mittee, whereas the first purpose is to endeavor to bring about a conference between employers and employees before any acute state of feeling shall occur relative to their diverse interests. If a rupture occurs, the committee endeavors to bring about a conference so that arbitration may be resorted to if both parties to the controversy shall so request.

As a rule, men do not care to refer matters in which they are particularly and financially interested to what are usually termed disinterested parties. They prefer to meet with those whose interests may be opposite to theirs, and, each conceding something in a conciliatory spirit, endeavor to come to an adjustment and agreement.

Unorganized workmen have a notion that they are absolutely impotent, that the employers are omnipotent, almighty. This is typified in the thought or expression, What can labor do against capital? Likewise the employers of unorganized workmen usually regard themselves as "monarchs of all they survey," and brook no interference. If any workman has the temerity to question the justice or sense of fairness of the employer or the wages paid, he is dismissed and a strike frequently results.

No strikes are conducted more bitterly than strikes of previously unorganized workmen. As soon as such men become desperate enough to strike, they are transformed; they no longer believe the employer all powerful, but attribute to themselves that function and faculty; the touching of shoulders brings a new found power to their minds, of which they never dreamed before, and they look upon their employers against whom they went on strike as absolutely at their mercy.

The employers, in these cases, usually regard the matter of request to be heard upon the question of wages, hours or other conditions of employment, as dictation by their workmen; but whether the strike is won or lost, if the workmen but maintain their organization, the initial step has been taken for a joint bargain and a conciliatory policy in the future. Both parties have learned a severe but a profitable lesson, that neither party is impotent, and neither all powerful. The organized labor movement in our day is an assertion

of the principle that there is no hope that the workers can protect their interests or promote their welfare unless they organize; unless they advocate conciliation to adjust whatever controversies may arise between themselves and their employers upon any disputed points upon which they cannot agree. There are some who advocate compulsory arbitration. I concur with Senator Hanna, who did not believe in compulsory arbitration. Indeed, voluntary arbitration cannot be successfully carried out unless both parties are equally strong and powerful or nearly so. This is true between nations as well as between individuals. Russia never arbitrated the question of the nationality of Poland. England did not arbitrate the question with Afghanistan, but simply bombarded her. England in her dispute with Venezuela proposed to bombard her, and only when the United States said, "Hold on, this is of very serious consequence to us, did England consent to arbitrate. There has never yet been in the history of the world successful arbitration between those who were powerful and those who were absolutely at their mercy. There has never yet been arbitration between the man who lay prone upon his back and the man who had a heel upon his throat and a saber at his breast. Arbitration is possible, but only when capital and labor are well organized. Labor is beginning to organize, and when labor shall be better organized than it is to-day we shall have fewer disputes than we have now.

Of the agreements made between employers and employed, two thirds, if not more, of the violations, of the failures to abide by the awards of arbitrators, are on the part of employers. But if it were not so, if the awards were broken by either one or the other side or by both sides in equal proportion, it would be better, it would make for human progress and economic advantage, to have an award violated than to have the award forced by government upon either one side or the other. The employer if he choose could close his business, and that would mean his enforced idleness. On the other hand, if the state entered and forced workmen to accept an award and to work under conditions which were onerous to him or to them, you can imagine the result. Men

work with a will when they work of their own volition, then they work to the greatest advantage of all. On the other hand, if men were compelled to work by order of the state, with the representatives of the state entering with whip in hand or a commitment to the jail, it would create a nation of sullen, unwilling and resentful workers; a condition that we do not wish to encourage; a condition which would be most hurtful to our industrial and commercial greatness and success. It is strange how some men desire law to govern all other men in all their actions and doings in life. The organized labor movement endeavors to give opportunities to the workers so that their habits and customs shall change by reason of new and better conditions.

We have our combinations of capital, our organizations and federations of labor. These are now working on parallel lines and have evolved the national civic federation. Through the efforts of men noted for their ability, for their straightforwardness, noted for the interest they take in public affairs, an effort is being made to bring about the greatest possible success industrially and commercially for our country with the least possible friction.

One of the greatest causes of the disturbance of industry, the severance of friendly relations between employer and employees, is the fact that the employers assume to themselves the absolute right to dictate and direct the terms under which workers shall toil, the wages, hours and other conditions of employment, without permitting the voice of the workmen to be raised in their own behalf. The workers insist upon the right of being heard; not heard alone at mass meeting, but heard by counsel, heard by their committees, heard through their business agent, or heard, if you please, through the much abused walking delegate. They insist upon the right to be heard by counsel; the constitution of our country declares that the people of our country may be heard through counsel. It is a saying in law, and I repeat it, though not a lawyer, that he who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. The organized workmen have long realized this truism and have preferred to be heard by counsel, and we say that the political and civil right guaranteed to us by

the constitutions of our country and our states ought to be extended; the principle of it ought to be extended to protect and advance our industrial rights.

One of the representatives of the Illinois board of arbitration recently said to me that there were so many cases of employers who refused to recognize the committees of the organizations of their employees that the board was in doubt whether it ought to name each individual employer or simply group such employers together and give their number in round figures. No man in this world is absolutely right and no man absolutely wrong. If this be so, men ought, as organized labor has for half a century demanded, and as the national civic federation has emphasized, to meet in conference and be helpful in allowing common sense and fair dealing and justice and equity and the needs of the people to determine what shall be the conditions under which industry and commerce shall continue to advance until we shall be in truth producers for the whole world.

The movement for which we stand tends to foster education, not only among the workmen, but among the educated; for all those possessing class ignorance and prejudice regarding industrial matters, the educated man who takes his cue regarding the labor question from those who are always opposed to the labor movement, and who never takes the trouble to find out the laborer's side of the labor question, is in the most deplorable condition.

IS COMPULSORY ARBITRATION PRACTICABLE?

BY SETH LOW.

[Seth Low, former mayor of New York; born in Brooklyn, Jan. 18, 1850; graduated from Columbia, 1870; elected on the independent ticket as mayor of Brooklyn, 1881-85; defeated as candidate for mayor of greater New York, 1897; president Columbia university, 1890-1901; mayor of New York, 1902-03.]

When compulsory arbitration is spoken of in the interest of the community, it is apt to be challenged by both sides. The capitalist says: "Compulsory arbitration is unfair, because labor is not responsible;" and labor says: "Men are not slaves: they cannot be compelled to work against their will."

I venture to submit, however, that at one point capital and labor stand in precisely the same position before the law; and that, at this point, if it is desirable, compulsory arbitration may be insisted upon, and may be made practicable. Without the privileges given by statute, neither capital nor labor, as illustrated in corporations and trade unions, can lawfully combine. In the eye of the common law, such combinations as a corporation and a labor union are both conspiracies. In other words, in order to combine at all, in such forms, both capital and labor have to ask the same privilege at the hands of the state.

The state can certainly say if it will: Yes, you may combine, but only upon the condition that all disputes between you shall be arbitrated. And the state can as certainly secure the acceptance by both parties of the award of an arbitration, by providing that a failure to arbitrate, or to abide by the award of the arbitration, shall work a forfeiture of the privilege of combining. In the case of a corporation, it would, in that event, lose its charter; and in the case of a trade union, which is an association of individuals, each individual would become amenable to the criminal law against conspiracy. Such a provision would probably be equally effective as to both labor and capital; and it would be equally fair to both, because it would apply to both equally for the same cause; that is to say, because of a failure to observe the conditions