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of the United States Immigration Commission has compiled a book upon the Japanese in America, which states that in 1912 the Japanese owned only 12,726 acres, an amount of land almost negligible in comparison with the enormous size of the State. And in reply to the fear that, small as this land control is, it may rapidly increase, it should be borne in mind that Japan has acted with perfect sincerity and effectiveness in preventing Japanese emigration to this country, as she agreed to do when Mr. Roosevelt, as President, brought about a friendly settlement of the questions raised by the former agitation in California; so that the total number of Japanese residents is decreasing. When the question as to the Japanese in the California schools was investigated, it was found that the number was very small indeed, and that the very real problem involved was perfectly capable of settlement without offense to Japan and through local regulation. When we remember the excitable methods of labor leaders in California, it may seem quite possible that the landownership question has not received that thorough examination and consideration which should precede legislation. Dr. Teusler, a director of St. Luke's Hospital in Tokyo, who is now in this country, has investigated this question in California, and reports that the Japanese own fewer than 25,000 acres, acquired during a period of twenty-five years, and he exclaims: "What is 25,000 acres in a State of 158.360 square miles!" Of course the reply is that the time to deal with a racial problem is when it first arises; and if those who say that the problem is increasing are right, the smallness of the acreage involved is not so significant. Dr. Teusler also shows that the restrictions upon foreign ownership of land in Japan are far less stringent than have been generally supposed. As regards the agitation and excitement in Japan which followed the situation in California, those who are inclined to exaggerate the facts may with benefit read these words from a newspaper interview with Captain Uyeno, a military attaché of the Japanese Embassy in London: "Such a thing as war between America and Japan," said Captain Uyeno, "is impossible. Such a thing will never happen. There is a war element, if you care to call it that, in all countries, but the best element in Japan, as in all other countries, is for peace, and Japan to-day entertains nothing but the friendliest elings for the United States."

and Social Unrest

Two statements recently The Vice-President made by Vice-President Marshall have оссаsioned much comment in the newspapers. One of these statements ascribed to him is as follows:

Men of judgment have expressed to me the opinion that if a vote were taken on a proposition to make all estates above the sum of $100,000 revert to the State on the death of the owner, the $100,000 being exempted, it would be carried two to one.

There is nothing to indicate that Mr. Marshall shared this opinion. He used it evidently to emphasize the fact that there is great social unrest and widespread discontent with the way in which wealth is distributed. As in the case of other exaggerated or fantastic statements used to call attention to some actual fact, the discussion has all centered about the illustration, and has ignored the point that Mr. Marshall wished to enforce. If Mr. Marshall has taken this opinion seriously, he has done what we should not suppose any intelligent and informed man would do. There used to be an idea that Socialists advocated something of this sort; but no one who has followed the tendency of modern Socialism any longer believes that the Socialists want to divide up private property after any such fashion. Mr. Marshall, however, is right in his opinion that there are a great many men of wealth who have no conception of the thoughtful discontent that great masses of their fellow-men feel. The other statement by Mr. Marshall has also caused comment and invited a great deal of criticism. It was made in his Jefferson Day speech in New York on April 12. He was trying to convince "backward-looking and inward-looking men" (in contradistinction to those men whom President Wilson has described as "forward-looking") that the security of property depends upon the popular belief in the justice of property rights. In order to do this he called attention to the fact that it is erroneous to suppose there is an inherent and constitutional right to pass property from one generation to another. Said Vice-President Marshall: The right to inherit and the right to devise are neither inherent nor constitutional, but, upon the contrary, they are simply privileges given by the State to its citizens." This statement has been treated as if it were an argument for doing away with the right of inheritance. Of course it is no such thing. It is simply a statement of legal

fact. Of that fact there is no doubt. There is nothing in the American Constitution to prevent a legislature from dealing with inheritances as it wills. In some countries the right of bequeathing property is very markedly limited by law. In France, we believe, the law makes it impossible for a man to disin-` herit his own child. By inheritance taxes the law in some countries appropriates from every estate that passes from its owner at death a large proportion for the use of the State. There is nothing to prevent any legislature from acting on the principle that a man can control his property only so long as he lives and not after his death. The fact is not at all a suggestion that it would be desirable for any legislature to enact a law appropriating every estate upon the death of its owner. There are very sound reasons, however, for the belief that there is a great opportunity for providing a wiser distribution of wealth in the power which the State possesses over the transmission of property at death.

