep away. We are all out and you had better join us.' It is legal to do it, and it is illegal for anybody to put an action before the judge or the court in consequence of so doing.

Now, that is the trades disputes act. That concession, I do not hesitate to say, has done more towards lessening the agitation amongst trades unions than if you had given them money, because they said, 'We do not intend to do any harm to the public. We will take care of that. What we now are glad to feel is that we are recognized as responsible beings, and we can act without having to give our neighbors, or without having to give our fellow-contributors trouble for that which we do.'

There was more discussion over this very short bill than over any other bill that went through the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In the House of Lords the late lord chancellor said it was the most extraordinary piece of legislation that he, in the whole course of a very long career, had ever given his attention to. It legalized tyranny, it disrupted liberty, and it made

for the breach of the peace of the people of the land. A man who would express that strong opinion you would think would act on that opinion, but noble lords in England are constituted in a different way. After he had said this the late lord chancellor told their lordships: 'We do not propose to vote against this bill; it is not expedient to.' Why? Because the noble lords recognized that there was a great mass of people behind this and they had better not offend the people. They said it was wrong and had not the courage to do what they said was right. They said this was infamous, and they were not brave enough to do that which would have made them famous. They let it go because of the trouble that they knew would result against this gilded palace if they set the great vote of all the trades unions of England against them on a bill that had been passed in the House of Commons almost without a division by about four to one. The lords know that the power to govern the land is in the hands of the common people if they exercise their vote. Said they, 'We must not range ourselves on the side of those who oppose these people; although it is wrong we will not vote against it,' and they did not.

"That act has certainly stopped trouble. There has certainly been less trouble between master and men since it passed than there was before it passed, because the men are afraid of getting into trouble themselves. You can arraign the men, but not their societies, and therefore they are careful. Individual responsibility counts, and that is a great factor.'

Asked if the additional expense of compensation for workmen's injuries by employers had caused any noticeable increase in the price of goods, Mr. Marks replied:

"It is a little bit early to tell that yet, but this act first of all was condemned very largely by a number of employers, very largely, indeed. I do not think today, if the employers were canvassed, there would be anything like the condemnation that was originally given to it, because it was not so bad as they feared. I do not think anything has been increased in price because of the extra payment made. One can not tell, because the ordinary fluctuations that occur in the market are greater

in amount than the difference this charge would make to the masters, especially in the case of coal."

At this point a member of the club asked: "What is the course of English law with regard to injunctions against striking or the result of striking?" To illustrate, "an injunction was issued a short time ago against the pressmen's union, enjoining them from paying out strike benefits or from even taking a vote upon the question as to whether they would work eight hours instead of nine hours. Is it possible under English law to have such an injunction as that issued?"

Mr. Marks replied: "No, it is not. You can not get an injunction such as that. You can not bring an action against a union as such; you can only, as I say, go against the individual. I will give you an illustration. There was a large firm of cabinetmakers and general dealers in London, a large store you would call it. Their cabinetmakers were on strike, and a number of the strikers marched up and down outside this great shop with what we call sandwich boards on them, in the back and front, hanging over their necks, and on those boards they had 'Don't buy at Wallace's. The men are on strike.' They went against the union to restrain them, but they could not. They went against the men and they got an injunction against the individuals for doing that which amounted to a nuisance outside the premises, but that was the only way they could get them, for creating a nuisance. They could not get an injunction against the union, but they got an injunction against the men because they got a great crowd around them. As they walked up and down the street the crowd would stop to see what they were doing and the policemen ordered them off, and they said, 'No, we have a perfect right as long as we do not stand in one place, to be here,' and so they walked up and down in front of this establishment, and, as I say, great crowds gathered to see them, and this injunction was secured against them, and after this injunction was passed there were no more sandwich boards. The individuals were responsible there and could be reached no matter whether they belonged to a trades union or not."

T

HE threatened invasion of British Columbia by Hindus and Sikhs is more than a vague menace to the interests of United States citizens along the Pacific coast. These East Indians being British subjects may freely enter the United States. Not only may they do this, but they are already doing it. A great majority of the Hindus in British Columbia are now looking toward the Pacific coast states as their land of promise. Already more than one thousand have settled in Oregon, Washington, and California. They are but the advance guard of the starving thousands and hundreds of thousands of East Indians who will swarm across the Pacific and rival the Chinese invasion unless means are taken to exclude them.

The British government so far is showing the utmost indifference on the subject. Public opinion in British Columbia is, however, very strongly against Hindu immigration. Four or five years experience with the comparatively small number who came over as servants has shown them to be undesirable in every way. They can no more be assimilated racially or made over into American citizens than can the Chinese.

The ravages of the dread bubonic plague in Pacific coast cities gives startling evidence of the Oriental diseases which follow in the train of this kind of immigration. One hundred and twelve deaths from the plague were reported in San Francisco alone in December, and as the plague is spread by rats there is the greatest difficulty in stamping it out once it gets a foothold. No need to describe its horrors here. It is far worse than cholera or yellow fever in its mortality.

With Congress in session at Washington the people of the west are hoping for some action which will adequately protect the Pacific coast states from the influx

of Oriental immigration which continually menaces it.

No portion of the globe outside India, and the continent upon which it lies, has a greater percentage of Hindus. Indeed they have become equally if not more of a pest to Pacific coast people than the Chinese.

Like the sheep who follow the first intruder through the broken fence, the Hindus followed the first invasion, until they are today a strong body, battling against American labor organizations, and little by little placing our western country in the same condition as the one they came from-plague-smitten and famine-stricken.

Sheep usually never break a fence unless present conditions are not suited to their purposes. They are in a field where the very roots of the grass have been consumed to get a livelihood. They break into green pastures, where more promising conditions invite. The same of the Hindu. The western United States and British Columbia are the green fields toward which the ever-hungry hordes of India are eagerly looking. They have found the gap, and are pouring in by the thousands. Will the remaining population of India's 296,000,000, of whom more than 100,000,000 are ever on the verge of starvation, follow the leaders in an overwhelming flood, thus becoming an immigration. menace? This very question was asked by every person of the invaded territory last fall when 2,000 Sikhs and Hindus were landed at Vancouver and Victoria.

It is not for us to be indifferent. It will not do for us to shrug our shoulders and say: "We have troubles of our own. The influx of Hindu laborers is a question for British Columbia to settle." If you are a ranch owner, upon which excellent grasses are grown, and a man on the adjoining ranch sows Russian thistles and tarweed,