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to measures, such as have never been known before. Elsewhere in this issue we have given several pages to a statement of the measures adopted in a number of our cities. Fortunately, the absurd theory that it is none of the business of municipal or other governments to recognize or alleviate exceptional social distress, has very little influence left. It is the plain duty of organized society to use its superior facilities for the benefit of the community at times when individuals are unequal to the situation. The winter of business disaster, when hundreds of thousands of honest men are out of work, is exactly the winter when public employment ought to be extended for the making of all sorts of desirable improvements. This is not dangerous socialism, but rather it is the clearest sort of business sense. Every town and county can at once relieve the unemployed, lessen the burdens and evils of public and private alms-giving, and make an excellent investment for ' itself, by going extensively into the business of improving the roads and streets. Of course, in large areas of country the cold weather and snow prevent new road making at this season. But even in these regions some profitable method can be devised for the employment at low wages of honest men out of work. It is pleasant to note the fact that in New York many men and women are engaged, under direction of the East Side Relief Association, in making clothing for the sufferers from the autumnal coastwise floods in South Carolina. Miss Clara Barton and her fellow-workers of the Red Cross Society are doing noble service for the relief of the frightful suffering that has ensued in consequence of the unprecedented storms that devastated that coast, and holiday offerings should be showered upon the work. It is unfortunate that Congress should have failed to make an appropriation for so exceptional a case as that of these South Carolina sufferers. Dr. Washington Gladden of Columbus has at our request set forth in this number of the REVIEW the sound principles upon which relief in our towns and cities ought to be Lased. He writes from a great fund of practical experience and scientific knowledge.

The strike on the Lehigh railroad was A Triumph of State terminated, fortunately, early in DeConciliation. cember. The officers of the company immediately proclaimed that it was settled without their concession at any points. So far as we can understand, however, the strikers won a substantial victory. It was a deplorable thing that the employees of the railroad should have gone out on strike at a time when so many hundreds of thousands of workmen are involuntarily idle through the paralysis of industry. But it should be understood that such conservative bodies as the Locomotive Engineers, the Locomotive Firemen, and the other railway orders and brotherhoods are not accustomed, through their highest authorities, to sanction and conduct a strike, unless there are good grounds for it. These men do

not enjoy strikes. We are inclined to believe that the moral responsibility for this particular trouble rests with the officers of the Lehigh road. Agreements which had been made with the men months ago, and which ordinary good faith required should be kept, were disregarded by the company; and representative committees abundantly entitled to a hearing were refused an opportunity to present their case. The State Arbitration Boards of New York and New Jersey 'intervened to effect a conciliation, and succeeded in persuading the officers of the road to honor the rules and agreements of last August; to listen hereafter to grievance commiteees, and to take back

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President New Jersey State Board of Mediation and Arbitration.

the strikers as rapidly as possible without prejudice on account of their strike. Just why these officials could not have acted with ordinary courtesy and tact at the outset, and met with frankness a set of employees whose position was a fairly reasonable one,is a question they should be compelled to answer to the stockholders of the road. Moreover, it is a question that a discommoded public has an equally good right to ask. High praise is due to the Chairmen of the two Arbitration Boards for their efficient interposition in behalf of all interests. This case well illustrates the value of conciliation and arbitration as principles. But the law should go further and in some manner, under specified conditions, compel insolent railway corporations to arbitrate labor troubles.

End of the English Coal War.

Thus the good offices of the State, through its official representatives, have ended what threatened to be a very disastrous strike. In this connection it is worth while to give a résumé of the circumstances under which, in like manner, the good offices of the English government brought to a conclusion the recent coal strike. After a civil war of sixteen weeks' duration, peace reigns throughout coal-getting England. The settlement was most welcome, but even more satisfactory was the final method of settlement. The closing stages of what has proved to be one of the greatest industrial struggles of the generation need to be stated with some detail. The first attempt to put a stop to the strife ended in failure. Representatives of miners and mine-owners met only to part without achieving agreement. The masters proposed the formation of a Board of Conciliation to decide the rate of wages, the immediate resumption of work by the men at a reduction of fifteen per cent., and the payment of this fifteen per cent. into a bank, pending the decision of the Board, to be made over to the men or to the masters as the Board should decide. The miners agreed to the formation of a Conciliation Board, and to its fixing the wages to be paid after April 1 next, but insisted that in the interim work should be resumed at the old rate of wages, and that the Board should be precluded from making a greater reduction than that of ten per cent. Thus the dispute had narrowed. The negotiable limits were now, on the one side, the coal-owners' fifteen per cent. forthwith, and on the other, the miners' ten per cent. from April 1. But neither party would yield the intervening five months and five per cent. The deadlock remained as grim as ever. Winter was coming on. The area of dominant hunger and cold spread far beyond the mining dis

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MR. ARTHUR MARSHALL CHAMBERS. Chairman of the English Coal-owners' Federation.

HON. G. ROBERTSON, JR., Chairman New York State Board of Mediation and Arbitration.

tricts. The enormous rise in the price of coal meant misery to the poor everywhere, and the scarcity of fuel involved general dislocation of national industry. For nine days the outlook was very black.

