the ones that they wanted to get. Organized labor made good, regardless of any statements to the contrary, and I might add in passing that we did not cancel their insurance when they went to war, like the old line companies did. We kept their insurance up and paid their beneficiaries but the old line companies did not. Now the war is over, these people who stayed home and made money are going to hold it.

You have heard about food profiteering all at once. Why? Because Big Business pushed the button and 1,700 dailies and 37,000 weeklies started fighting labor, and today labor cannot get a square deal in the press of America. We couldn't even get anything about the Plumb plan any more. We had to commence publishing our own paper, and when a man stands up whose loyalty and Americanism cannot be questioned and talks as the representative of over 7,000,000 voters he must have something that will have to be listened to. It cannot be either laughed or jeered out of existence. They say: 'It is revolutionary. It will never work." Why, some people said the same thing about the Constitution of the United States. They said: "The Constitution will never work. There is no precedent for it", but it has worked. And tho there is no precedent whatever for the Plumb plan, we are satisfied it will work.

Some one asked me to say what is going to be the future of the Plumb plan, in case these bills become a law. I don't know but what it would be probably the best thing that ever happened so far as the future of the Plumb plan is concerned, if these bills were to become law, bcause you would become so sick of the situation you would find confronting you with your railroads, that you would be glad to welcome the Plumb plan as a solution of the problems. If it is true, as some speakers have said, that these Îines of transportation must be kept open, if it is true that they are the arteries through which alone the commerce of the nation flows, then it is also true, it is a self-evident truth, that they should be operated in the interests of the whole nation instead of being exploited in the interests of a few small groups of capitalists. (Applause.)

MR. PLUMB: I want to add one thought to what Mr. Stone has expressed in criticising the Esch bill. It seems useless, but it may help some. When they selected this arbitration board they required the men representing labor to no longer belong to their organizations, and to have no ties with the organizations which they represented, but when they selected the officials from the railways they said, "They may maintain their connection with the railways; they may keep their securities and preserve their personal and financial interests." That is equality in the eyes of those men.

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THE AMERICAN RAILWAY PROBLEM

AND ITS SOLUTION

Address by Hon. Carl S. Vrooman

Formerly Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and
Author of "American Railway Problems"

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: I was introduced by a speaker in my home town, Bloomington, Illinois, as a scholar and a farmer. I replied that I was somewhat embarrassed by this double appellation because of the fact that it was the farmers in general who regarded me as a scholar, and the scholars were almost unanimous in regarding me as a farmer. I was at one time as has been said by the chairman, connected with our government, and I was very glad to do what I could to carry on the work of the government both in peace and in time of war, but when the armistice was signed I was offered a better position and I resigned from the government position and took my old job as a farmer, which I now hold, although not with as much credit as I would like. I speak to you as a farmer.

Josh Billings once said that you can never have an honest horse race until you have got an honest human race. That I will take as my text this evening. I once spent four years studying the railroad problem-studying the government regulation and ownership, and all the various methods in railway management in European countries. It was a great privilege to study these problems at first hand and to see for myself the real facts concerning the railway problem. I did not expect to get all the facts, but I got all the facts I could and digested all I could, and I have discovered some things which are not entirely known to the rank and file of our people. However there are mooted points about which even experts differ, and certain mooted points about which even advocates of public ownership differ. Thank God for that. I am glad that the great public ownership problem is not bounded by the conception of any one man or any one problem or any one set of facts. The great public ownership movement, of which this magnificent conference is but one slight evidence, is bigger than any of us know.

Plumb Plan Criticised

Last night we had a very interesting speech from Mr. Plumb. It was the first time I have heard him speak about his plan, and I was very deeply interested in all that he had to say. I had read a great deal about it, but I was anxious to hear him and was very

deeply impressed with his presentation of his plan. It explained to me a number of things which up to that time I had not entirely understood.

I had wondered a good deal about one thing in particular. I had known Mr. Plumb personally, and I did not quite understand how he had arrived at one part of his program-a part from which I have always dissented and still do dissent, the part in which he assigns one-third control of the railways to the railway officials, another one-third to the so-called employees, and only one-third to the public. He said when he was discussing the principles upon which he based his program-he explained, or at least I got it that way-why he has made what I regard this error in his plan, and I regard it as an error which can be removed without in any way injuring his plan. On the contrary, an error which can be removed to the great advantage of the plan. He said last night, as you will remember, those of you who were here, that our railway administrations involved three factors, the public, capital and labor, and he said furthermore that these three are one in importance. He might as well have said "Here is one dollar and here are two quarters and they are of equal value." The public includes both the capital class and the laborers, but it includes vastly more than that; it includes all the children and all the old people and all the women who are neither capitalists nor laborers. More than that, it includes all the social inheritance which we have had handed down to us from our ancestors. It includes all the great heritage we hope to hand on to future generations. The public is more than any of its parts, (Applause) and it is upon that ground that I must dissent and register a reservation-I believe that is the word nowdays.