and Conservation

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The extent to which

The Colorado Legislature the opponents of Conservation are willing to carry their opposition is indicated by a memorial to the President and Congress adopted by the Legislature of Colorado and signed by the Governor. While declaring that the people of Colorado are in favor of Conservation in the meaning of prevention of waste and monopoly," it declares unmis takably and emphatically against practically every feature of the movement that has made Conservation possible. Furthermore, it repeats the arguments that have been stated again and again by those who have been open and persistent opponents of every Conservation measure. In this respect the Legislature of Colorado has performed a service. pamphlet in which this memorial is printed may serve as a brief summary of the principal reasons offered against any Federal Conservation movement. It thus helps to make the issue clear. Nothing, for example, could be more emphatic or explicit than the statement : "We deny that it is right or advisable for the Federal Government to retain the title to, and lease the public land for any purpose." The form of argument, moreover, indicates the intensity of the opposition. For example, with regard to the exercise by the Federal Government of power over rights of way in the Federal domain, this memorial says, with especial reference to reclamation

The

projects under the administration of the Federal Government: "These projects and enterprises should not be made by officers of the Reclamation Service an excuse for the refusal to approve of rights of way and occupancy of lands under private irrigation projects." In the use of this term "excuse " hostility to the policy of Conservation is expressed as definitely as if it occupied pages of print. Still further, the Colorado Legislature commits itself to the view that, after all, private enterprise is the best force on which to depend for the protection of natural resources. This is sufficiently shown in one sentence: "The man who is willing to put his labor and money into the development of a mining claim is the person best fitted to classify the land, and should be permitted to acquire it." The Colorado Legislature turns again to a criticism of the whole leasing system. Let us quote

two sentences :

Without the value the presence and industry of our people have added to them, there is not a dollar's worth of value in any of our natural resources. Every dollar, therefore, charged in the form of royalty on the products of these resources is a tax on human toil.

Apart from the fact that this is a non sequitur - for the natural conclusion from the first sentence might equally be that dividends derived from the products of those resources are a private tax—this represents an uncompromising opposition to the leasing of any of the public domain by the Government. It is needless to continue quotations to indicate that this memorial expresses a policy with regard to our natural resources which believers in Conservation regard as directly leading to the greatest waste and the most certain monopoly. Those who believe that natural resources in possession of the Nation can be protected adequately only by Federal action

should take notice.

At the last session of Congress, toward the very close of the Taft Administration, Congress passed a Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill. This measure provided money for the conduct of various branches of the Federal Government. One provision in this bill forbade the use of money thus appropriated in proceedings to enforce the Anti-Trust Law against labor unions and farmers' organizations. There were three objections to this provision first, that it was a piece of general legislation tacked on as a rider" to an

The Anti-Trust Law and Labor Organizations

appropriation bill; second, that it left the Anti-Trust Law unchanged, but prevented in part its enforcement; and, third, that it was class legislation, singling out wage-earners and farmers for favoritism. President Taft vetoed the bill because of this "rider." Of course the Government must have money, and some kind of Civil Appropriation Bill must be passed. The House has now passed the bill again, and in doing so has kept the "rider " as a part of it; and it has been favorably reported in the Senate. The third objection, that the provision singles out a class for favoritism in legislation, we do not think is quite valid. The Anti-Trust Law is aimed at those combinations that tend to monopolize any commodity. Those who regard labor as a commodity, like shoes or beef or oil or steel, naturally argue that a labor combination should be treated like an oil trust or beef trust. Those, however, who, as we do, regard labor as human beings in the mass, and labor organizations as organizations of men formed not to control a commodity but to control themselves, believe that the legal restraint of labor organizations should be on a different basis from the legal restraint of trusts. Both kinds of combination should be under governmental regulation, but as the one kind differs in character from the other, so the form of regulation applied to the one should be different from that applied to the other. There is no more class legislation in this than in treating tenements in a different way from onefamily houses, or the inspection of food products in a different way from the inspection of school children. If the Anti-Trust Law, as interpreted by the courts, does treat both kinds of organizations alike, it ought, we believe, to be changed; but the rider on the Appropriation Bill does not change it. On the first two grounds this "rider" is distinctly objectionable. First, it is an attempt to take advantage of the necessities of the Government in order by indirection to enact a measure which ought to be subjected to the fire of debate. This is always bad, whether the measure itself is meritorious or not. Second, it is not a real amendment even by indirection—it is simply a command by Congress that one of its own laws shall not in all respects be enforced! Even if the position be taken that Congress never intended the law to include associations of men organized for their own self-protection, the law is not what the inner thoughts of Congressmen and Sen

ators considered it to be when enacted, but what it has been decided to be by the courts. If Congress believes that the law cannot be enforced against such associations, the provision prohibiting its use to that end is unnecessary; if Congress believes that it can be, and yet ought not to be, so enforced, Congress should change the law.

