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the ruling sentiment in the chamber is shown by the election of M. Bourgeois, radical, as presiding officer instead of the former president, M. Deschanel, progressivist. France, except on the side of its finances, which must be handled with extreme care under a policy of retrenchment, is in an exceptionally strong position, thanks to the astuteness of its retiring premier and to the sturdy good judgment of President Loubet. While all sorts of opinions are expressed as to the outlook for the new ministry, there are good reasons for believing that it will carry on with a fair measure of success the policy of Waldeck-Rousseau. The Combes ministry starts off with the enemies of the republic within its borders beaten to their knees and with its affairs abroad in good order. Doubtless its chief danger is that the very

clear sky to a distance of ten miles. Through this black mass frequent and fearful lightning-like bolts shot horizontally, due to terrific explosions of gases, demonstrating how it was possible for the entire population of St. Pierre to be slain in a few minutes by blasts of fire. This phenomenon is said to be entirely new in the experience of those who have studied volcanoes. Explorers discovered that a new crater has been formed on Mont Pelee and that the carly reports of the destruction of the volcano's top are untrue. Professor Hill and Professor Heilprin, president of the Philadelphia Geographical society, agree that there has been no flow of lava from the mountain. Professor Heilprin says that the eruption of May 8 "was unique in that it resulted in the greatest destruction of life and property ever known by direct agency of a volcano."

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strength of the republic's position may be taken as a license for bitter wars among the factions that now support the ministry.

Those West

A second violent eruption of Mont Pelee, in Martinique, on Indian May 20, greatly alarmed the Volcanoes. people in Fort de France and elsewhere in the island, though it did no particular harm, since the region already had been devastated upon which its showers of ashes and stones descended. During this disturbance Professor Robert T. Hill, geologist of the United States government and head of the expedition sent to Martinique by the National Geographical society, was fortunate enough to witness from Morne Rouge, near the volcano, a tremendous explosion from the crater, which was accompanied by extraordinary phenomena. Huge, mushroom shaped columns of cinders were thrown up, spreading across the

In the opinion of the scientists the violent eruptions of Mont Pelee and Soufriere, on the island of St. Vincent, are now over, though they freely admit that it is unwise to prophesy as to what a volcano will do. The relief of the volcano sufferers on the two islands was conducted with great expedition by United States government vessels and by vessels sent by the governments of France and Great Britain, as well as by individuals and commercial organizations. The panic in Martinique having subsided to a considerable extent, it is probable that the people will resume their ordinary occupations soon, except in those sections where the rain of ashes has ruined the homes and the growing crops. Doubtless many persons who have left the islands will not return, but there is little likelihood that either of them will be depopulated. No disturbance of coast lines or of the whole mass of either island has been discovered by scientists.

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THE AWFUL DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. THE RUINS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT THE RIGHT.

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THE RELIEF EXPEDITION AND SCIENTISTS AT WORK AMONG THE RUINS.

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and

Prosperity, as is well known, Prosperity breeds labor strikes. The comStrikes. mon saying that in prosperous times the price of labor is the last to go up gives pithily one reason for this tendency. The wage worker, provided he has steady employment, not infrequently discovers that he is more comfortable in years of panic than in years of great business activity, for his living expenses are low when times are bad. Of course the statistician, who deals in averages, can show that the enormous volume of wages paid during prosperous times rains blessings on the workingman as compared with the lean pay-rolls of other periods; but

Debate on
The eruptions of Mont Pelee
the Isth- and Soufriere seem to have de-
mian stroyed the last chance of ac-
Canal.
ceptance by Congress of the
Nicaragua route for the interoceanic canal.
When the matter came up for debate in the
senate last month Senator Hanna and
others presented with great force the ar-
guments against that route and in favor of
Panama. Since the opinion is very general
even among former advocates of the Nicar-
agua route, that if a good title to the Pan-
ama canal can be secured by the payment
of $40,000,000 to the French company
which controls it the purchase should be
made and the canal completed in the short-
est possible time, it is reasonable to think
that Congress will approve of that plan.
The vote on the question was taken in the
senate June 19. The adoption of the
Spooner amendment, which gives to the
president authority to examine into the
question of title and choose the Nicaragua
route only in case of failure to end success-
fully the Panama negotiations, seems a wise
solution of the matter. Senator Hanna and
others advocate that plan. Senator Morgan
of Alabama, for years the unswerving
champion of the Nicaragua route, Senator
Mitchell of Oregon, a member of the inter-
oceanic canal committee of which Senator
Morgan is chairman, and some others, can-
not be convinced that the volcanoes of
Nicaragua, some of which overshadow the
proposed canal route, are a real menace to
the great undertaking which they favor.
Leading scientists, however, assert that to
build a canal across Nicaragua, in view of
that country's volcanic record, would be the
height of folly. The isthmus of Panama
has no volcanoes to throw out cubic miles
of ashes and scoria on short notice. The
argument that earthquakes are a source of
great danger at the isthmus is answered in
part by the fact that the steel bridges, ma-
sonry culverts and embankments of the
Panama railroad have stood for half a
century with little or no injury from earth-
quakes. Furthermore, the Nicaragua
canal's length of 183 miles, when contrasted
with the 49 miles of the Panama canal,
would give far more opportunity for injury
by seismic convulsions than does its rival.
Senator Hanna's array of testimony from
ship captains and other mariners in favor of
the Panama route, as presented to the sen-
ate, was sufficiently convincing to change
the views of some of the senators who
viously had favored the Nicaragua route.