The "Good Offices' of

the Government.

Then, "at last, though late," government awoke to a sense of its functions. The primary duty of government is, after all, not to win partisan triumphs over fellowcitizens, but to maintain civil peace and to protect the nation as a whole from being sacrificed to private cupidity or stupidity. If two men try to settle their quarrel by the help of bludgeons, the State intervenes at once; but a conflict directly involving hundreds of thousands of citizens, and waged with the deadly weapons of starvation and resolute inaction, constitutes a much more serious breach of social order. Long before a privateer had inflicted on the national commerce an infinitesimal proportion of the damage which has resulted to it from this Coal War, the government cruisers would have been on her track. But a third of a year of intense national suffering must elapse before either government or people are ready to allow the State to interpose as industrial peacemaker. However, 66 better late than never." Mr. Gladstone's letter caught the psychological if not the logical moment. His wisely-worded proffer of Lord Rosebery's good offices, not as umpire or arbitrator, but simply as friendly host and presiding mediator, evoked general and enthusiastic approval. The Miners' Federation and the Federated Coal-owners

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MR. J. R. SOVEREIGN.
New Master-Workman. Knights of Labor

The agreement arrived at is marked by The Rosebery mutual concession. The miners won the Settlement. immediate and manifest victory of resuming work at the old rate of wages, pending the decision of the Board of Conciliation. But the men conceded that the Board's decision should take effect from February 1, and not, as they had urged, from. April 1. The masters, that is, yielded two-and-ahalf months, the men only two months, of the period in dispute. The balance of victory on the side of the men thus amounts, when measured in time, to barely half a month. On the other hand, the men gave up what had been declared to be the very backbone of their contention, the prescribing to the Board of a minimum wage. There is not a word about the minimum wage in the Rosebery settlement. Its terms leave the Board free to settle the miners' wage without predetermined limit, either upward or downward. No doubt the stand which the miners have made for what they take to be "the living wage' will have its moral influence on the deliberations of the Board; but "the living wage" has found no express acknowledgment in the terms of the treaty.

Arbitration Victorious at Last.

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The result is a twofold triumph. It is a triumph of the principle of arbitration. The fourteen representatives from each side in selecting a neutral chairman virtually appoint an arbitrator. It is a triumph of the further principle that the promotion of industrial peace is one of the

duties of the State. The possible nomination of chairman by the Speaker is a picturesque reminder of the fact that the State is not less interested in maintaining order amid the economic than among the political disputes of the nation. The precedent is certain to be largely followed. Already trade organizations have begun to ask for its systematic adoption by the Labor department. Some day, the Coal War of 1893 will seem as much a piece of civil barbarism as the Wars of the Roses. How largely popular sympathy has gone with the miners may be inferred from the amounts which have been subscribed for their relief. The Daily Chronicle alone has won from its readers more than eighteen thousand pounds.

The month has been marked, in "lab American Labor circles," by the annual meetings of the Organizations. Knights of Labor and of the American Federation of Labor. The Knights stand for the principle of labor organization regardless of trade lines, and include unskilled workmen. They profess to stand for the general interests of the wage-earning classes, as against unequal legislation or harmful aggression on the part of capitalistic monopolies or combinations. Mr. Terence V. Powderly, so long the able and conscientious leader of the Knights, was deposed from the position of "Master Workman" at this meeting, and his place was filled by the election of Mr. J. R. Sovereign, of Iowa, upon whose abilities and policies it will be wise to defer judgment for a time. Mr. Sovereign's speeches are more inflamma

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tory than were Mr. Powderly's; but practical responsibility may sober him into something like conservatism. The Federation of Labor is, as its name implies, a combination of trades unions for general objects. It has been a strong and successful organization under the presidency of Mr. Samuel Gompers, gaining in membership and prosperity of late years, while the Knights have declined. The Chicago meeting of the Federation did less then was anticipated towards formulating a practical policy for the relief of the umemployed.

The news from Hawaii has confirmed The Status of the Hawaiian all our previous impressions as to the firm Question. position of the Provisional Government. President Cleveland and Mr. Gresham could hardly have had a correct understanding of the situation; or they would not have attempted a task so hopelessly Quixotic as the restoration of the discredited Liliuokalini. History does not record any revolution for

From a photograph by C. M. Bell, Washington, D. C.

SENATOR HOAR, OF MASSACHUSETTS, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

the setting aside of an unacceptable ruler that was more strongly supported by the responsible and dominating elements of the community than this Hawaiian revolution. When the Executive department of our government deliberately enters upon a secret policy in a matter that properly concerns Congress and the whole country, it is to be assumed that criti cism is expected. Both Houses of Congress called upon the President for complete papers, and Senator Hoar introduced a new phase of the discussion early