The Firemen's Award

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Most people of the East who use the railways have reason to be profoundly thankful. Instead of wondering how they may go from place to place as their needs require, and how they may obtain food and the other necessities of life that come to them daily by rail, they are moving to and fro on the railways and getting their commodities-because there is such a thing as Industrial Arbitration. As our readers know, the firemen on the principal railways in the eastern part of the United States made certain demands upon the railway companies with regard to wages and conditions of labor. For a while a strike seemed imminent. No one can conjecture what the results of such a strike might have been. The term "industrial war" is no exaggeration. The physical and moral evils of war in industry are at least as pronounced and real as any form of war. These evils were avoided by the employment of a better method of settling industrial disputes. Under the Erdman Act a board, consisting of Albert Phillips, representing the firemen, W. W. Atterbury, representing the railway managers, and Judge W. L. Chambers, chairman, representing the public, heard the evidence and last week readered their findings. The decision they reached was unanimous. It allowed an increase of wages greater than the managers wished to grant and less than the men stipulated in their original demand. This wage increase, however, instead of being calculated from July of last year, as the men argued that it should be, takes effect, according to the general provisions of the Erdman Act, ten days after the award is filed. In this, it seems, the men had no great cause for complaint, inasmuch as it was they who argued strongly for the observance of the Erdman Act in the constitution of the arbitral board. In respect to conditions of work the men have profited very largely by the arbitration proceedings. Though their proposal that two firemen be employed on a certain type of

engine was denied, a method was provided by which specific cases of disagreement as to the use of one or two firemen could be settled by arbitration. The firemen's proposals that helpers in electric service should have the same conditions as firemen on steam railways; that the firemen in pusher and helper service, mine runs, and in work, wreck, beltline, and transfer service, should have the same rates as in through freight service, that the working day should be ten hours or a hundred miles or less (the general practice), that the day should begin when a man reported for work and end when the engine was delivered at the designated place, and that the firemen should be relieved of certain of their duties that are done on many roads by round-house employees, were granted. Will such a decision increase the cost of transportation? If it proves that it necessarily does so, the public ought to be willing to pay. No man ought to wish to travel at the cost of his fellow-men who serve him on the railways. It does not necessarily follow, however, that such an award will increase the cost of transportation. If it makes for increased efficiency, it may actually reduce such cost. It is not inconceivable that such an award may result in moral and physical benefit to the railway owners and managers, the railway employees, and the public alike.

A Double

The strike that has been going Labor War on for many weeks among the silk mill workers of Paterson, New Jersey, has involved, in addition to all the usual objectionable and wasteful features of a labor war, the singular spectacle of two great labor organizations warring one against. the other-namely, the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World. When one reads of the bitterness of the fight between the mill-owners and the workers, of the charges of violence made against the workers, and the charges of unnecessary and improper force made by the workers against the police, the one thing that impresses the reader's mind is the contrast between this archaic battling and the reasonable settlement of such disputes by the Protocol method, as recently in New York and Boston, and by arbitration, as with the railway firemen. It is said that in Paterson twenty-five thousand men, women, and children have been thrown out of work for two months. Meanwhile the Industrial

Workers of the World have been represented by their two most prominent orators and organizers, W. D. Haywood and Elizabeth Flynn. There have been enormous demonstrations; at the funeral of an innocent man, totally unconcerned in the strike matter, who was shot to death during a street disturbance by a private detective, over four thousand of the strikers marched in procession wearing red ribbons or red carnations, which they threw in the grave of poor Vallanio. The American Federation of Labor appears to have attempted intervention for the twofold purpose of bringing about a settlement of the strike and of organizing the workers under the Federation plan. This means the forming of unions on the basis of trade lines for instance, all weavers in one union, etc.; while the Industrial Workers of the World are following here, as always, their basic plan of organizing by industry; thus they call out in this strike all the people employed in the mills involved, without regard to their special work. Paterson is being injured severely in all its trade; wages, it is said, to the amount of nearly two million dollars have been lost by idleness, and the general situation is about as bad as it can be. Hatefulness and strife once more have shown their inadequacy to deal with questions of industrial justice and equity. Fifty years hence we believe that a strike of this character will be unthinkable.

