the rights of unorganized labor, making in fact a form of industrial tyranny which subverts personal liberty.

It does not follow that a system of arbitration which may work fairly well in one country can be as successfully operated in another country where the social and economic conditions may be different or more complex. It seems clear that the New Zealand system of arbitration could not be successfully implanted in this country under existing conditions. At the recent conference of the National Civic Federation in Chicago, in which the subject of labor arbitration was exhaustively discussed, and the New Zealand system was given a due share of attention, the trend of opinion was strongly in favor of some plan that would settle labor disputes by conciliation and obviate the resort to a compulsory method. Much is expected from private boards of ar bitration when fairly organized by the parties directly concerned in trade disputes, and the state boards can also do much to promote a harmony of interests between employers and employees; but there will be strong and persistent opposition to legislation for enforcing the decisions of such boards. It remains to be said that, at the present time, all plans for conciliation and arbitration are still tentative, for a method that may have worked satisfactorily in one case may not be applicable to other cases; but there is little reason to doubt that some practicable method will yet be devised for adjusting differences between employers and employees

which will command general popular support.

TRAVELERS' IMPORTS.

IN N an investigation made in 1897 it was found that the approximate number of 100,000 passengers arriving in New York yearly from abroad brought in goods free of duty to the amount of about $40,000,000. Twenty-five passengers were seen on six different days, from six steamers, who showed additions to personal effects while abroad for the whole number of $24,490, an average of $489.80 to each passenger. Under the Wilson tariff American dealers and manufacturers lost many million dollars' worth of trade, owing to the custom of American travellers buying goods in foreign countries and bringing them in free. Of course the government lost a large revenue from this source. The Dingley tariff fixed $100 as the limit for personal effects to be admitted free of duty.

It having been disclosed recently that this provision of the tariff law was slackly enforced, the Treasury Department issued new regulations about baggage inspection intended to correct the grave abuses which have prevailed for a considerable time. There are loud complaints that the customs inspectors at New York cause too much delay and annoyance to incoming passengers; but if the

new regulations are being enforced in an obnoxious manner this is a matter that can be easily remedied. But the government has a right to protect its own interests in the matter of the collection of revenues; and it is not to be supposed that it will fail to exercise any proper degree of scrutiny to detect importations that are subject to tariff duty.

It is more than probable that the loudest complaints of "customs inquisition" are from people who are trying to bring in merchandise without payment of duty, and many such instances have been discovered. Assistant Secretary Spaulding of the Treasury Department says that unquestionably considerable quantities of millinery, dress goods and other merchandise have been brought into the country without payment of duty, and have been put into competition with goods which have been imported by honest merchants who have paid the duties required by law. An idea of what the more stringent regulations have accomplished may be gathered from the fact that there was collected between March 31 and April 4 of last year from the baggage brought in on six steamers on the popular transatlantic lines $2,629.34. On the baggage brought in by six steamers belonging to the same lines between the same dates this year, the collections amounted to $13,826.35, a difference of $11,197.01 in favor of the new regulations. These duties were collected, not on personal effects of travellers, but on merchandise which the owners

only

were seeking to smuggle into the country.

One of the reasons for the new regulations was the strong suspicion of collusion between some of the subordinate customs officials and certain persons who have been making frequent trips to Europe; and this suspicion has proved well founded. It is related that soon after the new regulations went into effect a woman who had been in the habit of making frequent voyages with a large amount of baggage, inquired by name for a particular inspector as soon as she stepped off the steamer. On learning that he had been dismissed from the service she disappeared, deserting her trunks. Some time later the treasury received a draft for $4,000 with the request that the money be used to pay duties on her importations and that her baggage be released and forwarded to her at a distant city. Reference to her affidavit taken by the surveyor while the ship was coming up the harbor showed that she had not declared anything what

ever.

Assistant Secretary Spaulding told of another woman who arrived on the "Lucania." She at first declined to make any declaration as to the amount of dutiable goods she had brought, telling the officials she had made seventeen trips across the Atlantic and had never made a declaration or paid any duty. When she was finally made to realize that she would have to make a declaration she said she had bought gloves and other articles of apparel to the amount of

$100, the exact limit which she could bring in free of duty under the law. Her baggage was examined and she was found to have dutiable goods to such an amount that she was required to pay $698.90 in duties.

It would seem that the action of the government is fully justified, though there may be some ground for the complaints that the method of enforcing the law is objectionable. The free traders are clamoring for the restoration of the old law permitting personal effects of travellers to be imported without any fixed limit as to amount, unless it appeared that the articles were intended for other persons or for sale. It may be easily surmised that this loose provision did not much operate to check importations for commercial purposes. On the contrary, in the year before the passage of the Dingley tariff, it is estimated that the importations of merchandise by travellers which should have paid duty, but did not, amounted to $50,000,000 at the one port of New York; and of course there were many millions that escaped payment of duty at other ports of entry. The injustice of favoring the returning travellers (who, as a rule, are abundantly able to pay tariff duties) at the expense of our merchants, and people who cannot afford to go abroad, must be manifest to all fair-minded persons; and it will be generally admitted that the present law limiting travellers free imports to $100 in value for each person imposes no particular hardship upon that class of people.

