low as he had fallen the thought of the disgrace stung him sharply. How miserably his plans had failed. At last by unfrequented streets and alleys he reached home. Mercy opened her eyes with a start of terror as he entered the room and lighted the lamp. For an instant she knew him and stretched out her arms with a smile and then her mind wandered and she babbled of other scenes and other days when they were happy and life apparently held something in store for them beside misery and suffering.

Joyce was sober. The events of the last hour had made him so and he realized fully now how terrible was his situation. He a hunted criminal, an outcast, compelled to leave his dying child alone and uncared for. He could not even go for aid for he had not the courage to look another man in the face, his conscience accused him so loudly. He got some cool water and bathed her face and temples and as he bent over her tears ran down his cheeks and fell upon her. Every moment he expected the officers to break in upon him, but they did not come. In his present misery he had almost ceased to care if they did. At length she opened her eyes with the light of reason in them.

"I am so glad you come, papa. I have been so lonesome and afraid. Don't leave me alone any more, papa. It is getting so dark."

He bent his face close to hers and she threw an arm convulsively about his neck. His groans alone broke the silence. The arm relaxed and fell on the bed; there was a long drawn sigh, and Bernard knew all was over. He smoothed the clothes about her and then stood for a time looking down on the pale face, his conscience

lashing him cruelly for his neglect, a neglect he alone was not responsible for. Then he went to a table and wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, asking that some charitably disposed person would see that she was laid beside her mother in M- Cemetery, and pinning it to her sleeve, he pressed his lips to hers for the last time and went out. He walked across the street to the house where the old German woman was staying and calling her out, told her that Mercy was very bad and asked her to go over a little while until he summoned aid, and she, kind soul, went at once and he fled away into the night.

Along the streets, turning this way and that, he went until he came out on the docks down at the lake. The sun was just tinging the east with red as he looked back over the city showing dimly in the early morning light, full of avarice, oppression, vice, crime, misery and suffering. He had felt the effects of all, but soon he would leave them behind. He thought of his wife, of their early efforts to succeed in the battle of life, of the sweet little girl now lying dead back in that miserable old tenement. What a wretched failure the world would say his life had been. Was it all his fault? Perhaps he could have done better, but there were those in high places who, by their unjust oppression, had started him on the downward road and followed him until he was far along it. They had robbed him of work, his family of food, and virtually of life. For him there was nothing left but the lake, and he sighed as he looked down at the lapping waters. There was a plunge, and an eddying ripple to mark the end of a great human tragedy.

-Anon.

I

T SEEMS not difficult to find some judge who is willing to undertake the job of killing every law that is enacted for the protection of employes. As long as the present practice of permitting the employing class to dictate appointments to the federal judiciary nothing else

can be expected. A President of the United States who appoints corporation lawyers to such positions lends his aid to such efforts to destroy protective legislation, and paves the way for defeating the will of the people. As long as the President delegates life-long legal servants of trusts and corporations to interpret laws restricting powers and privileges of such trusts and corporations he certainly must intend that such interpretations are to be liberal or partial to trusts and corporations. The people of the United States have greater grievances against their judiciary than they ever had against their King George, and the latter were adjusted far more easily than will be the present disputes. It was Thomas Jefferson that foresaw the usurpation of power by the judiciary, and he believed that the revolution against the King would some day have to be repeated against the judges. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that caused, or hastened, the Civil War by attempting to extend and perpetuate chattel slavery. The issue then was master vs. servant, and the issue will always be master

vs. servant.

The latest service performed by a federal judge for corporations is the decision

that practically kills the Safety Appliance Law, by which it is decided that automatic couplers need not be "automatic" with any other type of coupler. For instance, a most absurd coupler, one that would not couple with any other coupler ever known, might be placed upon cars, and the placing of these couplers into service might result in the death of a thousand employes annually, yet, according to the court, it would not be a violation of the Safety Appliance Law, because the man-killer would couple with another coupler that was just like it, one that had the ability to kill just as many men. This is an entirely new interpreta

tion, one sufficiently valuable to railway corporations to justify them in making members of the judiciary eligible to their pension schemes.

