We

work, we are not only cheating ourselves, but our men. are defrauding them. Let us work, not merely for dividends, or profits, but to make it possible for industry to pay a better wage to its rank and file workers. Perhaps this cannot be done to-morrow. Wages may even have to drop, but let us do all we can to avoid that contingency. If, as a last resort, we cannot help it—well, our men will say: "They have done their best." I can quite conceive that especially at a time like the present it may be advisable for those responsible for the conduct of industry, to say to their men: "We admit that the wages paid are not as high as we should like to see them, but we dare not make them any higher. We dare not handicap ourselves in relation to our competitors. But let us make a bargain of this kind. We will pay the standard wage. We will pay at the market price for whatever supplies of capital we need for the maintenance and development of our industry. After that, if there is any profit, let us divide it. Let us come to some fair arrangement. That scheme might be a very sound one. If we do not make the profit, the men will not get it, and neither shall we, but if we do, we shall go to the men and say: “Here it is. We have earned it through our joint activities."

With regard to hours, we do not want to go back to the twelvehour day. But, in existing circumstances, it would be opposed to the interests of the workers to reduce hours below the level which makes for the maximum productivity, assuming, of course, that it leaves a reasonable amount of leisure to the worker.

With regard to security, in outlining the kind of policy which an employer who really recognizes his responsibility as a captain of industry would pursue, I am quite sure that we must do all we can to get rid of the horror of economic insecurity. We ought to have done so decades ago. But here I will only say that industry must accept, unless the State does it, the responsibility for maintaining in periods of enforced idleness the reserve workers who are necessary for the functioning of industry. In some way or other this must be done, and I want to ask all employers of labor who read these words whether they can work out some way of minimizing any risk of temporary unemployment which may be run by their workers if they increase production.

Finally, there is the status of the worker. I look upon this as something which will follow from a real sympathy felt for the worker by the employer. We live in a democratic country, but to some extent democracy has to cease when the worker passes the factory gates. But the sympathy for which I have appealed will make the thoughtful employer ask himself—"Is it reasonable that just because I happen to represent capital, which is only one of the essential factors in successful industry, while the other man represents labor, another essential factor in industry, I should always dictate the terms under which we both work?" It is only fair that working conditions should be jointly agreed upon. Those are the five practical applications which I think we may give to our sense of sympathy with the workers-Wages, hours, security, a share in the profits, and improved status.

Now I want to ask any workers who happen to read these words, to go half way to meet any employer who is honestly trying to help them. I want to ask them to unite with employers in solving the great difficulties which confront us at the present time. I want them to create a public opinion against the slackers -I want them, like employers, to keep the thought of service in their minds. I want them to spare some sympathy for the industrial administrator who is up against great difficulties. I want them to consider these problems of industry without selfishness and without suspicion, to confer frankly with the employers over the difficult problems which confront both.

On those lines I believe we can get a solution of our present difficulties. But for a country that goes on losing eighty-six million working days in a year-as Great Britain did in 1921, through strikes and lockouts-there is no solution possible. And so, as generally happens when we discuss any political or social or industrial problem, it finally resolves itself into a spiritual problem. Let us be unselfish. Let us keep the thought of the other man constantly in our mind. Let us be willing to spend our lives with unflinching determination in the service of the community, and then we shall win through.

B. SEEBOHM ROWNTREE.

"THE DIAL PLATE OF TIME"

BY HENRY W. BUNN

ON a nice calculation of the gains and losses, of the good and evil hap, of the twelvemonth preceding Armistice Day, 1922, there is perhaps little to choose between the two sums. There's the Irish settlement-that's to the good; but then there's the resurgence of Turkey-that is (whatever Pierre Loti would have said) to the bad. There's the Washington Conference-beneficent, surely; but put in the opposite scale Genoa and The Hague, with half of the world talking repudiation and the other half concessions, and always the smell of petroleum-Oil, Oil, destined to replace Religion, Backstairs Intrigue and Self Determination as your chief breeder of bate and mischief in the world. There are Everest-scaling heroes, and there are New York landlords. Nothing is but has its opposite. Ormuzd and Ahriman equally divide the universe. One must not be a pessimist, of course; but, looking back and peering forward, I do not feel justified in a cheerful prognostication. Yet man, the everlasting gull, even if he be a Job or a Dean Inge, will always entertain a soupçon of a hope that in some unexpected quarter something blithe will turn

up.

