blindness led me into the industrial

world. And what a world it is! I must face unflinchingly a world of facts-a world of misery and degradation, of blindness, crookedness, and sin, a world struggling against the elements, against the unknown, against itself. How reconcile this world of fact with the bright world of my imagining? My darkness had been filled with the light of intelligence, and, behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness. At first I was most unhappy; but deeper study restored my confidence.

By learning the sufferings and burdens of men, I became aware as never before of the life-power that has survived the forces of darkness-the power which, though never completely victorious, is continuously conquering. The very fact that we are still here carrying on the contest against the hosts of annihiliation proves that on the whole the battle has gone for humanity. The world's great heart has proved equal to the prodigious undertaking which God set it. Rebuffed, but always persevering; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted, tenacious, the heart of man labors towards immeasurably distant goals.

Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that whispers: "Be not dismayed; in the future lies the promised land."

-Helen Keller.

Is

philosophy of American history and politics? And if so, what it it? . Wise men say there are two sets of wills to nations and to persons-one set that acts and works from explainable motives-from teaching, intelligence, judgment, circumstance, caprice, emulation, greed, etc., and then another set, perhaps deep, hidden, unsuspected, yet often more potent than the first, refusing to be argued with, rising as it were out of abysses, resistlessly urging on speakers, doers, communities, unwitting to themselves— the poet to his fieriest words—the race to pursue its loftiest ideal.

Indeed, the paradox of a nation's life and career, with all its wondrous contradictions, can probably only be explained from these two wills, sometimes conflicting, each operating in its sphere, combining in races or in persons, and producing strangest results. -Walt Whitman.

ENTHUSIASM is the power and the

the social scale. What is at the other?

Massed in millions, at the other end of the social scale, are fortunes of a size never before dreamed of, whose

very owners do not know the extent nor, without the aid of an intelligent clerk, even the sources of their incomes. Incapable of being spent in any legitimate manner, these fortunes are burdens, which can only be squandered, hoarded, put into so-called "benefactions" which, for the most part, constitute a menace to the State, or put back into the industrial machine to pile up ever-increasing mountains of Gold.

-U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915.

THE glory of science is, that it is

freeing the soul-breaking the mental manacles-getting the brain out of bondage-giving courage to thought-filling the world with mercy, justice and joy.

Science found agriculture plowing with a stick-reaping with a sicklecommerce at the mercy of the treacherous waves and the inconstant winds -a world without books-without schools-man denying the authority of reason, employing his ingenuity in the manufacture of instruments of torture, in building inquisitions and cathedrals.

It found the land filled with malicious monks with persecuting Protestants, and the burners of men. It found a world full of fear; ignorance upon its knees; credulity the greatest virtue; women treated like beasts of

burden; cruelty the only means of ref

ormation. It found the world at the mercy of disease and famine; men trying to read their facts in the stars, and to tell their fortunes by signs and wonders, generals thinking to conquer their enemies by making the sign of the cross, or by telling a rosary.

It found all history full of petty and ridiculous falsehood, and the Almighty was supposed to spend most of His time turning sticks into snakes, drowning boys for swimming on Sunday, and killing little children for the purposes of converting their parents.

It found the earth filled with slaves and tyrants, the people in all countries down-trodden, half naked, half starved, without reason in the world.

Such was the condition of man when the morning of science dawned upon his brain, and before he had heard the sublime declaration that the universe is governed by law.

-Robert G. Ingersoll.

THE fact is that nothing is as stubbornly resisted as the attempt to organize into effective unions. Yet it is labor organized that alone can stand between America and the creation of a permanent, servile class. Unless labor is powerful enough to be respected, it is doomed to a degrading servitude. Without unions no such power is possible. Without unions industrial democracy is unthinkable. Without democracy in industry, that is where it counts most, there is no such thing as democracy in America.

For only through the union can the wage-earner participate in the control of industry and only through the union can he obtain the discipline needed for self-government. Those who fight unions may think they are fighting its obvious errors, but what they are really against is just this encroachment of democracy upon business.