after all, are earned merely that they may
be spent. If rents are high, if beefsteak
is dear, if butter and bacon and flour are
to be obtained only at unusual cost, the
workingman who has experienced no cor-
responding increase in wages very com-
monly casts statistics to the winds and
agrees with his comrades that they must
share in the general prosperity to which
they contribute their toil or they will strike.
They know that crowds of unemployed men
no longer swarm about the door of the shop
seeking work at any price, as they do in
times when factories are shutting down;
therefore it will not be easy to fill the
strikers' places. Furthermore, it is noto-
rious that the firm is swamped with orders
and can ill afford to have the plant lie
idle even for a day. So their demand is
made for more wages; if an increase is
refused they strike. But suppose the firm
has been straining every nerve to pay off
indebtedness incurred to keep the plant
running during panic years when, rather
than turn the men into the streets and lock
the doors, the proprietors continued to man-
ufacture goods that had to be sold at a loss?
What if there is some equally good reason
why wages should not go up at this time?
Surely such relations should exist between
a firm and its workmen that the situation in
all its bearings could be talked over amica-
bly by representatives of the two interests in
any controversy about wages. If an agree-
ment between them is impossible, an appeal
to honest and wise advisers acceptable to
both very likely would lead to an adjust-
ment of the differences. That arbitration
and conciliation are growing rapidly in
favor, not only among labor unions that
enjoy the benefits of intelligent leadership
but among enlightened employers also, is
a hopeful sign.

pre

Strike in

was

A splendid success Teamsters' achieved during the first week in Chicago. June for the policy of conciliation by the settlement of two dangerous strikes in Chicago. Teamsters employed by the large packers to deliver meats to local markets struck for an increase in wages and other substantial benefits. Efforts on the part of the packers to supply the city with meat by sending out their wagons in long caravans furnished with a strong police guard led to terrible street riots, extending for miles through the heart of the city and resulting in the killing of a few persons and the serious injury of many. In the meantime members of the arbitration committee of the National Civic Federation and Mr. Frederick W. Job, chairman of the Illinois Board of Arbitration, used their best endeavors to secure a peaceful settlement of the bloody war. Mr. Job, by patient endeavor, first succeeded in bringing together representatives of the department store managers of the city and of the drivers of their delivery wagons, who had struck in a body because two of their number had been discharged for refusing to haul meats from the packing houses during the teamsters' strike. This meeting led to an agreement between drivers and employers, arrived at by mutual concessions, and the drivers returned to work. Mr. Job then turned his attention to the greater strike of the stockyards teamsters. After a long day of rioting and bloodshed in the principal streets of the city, a night of negotiation, made possible by the tact and address of the chairman of the arbitration board, who had brought together representatives of the packers and of the Teamsters' union, resulted in a harmonious settlement of the strike. The intense relief of the community, which for some days had been on the verge of a meat famine and which had seen the streets turned into battlefields, expressed itself in enthusiastic praise of the policy of conciliation invoked with such skill by Chairman Job. Seldom has a more impressive lesson been given of the superiority of reason over sullen non-intercourse on one side and brute violence on the other.

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of arbitration to which could be referred all differences between members of the Teamsters' union and their employers. Officials of the union and representatives of many large industries entered earnestly upon the work of perfecting the plan and carrying it into effect. With such an auspicious beginning there is strong reason to hope that the movement will become quite general among employers of labor and that arbitration boards will come to be regarded soon as a necessity by the various industries. There is, of course, nothing experimental about such boards, since some of

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Concilia- labor war grew up a movement among employers of teamsters for the establishment of a permanent board

FREDERICK W. JOB. Chairman of the Illinois Board of Arbitration.

the more progressive labor unions and the employers of their members long ago inaugurated the policy of arbitration and demonstrated its worth. While the nation and the states are powerless to compel the settlement of strikes by arbitration or otherwise, the force of public opinion as applied to acute labor difficulties is growing greater continually; so that, joined with the promptings of self-interest On the part of employer and workmen, public opinion has much weight on the side of mutual concessions leading to the peaceful settlement of differences. Not many years ago the average employer deemed it a sign

of inefficiency on his part to make a settlement with his striking workmen; now he is beginning to feel that it is a sign of inefficiency not to do so. Labor unionists are usually in favor of arbitration, which seems to show on their part a desire to be fair to the extent of resting their cause on its merits. However, those of them who have studied the statistics of strikes are aware that by far the greater number fail, so that they are more likely to secure benefits by arbitration than by fighting.

The refusal of officials of the Progress coal roads in the anthracite reof the Coal' Strike. gion of Pennsylvania to discuss, with a view to its settlement, the strike of the mine workers, continued to block efforts by public officials, commercial bodies, conciliation boards and private individuals to pave the way for a settlement of the great labor controversy. The 147,000 miners who obeyed the command to strike issued the middle of May by the United Mine Workers of America mained idle week after week, doing all in

re

their power to strengthen their lines and
prevent the employment in their places of
non-union men. On June 2 the extreme
measure was resorted to of calling out the
firemen, pumpmen and others whose im-
portant duty it was to keep the water
pumped out of the mines. It is asserted
that from 60 to 80 per cent of these men
obeyed the summons and went on strike.
The places of some of them were filled by
non-union men, mine superintendents and
others, but many of the pumps remained
idle, to the enormous damage of mine prop-
erty. As the weeks went by there was in-
creased bitterness against the mine owners
and the men who refused to strike. In
some of the mining communities large num-
bers of effigies were to be seen hanging
from trees and telegraph poles, bearing
placards expressive of the anger felt against
those who did not join in the struggle for
higher wages. Some violence occurred and
there were threats on the part of the au-
thorities of calling out the militia to keep
order. President Mitchell and other lead-
ers of the strikers threw their influence

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