It was interesting to read in the evening paper that the Public Ownership League had decided to co-operate with the Plumb plan managers with reservations. This subject involves to my notion something decidedly more important than the railway problem; it goes right down, as I see it, to the very roots of society, and if we can solve this problem aright, and if we can establish this principle correctly, I think many of the grave problems of civilization today will prove easy of solution.

Any Kind of Autocracy Dangerous

This is what I have in mind: There is today a dangerous tendency all over the world, in every country that I know of in the world, and in every place that I know of in every country in the world, a tendency to get by might what they cannot hope to get by right. That is the most dangerous tendency in the world. Why? It is nothing more or less than kaiserism, pan-Germanism and bolshevism.

As I understand bolshevism it is not democracy; it is autocracy. Some prefer to have an autocracy of the poor instead of the rich; that is a debatable question. As for me, I will have neither (applause) and when any class or coterie, be they millionaires or paupers, be they citizens or soldiers, be they priests or what not, or farmers even, when they decide that they know more than the rest of the community, that they have more of intelligence and more of morality, and they admit it themselves, than all the rest of the community, and that they intend to do something for the community which the community cannot do for themselves, they have tried to establish a tyranny. Well, it is a benevolent tyranny. That is the story of tyranny as far back as history goes. There never was a tyranny founded in the world that the proponents did not convince themselves was a beneficial tyranny. I am ready to take my place with the democracies of the world; they are not perfect-God knows they are not perfect. You will never have a perfect democracy until you have a perfect human race. Josh Billings is right. Democracy has its faults, but it has fewer faults than any autocracy the world ever saw.

us

Today as you look around the world what nations are the best governed? There is a little too much of a tendency often times to lay stress or emphasis on negative conditions, a little too much tendency to pick out the ugly or pathological. It is not good technology. The new technology teaches us, if it teaches anything, that the way to make the world better is to see a clear vision of things as they should be, and of things as they potentially are, things as they are in the mind of God and as they will be later among the sons of men; and so tonight let us lift our minds free of the mis-shapen and the ugly and distorted. Thank God it is a minority of what there is in this world. Thank God it is the mionrity.

Let Us Be Positive and Constructive

Let us play the great symphony of public ownership. Let us deal with something constructive and positive. The ideas that we stand behind, or the ideas that dominate us and for which we stand; those ideas I believe; some day are destined to rule the minds of men and re-organize and regenerate our institutions. Keep our minds on that; work to that great end and with that end and with that great purpose.

Defends Administration

I have heard a number of things here that have pained me quite seriously. I never heard anything yet that pained me very seriously, because I am able to put it out of my mind, and think of something more in line with what we think is true. I have heard

some things that amaze me, for instance several speakers criticised our government-and I know plenty of places where it could be criticised. I am very familiar with our government at Washington. I know its weak spots possibly as well as anybody here, but the spots on the sun are not the things to think about. The thing to think about chiefly in connection with the sun is its waves of light and heat and life that it throws off in endless currents for the benefit of the world; but when you look at the work of the present administration, it is a curious type of men that will fasten its eyes upon the things that have not been done to the exclusion of the extra-ordinary and unparalled program of achievements that it has to its credit. (Applause.)

I was talking a couple years ago to a leading "Bull Mooser" of this city and he said to me "I want to tell you something, I think it is only fair to do it, I am a business man, always have been a business man; a few weeks ago I said 'Here is the Wilson administration, look at it as you would look at the balance sheet of a business institution; size it up, analyze it, sum it up, see what you think of it as a business proposition." " He said "I went after it with a microscope. I went at it thoroughly." "Now," he said, "you will hardly understand my feelings, because I was brought up a Republican from my young manhood; I have always been a Republican; I have looked upon the Democrats as a set of Apaches, and as being entirely untrustworthy, and it never once occurred to me that the Democratic party had enough intelligence and character to carry on a constructive program, to really carry on the work of this nation." "So," he said, "you may imagine my amazement, if not my consternation, when I discovered that in less than four years (this was some time ago before the war,) in less than four years this administration had written on our statute books more beneficial legislation that I believed in as a Republican and have believed in as a Bull Mooser than in any three administrations in the history of our country."

Now that is God's truth. If there is anybody that doubts it I am willing to take them up and give them a seriatim list. I can prove the accuracy of the statement. By that I do not mean to say that the administration has not done some things they should not have done. It has been human, but it has also been magnificently human, and our movement does not depend on depreciating any other movement that is helpful. We do not need to build ourselves up by slandering other people who have done their best, but the best that has yet been done on our continent by any government elected by the people of this country.

Public Railways More Efficient

Now with regard to the railroad problem, my researches taught