-Walter Lippmann.

MILLIONS of men on this earth

remember distinctly the past fifty years, and their fathers remembered fifty years farther back. The hundred years behind us have seen a complete change in the ways of human beings and in the world's methods. The stage coach went, steam cars and steamboats came in.

The telephone has come-CONQUERING SPACE. The wireless telephone and telegraph have comeCONQUERING SPACE AND TIME. The flying machine has lifted men from the earth-CONQUERING THE LAW OF GRAVITATION. The automobile has replaced the horse on the city streets, and will replace it on the farm. Electricity has lightened the labors of women, sweeping, wash

ing, heating, refrigerating, sewing, cooling, lighting, driving machines, executing convicts. Man, born with ten fingers, provides himself through electricity and machinery with a thousand million fingers of steel.

-Arthur Brisbane.

their employers, they find arrayed against them, not only the vast power of capital, but every arm of the government that has been created to enforce guaranties of equality and justice. -Frank P. Walsh.

THE 'HE union shop (coined "closed shop" by the employers in 1900 to mislead the public) is a shop where all workmen belong to the union, or are willing to join. It is a shop which is void of friction. The workmen through representatives selected by themselves meet the employers in the industry on a common ground.

In this shop workmen and employers meet as man to man. Each respects the other. There are no class distinctions or autocratic rulings to disturb the best relationship. The employee is a willing worker and the employer keeps the part of the bargain he has made with the workmen through their chosen representatives.

-Samuel Gompers.

THE employer emphasizes the merit system. He appeals to the desire

of most men to reach the top. The merit system is good, provided there

IAM aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as Truth, and as uncompromising as Justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.

No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallenbut urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

I am in earnest-I will not equivocate -I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.

-William Lloyd Garrison.

But the standards are determined by men who are not so trained as to be qualified to measure efficiency. Workers see too much favoritism shown by foremen not to be suspicious of "merit" systems. As yet there are but few tests, nor is any attempt made to develop standards in conjunction with the worker.

-Commons' Industrial Good Will, and Hoxie's Trade Unionism in the U. S.

HE said, "I see.”

-Seneca.

E said, "I see." And they said: "He's crazy; crucify him." He still said: "I see." And they said: "He's an extremist." And they tolerated him. And he continued to say: "I see." And they said: "He's eccentric." And they rather liked him, but smiled at him. And he stubbornly said again: "I see." And they said: "There's something in what he says." And they gave him half an ear.

But he said as if he'd never said it before: "I see." And at last they were awake; and they gathered about him and built a temple in his name. And yet he only said: "I see." And they wanted to do something for him.

"What can we do to express to you our regret?" He only smiled.

He touched with the ends of his fingers and kissed them. What could they do for him? "Nothing more than you have done," he answered. And what was that? they wanted to know. "You see," he said, "that's reward enough; you see, you see.”

-Horace Traubel.

WE E are taught, many of us, from our youth onwards, that competition is essential to the health and progress of the race. Or, as Herbert Spencer puts it, "Society flourishes by the antagonism of its atoms."

But the obvious golden truth is that co-operation is good and competition bad, and that society flourishes, by the mutual aid of human beings. I say that is obvious, and so it is. And it is so well known that in all great military or commercial enterprises individualism has to be subordinated to collective action. We do not believe that a house divided against itself shall stand: we believe that it shall fall.

We know that a State divided by internal feuds and torn by faction fighting can not hold its own against a united people. We know that in a cricket or football team, a regiment, a ship's crew, a school, the "antagonism of the atoms," would mean defeat and failure. We know that a society composed of antagonistic atoms would not be society at all, and could not exist as a society.

We know that if men are to found and govern cities, to build bridges and make roads, to establish universities, to sail ships and sink mines, and create educational systems, and policies and religions, they must work together and not against one another. Surely these things are as obvious as the fact that there could be no hive unless the bees worked as a colony and on the lines of mutual aid.

-Robert Blatchford.

