structor of practical experience explains such duties as invoicing, protection of revenues, quarantine matters, and settlement of estates of Americans traveling abroad, etc. Lectures are to be given by prominent officials informing the appointees on such general matters as food inspection laws, trade conditions, registration, expatriation and citizenship of Americans in foreign countries, as well as all details of immigration, and the possibilities and desirabilities of trade extension.

Important Washington Conferences.

An important recent gathering at Washington was the conference of repre

sentatives of commercial organizations called by Secretary Straus some time ago. After listening to an address by Secretary Root, who dwelt upon the importance of perfecting organization among American business men if they are to push their wares in the world's markets, the conference organized by the election of Mr. Gustav H. Schwab, of New York, as chairman. President Roosevelt welcomed the members at the White House with a brief address, in which he commended as necessary to secure the best results such co-operation between the Government and private bodies as seemed to be foreshadowed by the conference. Another meeting of wide interest was the National Rivers and Harbors Congress, which also convened at the national capital in December, and was addressed by Secretary Root, Ambassador Jusserand, Chairman Knapp of the Interstate Commerce Commission, several governors of States, and other men of note and consequence. The point was made by several of the speakers that the railroads are at present unequal to the task of carrying the commerce of the United States. Such men as President Hill, of the Great Northern, and President Finley, of the Southern Railway, welcomed the improvement of the waterways as affording a needed relief to the railways.

Statistical Progress of the United States, 1800-1907.

recently issued a report entitled 66 Statistical Record of the Progress of the United States, 18001907." As indicated by the title, this report consists exclusively of columns of figures recording, for the United States as a whole, the progress of its industries and commerce, the increase in its financial resources, and other facts of financial interest covering more than a century. So far as possible these statistics are so presented as to be comparable by years. While statistics relating to one feature or another of our country's industrial and commercial progress during extended periods of time have been available in individual reports, there has long been a demand for a single compilation of these statistics which should place conveniently at hand the vital facts regarding our Nation's growth along industrial and commercial lines. The "Statistical Record" serves this purpose, being in fact a comprehensive yet inelaborate compendium of that wealth of statistical material which the several departments of our National Government have been collecting during the past one hundred years and more.

Annual Conference of the Na

At the annual conference of the National Civic Federational Civic tion, held in New York last Federation. December, there were present some 780 guests. Notable addresses were made at the dinner on December 16 by John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers of America, Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, August Belmont, George W. Perkins, of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., Major General Frederick D. Grant, U. S. Army, and Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University.

President Eliot said that he represented the consumer, who felt the full

effects of the industrial warfare the Civic Federation was organized to prevent. He represented that public which invariably paid all the cost of industrial warfare. He had been studying what he thought was the best piece of legislation ever adopted to promote industrial peace, the Canadian law of March 22, 1907. Under this law no strike is lawful, no lockout is lawful until there has been an impartial public investigation. There was not a particle of arbitration provided for in this law, and this was one of its best points.

Samuel Gompers took exception to President Eliot's classification of union labor as a commercial organization. He thought that the term, so far as labor was concerned, was misapplied. President Gompers in his speech declared that the workingman knew that the financial situation was not any fault of his. Speaking of the threatened decrease in wages for labor, he said:

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Twenty times in the last 12 hours, since I have been in New York, men have come to me and whispered in my ear and told me that the workingmen must come down in their wages, but let the employers remember that if they attempt to force down wages they will not have the easy sailing they did a year ago."

George W. Perkins, of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., described why the United States Steel Corporation decided on and put into effect profit sharing with its employees. After citing the results of the plan he said: "In these results is there not a form of socialism of the highest, best, and most ideal sort a socialism that makes real partners of employer and employee and yet preserves the right of private property, retaining the capitalist's incentive to enterprise while giving the worker a new inspiration for effort - humanizing a vast organization, promoting good will and industrial peace?

"One difficult problem was how to arrive at some method of compensating

the officers of the subsidiary companies for successful management and at the same time compensate the actual workers in the plants. Many profit-sharing plans were studied. Nearly all of them, however, were found to be weak, unfair, or inadequate to the size of our undertaking. In December, 1902, the board of directors finally authorized the announcement of the plan which has commonly come to be known as the steel corporation's profit-sharing plan. It was divided into two parts, one intended to interest the officers, managers, superintendents and all others in a position of responsibility and control; the other an offer to the entire organization to purchase the company's preferred stock. In 1903, something over $1,250,000 was distributed; in 1904, the same amount; in 1905, $1,800,000; and in 1906, $3,300,000."

John Mitchell, the labor leader and one of the prominent members of the federation, said: "So far as I have been able to control the affairs of my organization, it has been toward the cause of peace. Happy would be the day if strikes, lockouts, and attendant evils were no more. I am not sure that the time will come in our lives. But is it not better that we sit down and reason it out and see if reason cannot take the place of force? I do not know if the people of New York realized that two years ago they might have had to again undergo the terrible times of the coal strike of 1902. But that is true. That would have happened had not men got together and talked operators and workers, as men to men. I found the operators, when I came to meet them, very different men than I had imagined from the newspapers, or from what they said at the White House. For I had believed that the representatives of capital were men without any sympathy, any regard for those whom they employed. That was before I met them. I have learned differently since. And, on the other hand, I know employers

who regarded labor leaders a few years ago as if they were demagogues who went about the country inducing men to strike. I know the leading laboring men, and I know they are as true in purpose and as patriotic as any of the men in the country."