The idea of social laborSocial Laboratories atories for testing the and School Lunches soundness of new social activities before their general adoption by municipal or State governments is rapidly spreading. The munificent gift of Mrs. Elizabeth Milbank Anderson of $650,000 for this purpose to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor marks a new era in this field, and assures a more scientific testing of these social activities than has heretofore been possible. Under the terms of this gift experiments will be made in matters relating to public health, to the physical welfare of school children, and to the numerous problems connected with the food supply. It is expected in particular that New York City will test the effect of medical inspection of school children, of dental clinics, of proper methods of ventilation and sanitation of school buildings, and of furnishing hot school lunches at cost price. It will

also make it possible to determine the effect of public baths upon public health. These and other experiments fundamental in any programme of social welfare will be undertaken. One of the most interesting, however, of these experiments is that of feeding school children at cost. For several years a voluntary committee of public-spirited citizens, under the effective leadership of Miss Mabel Kittredge as chairman, has been supplying, in a half-dozen public schools in New York City, hot school lunches at approximately food cost. These lunches are served to children at two and three cents each, each portion being one cent. It is the desire of Mrs. Anderson to extend this experiment to some sixteen schools, to establish central or group kitchens from which several schools can be supplied, thereby reducing the cost, and to make it possible for the School Lunch Committee to study scientifically the effect of such lunches upon the children and their capacity for school work; and in general to determine, as a result of this laboratory work, whether the principle of hot lunches to school children at cost should not be extended to practically all sections of New York and other municipalities.

So much has this work atMr. Roosevelt's tracted the attention of pubVisit lic-spirited citizens that a visit to the work was recently arranged for Mr. Roosevelt. He was greatly impressed with the amount of nourishing food that could be supplied to the children at this cost. He was impressed also with the effect which this work has upon the families of the children in showing them how to supply nourishing food to their children at a very moderate cost. The training that the giving of these lunches affords to some of the older girls in the school who regularly assist in serving interested him especially; and the numerous push-carts which were congregated in front of schools not maintaining school lunches, from which Mr. Roosevelt saw children buying pickles, sticks of licorice, and other food with little nourishment and exposed to all kinds of street dust and uncleanliness, were a very convincing argument to him, as they would be to any keen observer, for the continuation and extension of the excellent work which has been done by the School Lunch Committee in New York City. In a similar way other social experiments are to be made

by the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and the new Department of Social Welfare which will conduct these experiments will be under the direction of Mr. Bailey B. Burritt, who has for some years been engaged in social work in New York City, whose selection for this work has just been announced by Mr. John A. Kingsbury, the General Director of the Association.

Port and Starboard

The decision of the Navy Department to substitute, in giving orders to the helmsmen of war vessels, for the time-honored words "port" and "starboard" the more prosaic words "right" and "left" has aroused much comment, some regretful, some indignant, some humorous. It is suggested that the change will afford aid and comfort to the landlubber on his first ocean voyage. When he inadvertently announces that he is going "outdoors" instead of "on deck," or " downstairs" instead of "below," or declares that his room is on the " top floor," or reports that he has been looking at the phosphorescence over the "back" of the boat, he will be able to feel that he has high authority for his translation of hoary sea terms into the language of every-day landfaring life. One newspaper paragrapher pictures an old sea-dog of a captain in an emergency ordering a sailor to "go to the front and look over the fence and find out what's the matter." The opportunities for quips afforded by the new order are legion. But to be able to poke fun at an innovation is not necessarily to condemn it. The regret and indignation, on the other hand, are probably largely due to a misapprehension of just what the change involves. It applies only to the orders given by the officer on the bridge to the man at the wheel. Instead of the command to " port," the command will be "right" instead of the command to "starboard," it will be left." The reasons for the change are clear when it is realized what the old practice was. Let us take an example. battle-ship is coming into harbor in a fog. An officer is on the bridge navigating the ship. A quartermaster is at the wheel. Suddenly a ship looms through the fog on the starboard bow. The battle-ship must go to port to escape a collision. The officer calls out, Hard a-starboard." The wheelsman repeats the order and spins the wheel to port. The battle-ship sheers off to port and the danger is averted.

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