MEN

[EN are fighting for the beginnings of industrial self-government. If the world were wise that fight would be made easier for them. But it is not wise. Few of us care for ten minutes in a month about these beginnings or what they promise. And so the burden falls entirely upon the workers who are directly concerned. They have got to win civilization, they have got to take up the task of fastening a worker's control upon business.

No wonder they despise the scab. He is justly despised. Far from being the independent, liberty-loving soul he is sometimes painted, the scab is a traitor to the economic foundations of democracy. He makes the basic associations of men difficult. He is an indigestible lump in the common life, and it is he who generates nine-tenths of the violence in labor disputes.

Democracies of workingmen have to fight him out of sheer self-protection, as a nation has to fight a mutiny, as doctors have to fight a quack. The clubbing of scabs is not a pretty thing; the importation of scabs is an uglier one. It is perhaps true that there is, as ex-President Eliot said, no such thing as peaceful picketing. There is no such thing as a peaceful coast defense or a gentlemanly border patrol. The picket-line is to these little economic democracies the guardian of their integrity, their chief protection from foreign invasion.

-Walter Lippmann.

To argue with a man who has lost his reason is like giving medicine to the dead. -Thomas Paine.

TRADE unionism has grown so old and strong and has been so much patronized by surface thinkers, as well as by that large class who always seek the easiest way, no matter how indirect, that the opposition is not now so much directed against the union as against everything it does. Most people are willing that workmen shall be

organized, provided they do nothing but pass resolutions and pay dues. -Clarence Darrow.

THE struggle of labor for organiza

tion is not merely an attempt to secure an increased measure of the material comforts of life, but is a part of the age long struggle for more freedom. And this struggle is sharpened by the pinch of hunger and the exhaustion of body and mind by long hours and improper working conditions. But even if men were well fed, they would still struggle all the more to be free.

-U. S. Commission on Industrial
Relations, 1915.

WHEN one wishes to gain knowl

edge about finances they usually consult a banker. If they wish to know about engineering problems, they consult an engineer. About law, you will consult a lawyer. But when anyone wishes to know about the cause of labor, its aspirations, proposals and its methods, as a rule, they consult those who are enemies of the government.

-Samuel Gompers.

THE majesty of suffering labor is no

longer dumb: it speaks now with a million tongues, and it asks the nations not to increase the ills which crush down the workers by an added burden of mistrust and hate, by wars and the expectation of wars.

Gentlemen, you may ask how and when and in what form this longing for international concord will express itself to some purpose. . . . I can only answer you by a parable which I gleaned by fragments from the legends of Merlin, the magician, from the Arabian Nights, and from a book that is still unread.

Once upon a time there was an enchanted forest. It had been stripped of all verdure, it was wild and forbid

ding. The trees, tossed by the bitter wind that never ceased, struck one another with a sound as of breaking swords. When at last, after a long series of freezing nights, all living things trembled with the first call of spring, the trees became afraid of the sap that began to move within them. And the solitary and bitter spirit that had its dwelling within the hard bark of each of them said very low, with a shudder that came up from the deepest roots: "Have a care! If thou art the first to risk yielding to the wooing of the new season, if thou art the first to turn thy lance-like buds into blossoms and leaves, their delicate raiment will be torn by the rough blows of the trees that have been slower to put forth leaves and flowers."

And the proud and melancholy spirit that was shut up within the great Druidical oak spoke to its tree with peculiar insistence: "And wilt thou, too, seek to join the universal love-feast, thou whose noble branches have been broken by the storm?"

Thus, in the enchanted forest, mutual distrust drove back the sap, and prolonged the deathlike winter even after the call of spring.

What happened at last? By what mysterious influences was the grim charm broken? Did some tree find the courage to act alone, like those April poplars that break into a shower of verdure, and give from afar the signal for a renewal of all life? Or did a warmer and more life-giving beam start the sap moving in all the trees at once? For lo! in a single day the whole forest burst forth into a magnificent flowering of joy and peace. -Jean Leon Jaures.