So I, methinks I behold emerge from the chaos, from the faction, the New China; that is, the Old China with youth renewed. All the arts will revive, and again ye shall see the dewy freshness of Ching and Ch'u, the fierce energy and spiritual power of the T'ang masters, the supple grace, the easy majesty, the supreme elegance of the Sung era. There will be a Renaissance.

Had De Tocqueville been permitted to revisit the glimpses of the moon and to dwell amongst us during the twelvemonth ended on Armistice Day, what would that great observer and philosopher have noted as most significant in our history in the making?

I think he would have noted as of chief significance the enormous development since, ninety years ago, he was a "chiel amang us takin' notes", of the tyranny of public opinion— whether the opinion of a majority, or, what is worse, of a highlyorganized minority usurping the prerogatives of a majority. The best passages in De Tocqueville's incomparable work are those in which he expresses his apprehension that this tyranny of public opinion, exercised with reference to matters properly left to private opinion, might in time wreck the Republic. He would have noted in this connection the attempt in Kentucky (which barely failed of success, and to which Mr. Bryan lent his prestige and his silver tongue) to procure passage of a law prohibiting the teaching in schools supported or aided by State funds, of “evolution as relating to the origin of man"; he would have noted the popular vote in Oregon ratifying the State Act which requires all children (with certain very limited exceptions) between the ages of eight and sixteen, to attend public school; he would have noted the sundry efforts (not all in vain) to tighten and extend censorship over this and over that, to revive old blue laws and enact new and bluer ones, to send to Coventry whoever should have the temerity to contradict Demos. He would have noted these things, and would eagerly have expected Hermes summoning him back to the Elysian fields.

As I see it, the past twelvemonth in our country has been chiefly remarkable for multiplying instances of the tyranny of public opinion. The best suggestion I can make in the premises is that all our citizens, of whatever sex, age, or color, and especially our legislators, spend their days and nights in the reading of De Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

The year saw two great industrial struggles in the United States-one marked by the strike of all the unionized coal miners of the country, the other by the strike of some 400,000 railroad shopmen. After five months, the strike of the miners was ended dubiously and indecisively. Deflation has at least been delayed for the mining industry and the principle of arbitration of wages seems to have received the coup de grâce. In the coming spring difficult negotiations will end successfully or in another strike. On most of the railroads hostilities have ceased-ending in vic

tory for the managements or in cloudy agreements. On the whole, there is peace on the railroads a peace of sorts, a precarious peace. The miners' strike will forever be remembered for an incident the most hideous and disgraceful in human annals -the Herrin massacre. The behavior of the shopmen justified the President's comment thereon to Congress. "There is," said he, "a state of lawlessness shocking to every conception of American law and order, and violating the cherished guarantees of American freedom."

But, strikes or no strikes, no doubt we shall shog along comfortably enough during the coming year, our food production being far beyond our necessities and our population far this side the saturation point. Our self-love, too, will make shift to explain away the Herrin massacre (that chef d'œuvre of a year distinguished for a bumper crop of murders) and whatever else may seem to contradict our boast of being "a people the most moral ", etc., etc.

Of the Federal legislation of the twelvemonth, perhaps the most significant was that affecting our "preparedness". The Army Appropriation Act carries retrenchment to the point of practically nullifying the National Defense Act, and the Naval Act cuts the navy below the strength required for efficiently manning the ships left by the Five-Power Treaty. Reversion to the condition of helplessness which existed before the war seems to satisfy the people.

The Coöperative Marketing Act calls for especial remark as the legislative firstfruits of the activity of the farm bloc.

The Republicans, in the delectable vulgar phrase, "got theirs” on November 4. Their majority in the next House will be only 17 instead of the present 165, and in the Senate 10 instead of the present 24. And, what's worse from the Elephantine point of view, the Progressives or Independents and other irregulars or malcontents within the Republican Party will hold the balance of power in the 68th Congress. What that portends, I leave to the quidnuncs. I expect fun and fireworks.

Our foreign policy, apart from the Washington Conference, has been-well, cautious. The latest invitation to be declined was that to the Lausanne Conference on the Near East. Our policy of