This decision has come at a time when

it will defeat efforts of the Interstate Commerce Commission to protect lives of railway employes. The secretary of the commission, Mr. Edward A. Mosely, has addressed the following communication to the House of Representatives:

Interstate Commerce Commission, Office of the Secretary, Washington, D. C., Jan. 7, 1903. Dear Sir-Inclosed please find copy of a recent decision by the eighth United States Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Johnson v. the Southern Pacific Company.

In this case the safety appliance act of March 2, 1893, is construed, and it is held that if a carrier equips its cars with couplers which will couple automatically with those of the same kind, it complies with the requirements of the statute and that the act does not require cars used in interstate commerce to be equipped

with couplers which will couple automatically with cars equipped with couplers of other makes.

If this ruling should be upheld on appeal to the United States Supreme Court it would have the effect of nullifying the purpose of the statute in a vital respect, which is to secure such uniformity in applied automatic coupling devices as to permit all cars in a train to be coupled and uncoupled without requiring men to go between the cars. Carriers are left free by the statute to use any kind of automatic coupler they see fit, the general and governing restriction being that no cars shall be hauled or used on the line which do not couple automatically by impact or can not be uncoupled without men going between the cars; and the commission has assumed that this applies to the hauling of all cars, whether owned by the carrier operating a given road or by other carriers.

Plainly, if carriers use different types of couplers which do not work automatically with each other, the law is defeated when a carrier undertakes to haul two cars so equipped in the same train. This was pointed out by the commission in its report to Congress for the year 1893 and has apparently been so understood and followed by carriers generally throughout

the country.

The above-mentioned decision by the Court of Appeals is in conflict with that construction of the statute, and it would, if finally affirmed, permit the use of many different types of couplers, each type working automatically with those of the same description, but not with any other, and authorize the hauling of cars in the same train which could not be coupled or uncoupled without the aid of men going between the cars.

It is unfortunate that this remedial statute, which has proved such a benefit to railway employes and the public, should be rendered nugatory in a most important particular by a decision in a case brought by an individual to recover personal damages, without the Government's representative being heard upon a proper construction of the statute. The far-reaching and disastrous effect of this decision upon the operation of the safety-appliance act is my excuse for calling it to your attention.

Very respectfully,

EDW. A. MOSELEY, Secretary. HON. D. B. HENDERSON, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

Certain influences are at work to secure great increase in salaries of federal judges. Their services have been sufficiently appreciated to bring to the support of the bill a strong lobby. In discussing the bill in the House, Representative Cochran, of Missouri, is quoted as saying:

"Were a judge to drop dead in Washington tomorrow, before the widow's tears were dried the corporations would pick out his successor, and he would be ap

pointed. We must go back to first principles and throttle the monoplies, or they will crush us. An honest and upright judiciary would eliminate the offensive conduct of the trusts within six months or a year."

Increased Wages and Increased Living Expense.

The recent increases in wages of working people are more than offset by the increased living expenses, the only advantage of 1902 over 1894 being the opportunity to secure employment. The following are expressions of opinion by representative labor publications:

A general advance in wages is invariably and almost immediately followed by a rise in prices, especialy of the common necessities of life. Luxuries such as highclass wines, cigars, etc., and table dainties like game and hot house fruits, things that never appear on a workingman's bill of fare, are not touched, but bread, meat, butter, potatoes and such staples mount skyward. Many instances could be cited to prove this fact and show that no matter how wages advance labor has to pay back the increase sooner or later.-Machinists' Journal.

While the great captains of industry are piling up colossal fortunes their employes, even in cases where wages have increased 10 to 25 per cent., must figure more closely than ever before to keep their living expenses within the limits of their incomes. The only feature of the present industrial situation, therefore, which is favorable to the laboring man is that employment is continuous and more easily obtained. The profits to the em; ployer are the gauge by which the demand for labor is set, and the fact that the demand for labor is so great at the present time simply indicates the further fact that the employers of labor are making greater profits than ever before on their contracts. * * * It is not satisfying to the workers who always have steady employment the year round, and it should not cause even those who in the past have been irregularly employed to be content with less than a fair equivalent for their labor just for the sake of being employed, for if there is ever a time when labor can ask and receive a fair reward it is, to use a metaphorical expression, "when there are two jobs looking for one man." Even then labor is not fairly compensated unless it is intelligently sold through an organized agency.-Advance Advocate.