in December by asking the Senate to pass a resolution calling upon the President to explain Mr. Blount's mission. It will be remembered that Mr. Blount was sent to Hawaii to assume functions not recognized by our laws, and that his appointment was never submitted to the Senate for confirmation. There can be little doubt that the Administration committed a serious, though not an intentional error in taking this course, an error afterwards practically acknowledged and partially rectified by making Mr. Blount minister to Hawaii. But this error was not to be compared with that of the deliberate attempt to overthrow the existing Hawaiian government and to establish a monarchy in the islands, placing the ex- Queen upon a throne to be bolstered up by the American republic, against the protests of the American colony, which in fact constitutes the weighty and significant element in the ownership and civilized life of Hawaii. It is true that Mr. Cleveland, Mr. Gresham and Mr. Blount declare the revolution to have been unduly aided by our minister, Mr. Stevens. But even if this were a fact, and the preponderance of credible testimony is quite against such a theory,-it is difficult to follow the logic which led our Administration to think that it must virtually make war against the existing government. This Administration, while professing its abhorrence of what it deemed Minister Stevens' interference in the internal affairs of Hawaii, had itself proceeded to interfere on its own account, and to an extent quite unheard of before. Mr. Blount and Minister Willis had assumed something like autocratic power in the Islands; and the Administration had been conducting inquiries into their affairs in a manner quite incompatible with its announced theory of our proper relations with a foreign country.

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Mistakes of the Administration.

So far as the United States are now concerned, Hawaii has a firm government under President Dole and his associates. That government negotiated a treaty of annexation with our government under President Harrison. The treaty was pending in the Senate when Mr. Cleveland came into office. He withdrew it from the Senate before it had been acted upon, and he informed the Hawaiian government that annexation was rejected by the United States. This should have ended the Hawaiian question, so far as Mr. Cleveland was concerned. His subsequent disposition to concern himself with the internal affairs of Hawaii appears irrelevant. His rejection of the overtures for annexation leaves the Hawaiian government perfectly free,--unless we use or threaten force to restrain that freedom,-to enter into especial relations with the British or any other government. The spirit shown by the Hawaiian authorities is wholly commendable. They have announced their purpose to resist hostile attempts to dispossess them. Mr. Thurston, who has so ably represented the Hawaiian government at Washington, returned to Honolulu in the middle of December to aid and advise President Dole. In all candor let us say that the withdrawal

of the annexation treaty was a serious enough mistake, and that the proposed subsequent overthrow of President Dole and restoration of Liliuokalani, in violation of every principle of international law, would, if consummated, have been a dark blot upon our history. Nobody for a moment doubts the absolute rectitude of Mr. Cleveland's intentions in all this mismanaged business. But he has clearly suffered from the misfortune of bad counsel. Mr. Willis, of course, found it practically impossible, when he reached Honolulu, to carry out the policy of overthrow and restoration that had been prepared for him. The Queen herself was not ready to agree to the policy except with guarantees that the United States would permanently interfere to prevent the Hawaiians from deposing her again and governing themselves as they might prefer. The impossibility of the programme originally arranged for Mr. Willis of course increased with every day of delay after its main features became known; so that few things in the realm of the world's politics are now so improbable as that Liliuokalani will ever again sit upon a throne. Meanwhile, Mr. Carter and other Hawaiians have replied to Mr. Blount's report in a fashion that leaves it sadly discredited. Mr. Cleveland's long message to Congress on December 18, transmitting the papers and correspondence that had been asked for, did not in any way change the conception of the situation that had already been formed in the public mind.

Mr. Cleveland has been in the White Our Foreign Service and the House ten months, and the quadrennial Spoils System. making of an almost entire new Ameri. can diplomatic and consular service is practically completed. A vast amount of seasoned and valuable timber has been deliberately discarded, in order to make place for a like amount of new material. It should be distinctly understood that in very few cases are men dismissed from our foreign service for the sake of improving the service. Almost invariably they are dismissed because the appointing authorities wish to give the posts away to other men, not in order to promote public interests, but to serve private and personal interests. The subject in all its bearings has had a peculiarly striking illustration in the case of the appointment of Mr. James J. Van Alen as minister to Italy. It is conceded by every one that Mr. Van Alen's selection by Mr. Cleveland grew primarily out of his having contributed a large sum of money-from $30,000 to $50,000-to the campaign fund used in Mr. Cleveland's election. It is on the other hand conceded quite generally that Mr. Cleveland did not appoint Mr. Van Alen until after he had satisfied himself that this gentleman could fill the post respectably. The appointment was severely criticised in the Senate, and was only confirmed after much delay. The press of the country had also very widely condemned it. To the surprise of the country, Mr. Van Alen declined the place after he had been confirmed, holding that he could not take it under such a storm of criticism. He

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Mr. Henry White's Case as an Instance.

MR. HENRY WHITE.

There is in fact some difference between giving offices to men widely known because they are occupied with public affairs, and who aid their party's cause with voice and pen, and parceling them out to the private rich men who give money to campaign funds. Every one can feel the difference, no matter what logic is used to obscure so real a distinction. But in the light of the soundest principles, even such a difference is hardly worth noticing. The offices do not exist to reward party or personal services of any kind. They belong to the nation, and ought to be filled solely upon the simple, plain principle of promoting the nation's welfare. With all respect to Mr. Van Alen, it is inconceivable that he was the one available person best qualified to represent the United States at Rome. If it was necessary for any reason to relegate to private life the minister who was serving us at Rome when Mr. Cleveland came into power, it does not follow that trained men should be left out

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