PRODUCTION AND CON

SUMPTION.

[From the Textile Record.]

MR. THOMAS L. GREENE, iden

tified with railroad interests, expressed some rather odd opinions in testimony given by him before the Industrial Commission. Mr. Greene is reported to have used the following language:

We have bad times in this country as a result of the tremendous energy of our people. This energy must be given a vent some way or other, and one of the results is overproduction. If we could get something to keep this industrial energy within bounds it seems to me it would have a very wholesome effect.

If this doctrine indeed be sound, we should be required to believe that in the ratio that the energy of the people diminished, prosperity would increase, so that the very highest possible degree of prosperity for the nation would be reached when the energy of the people should be completely paralyzed. The "industrial energy" of the people is exerted upon the successful production of wealth, and, according to Mr. Greene's theory, so much wealth is thus produced that the nation tends to become poor. The more wheat you grow, the less able you are to appease your hunger; the more cloth you make, the greater the difficulty to cover your nakedness; the more shoes you have, the larger the chance that you will have to go barefoot; the more coal you mine, the more certain you are to shiver

when the blizzard comes.

One hundred and odd years ago a celebrated English philosopher taught that population increases so much more rapidly than the power was multiplied to produce supplies, that soon nobody could have enough food and clothing and fuel because the available quantity would not suffice to go around. Everybody must admit if the supply is inadequate, somebody must go without; but how shall we be able to admit that there must necessarily be want because the supply is above and beyond all possible capacity of the people to consume?

The American people have had a good many queer economical theories thrust at them in recent years, and they have accepted as truth not a little teaching that experience will show to be mere falsehood; but it is hard to believe that they will give their confidence to the doctrine that we are making ourselves poor by producing wealth too rapidly. The doctrine of the production of useful articles in large excess of the ability of our own people to use them, has not a single element of reasonableness. It is openly defiant of the plainly eviIdent fact that millions of Americans at this very moment cannot supply their just requirements. There are multitudes of hard working people who live always below the lowest standard of comfort. There are other and perhaps larger multitudes who contrive by the most careful management to live just within the comfort line. It is certain that ninety per cent of the population do not have

their wants, reasonable and unreasonable, satisfied. We have to deal with human desire, and human desire is insatiable. There is not too much of the things that men want. There is no overproduction. The hitch will be found to lie in the machinery of distribution, and most likely to have its origin somewhere in the currency problem; and one of the most important of the duties now devolving upon persons who have such knowledge of economics as Mr. Greene, referred to above, never dreamed of, is to try to discover just where lies the obstructive force that produces the trouble.

If Manchuria becomes Russian we shall undertake to find out what the Russian Manchurians want that we can furnish them, and then to supply it to them under the most favorable circumstances. If Manchuria remains Chinese we shall pursue the same line of policy. We believe that our interests will be best served by the continuance of Chinese control, but if we are unable to gain our point by peaceful means we will not, in any case, be justified in the use of force, whatever any other nation may do.Colorado Springs Gazette.

With the encouragement given by the administration at Washington through its uncalled for reciprocity treaties all the free traders of the country are coming out of the retreats in which they have been compulsorily hibernating since the Dingley tariff became a law over three years ago. Our old friend, Edward Atkinson, is one of these dormant free traders who has recently shown signs of renewed vitality.-Iron and Steel Bulletin.

[The following communication was sent to the Boston Herald, but the editor declined to print it.]

To the Editor of the Herald:

WE are among the number who

think that the home market should be protected by imposing duties on competing foreign products high enough to keep them out. We all know that our export trade is of "small concern" compared with our domestic trade.

We are, and we suppose all protectionists are aware that foreign nations are jealous of our invasions of their markets. This was certainly to have been expected. "But every American business man should be more firmly grounded in the belief that after all, the great American market is the one to be chiefly depended on," "and that it should be fostered and developed as a matter of American self-preservation, to its utmost capacity, by every means within the reach of American ingenuity."

It does not require any great calculation to see that every dollar that we send out of this country, for things that we can produce, that we consume, is taken directly from our producers, and paid to foreign producers, who spend it all for foreign products, while our producers would have spent it all for home products.

We have only enumerated some of the principal items of our imports, and with the exception, possibly, of some of the hides and skins, we could, and it would have been better for all of our people if we had, have produced all of the things enumerated. Our industrial independence is of more importance than our political independence.

Our imports of things that we consume have been the cause of all of our want of employment, financial panics, and what is called overproduction that we have experienced since the formation of our government. With the possible exception of raw