Andrew Mills, president of the Dry Dock Savings Bank, in an explanation of the operation of the savings bank, said that depositors in the savings banks of New York had enough money to discharge the entire national debt and have $84,000,000 left over. He said that as a matter of fact the tenement-house dwellers of the crowded East Side, who formed a large proportion of the depositors in his bank, were now lending money to millionaires to mortgage their homes. The bank president said his institution paid four per cent interest. The profit to the bank alone was only about one-fourth of one per cent, just enough to cover running expenses.

In a general way the labor leaders opposed, while others supported, the proposition of compulsory arbitration. An exception was S. L. Landers of the United Garment Workers of Canada, who said the Canadian law practically

prohibiting strikes and lockouts was the best measure ever enacted in the interests of capital and labor. When Mr. Gompers asked what would prevent a firm closing down on the pretext of necessity, Mr. Landers replied: "A tree must be planted before it can be pruned and watered."

Hugh H. Lusk, former member of the New Zealand Parliament, told how New Zealand had prospered under compulsory arbitration, but admitted to Mr. Gompers that the plan might be less successful under the conditions existing in the United States. "No matter what may be done in any other country," said Mr. Gompers, "we will prevent a law that imposes practical confiscation on the one hand and imprisonment as a penalty on the other."

John Mitchell, president of the Mine Workers' Union, said that in the cases of the recent mining strike in Canada, the conciliation act worked as did most conciliatory measures. When the mine owners and workers failed to get together the men struck. A trade agreement was advocated by several as more acceptable to organized labor than compulsory arbitration.

The sixth Report of the Board of Trade, United Kingdom, on their proceedings under the Conciliation (Trade Disputes) Act, 1896, deals with two years, viz., from July 1, 1905, to June 30, 1907.

Fifty-one cases were dealt with in the two years covered by the Report. No fewer than 23 cases occurred in the last six months of the period (January to June, 1907). The number of cases in which a stoppage of work occurred was 16. The total number of cases dealt with under the Conciliation Act between August, 1896, when it came into force, and June 30, 1907, is 232, and of these, 168 cases (or 72 per cent of the cases dealt with) were settled under the act.

The total number of cases of joint application during the two years under review was 46, or 90 per cent of all the cases dealt with. In the earlier years of the operation of the act applications for the intervention of the Board of Trade came mainly from one side only (generally the workpeople). The great majority of the applications in the last six or seven years have been joint applications, either from the parties themselves or from organizations directly representing them.

Of the 51 cases dealt with in the two years under review, 14 arose in the building trades; 13 in the boot and shoe trade; seven in the metal, engineering, and shipbuilding trades; seven in the printing and allied trades; four in mining and quarrying; and six in other trades.

Among the cases settled during the period covered by the Report two are of special importance, the Nottingham lace trade dispute and the Music Hall dispute, both of which were settled by Mr. G. R. Askwith after prolonged negotiations with the parties. In the former dispute Mr. Askwith found that the lace trade in Nottingham had a system of "cards or price lists framed when lace-making machines were much less complicated than those of modern construction, and the extras charged when additional "bars" were used seriously affected the manufacture of many kinds of lace in the city of Nottingham itself, where these "cards" were in

use. These restrictions, however, were not in force in the smaller towns and villages surrounding Nottingham, to which manufacturers were accordingly migrating in large numbers. Mr. Askwith entirely abolished the old "cards," which were 21 in number, and substituted 15 other "cards," simpler in construction and better adapted to modern conditions.

The Music Hall dispute was also of great importance, as it affected the future terms of engagement of all music hall artistes throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and the wages, hours, and conditions of service of all musicians, stage hands, carpenters, etc., employed at music halls in London.

Of the 13 cases in the boot and shoe industry, four had reference to applications made by the workpeople for a minimum wage to be fixed, or for the raising of a minimum already in existence. The awards made fix a minimum wage for lasters and finishers in London, for clickers and pressmen at Kettering, and for all classes of adult male boot and shoe operatives at Anstey and at Stafford.

No addition has been made, during the period covered by this Report, to the number of Conciliation Boards registered under the act. Both the registered and the unregistered boards, however, with few exceptions, furnish the department with annual returns of their operations, and a summary of these returns is published in the annual Report on Strikes and Lockouts, and on Conciliation and Arbitration Boards. The total number of such boards at present known to be in existence is 209.

The rules of Conciliation Boards, and the " working rules" or other agreements observed by the employers and workpeople in the several trades, frequently contain a clause providing that, in the event of the Conciliation Board (or other conciliatory agency) failing to effect a settlement, application shall be made to the Board of Trade for the appointment of an arbitrator, umpire, or conciliator. Such clauses, so far as known to the department, now exist in 60 agreements.