According to statements in the daily press the railroad men of the country are to be envied. They have secured a large increase in wages, shorter hours, besides several other concessions, and all because the corporations are getting good-natured

-The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

have raised before election or even just before the next election. But the increase comes after the elections and there are no important elections for two years. It is plain that if these great employers of labor wished to affect political action they would raise wages say about September, 1904. No, they didn't raise them for or because of any political effort. But they did raise them because they recognized the demand of the organized workers for an increase, for mark you, in most instances there was a demand, and it was

organization that made the demand. Would the railroad workers have secured any increase in wages had there been no organization of railway workers? No. Here then is a plain and clear illustration, an illustration that ought to impress itself upon every wage worker throughout the land. Trades' Union Organizations is the party that secured the seventeen or twenty million dollars increase for the next twelve months.

Will the workers ever understand that they can win almost any victory they seek if they will but once perfect a thorough organization? This object lesson ought not to be lost. It ought to bury itself deep into our brains, it ought to be the means of bringing a million men into the unions, that it will bring many thousands there can be no doubt.-Shoe Workers' Journal.

Coolie Labor in the Philippines.* I wish to speak of the proposition that has been made by Professor Jenks, to introduce coolie labor into the territory pertaining to the United States in the Philippine Islands.

This proposition, which is contained in a report made by Professor Jenks to the War Department-it is therefore an official document, and not merely the "ipse dixit" of an individual is supported by the pressure of capitalistic interests in the Philippine Islands.

One representative of these interests was reported in an interview in the papers as saying that he came for the purpose of using his influence that this bill, a bill in favor of the importation of coolie labor into the Philippine Islands, shall be passed, and when questioned whether negroes might not answer in Hawaii or the Philippines, his answer was that the negroes were not as abject and as docile as coolies, and that therefore they were not wanted.

So we want abject and docile labor in the new territory of the Republic!

Perhaps, by and by, we shall want some kind of abject and docile labor in the older territory of the United States.

My contention is that this proposition -just to put it clearly before you-it is the proposition that Chinese in considerable numbers shall be imported into the Philippines, that they shall be penned up in the district in which they work, not permitted to escape from it, not permitted under any pretense to settle in distant parts of the island, and that after three years they shall be sent back to China, unless especial permission is given to prolong their term of service. My contention *Address by!Dr. Felix Adler.

is that this proposition is a proposition to re-establish or to restore, in a modified form, human slavery in the territory of the United States, forty years after we went through the bloodshed and struggle of the Civil War, in order to banish human slavery from the territory of the United States, as we thought, forever.

Do not suppose for a moment that this is an academic question. These great changes in our policy slip in unawares. People have not made up their minds, they are in a state of suspended judgment with regard to them; they say neither "Yes or No," and, in the meantime, those who want it, push the thing through, and succeed in getting it, because of this state of indecision. So there is the greatest danger that some day we may find the bill for the introduction of coolie labor passing the House and the Senate, and in the meantime people have not made up their minds, and I want to do what I can, with others and we propose to do itthat people at least shall know what the proposition is that is now submitted, and what is its nature.

Do not let yourselves be deceived by assimilating this scheme of coolie labor to other forms of involuntary labor. For instance, to the apprenticeship system, where also the personal freedom of the apprentice is taken away while he is at work. The apprentice is a minor. That makes all the difference in the world. Just as you do not let your child have unrestricted personal freedom for his own good. The apprentice is a minor, and he is being educated for a trade.

It has been said, and very strongly urged by Professor Jenks, that this is a contract, that the coolie laborer contracts of his own accord to go into this form of service, and that, therefore, it can not be slavery, since it rests on contract. Now, my contention is that this sort of contract is no true contract, that the name is only used to throw dust into the eyes of superficial reasoners. Judge Holmes says in his Book on Common Law, "If when a man promised to labor for another, the law made him do it, his relation to his promise might be called a servitude with some truth. But this is what the law never does." But this is exactly what

the law does in coolie contracts. It makes man labor after he has said he will not labor. It does not accept damages if he runs away or refuses to labor. It makes him labor. It catches him and takes him back to his employer and says, "Here he is; go on, work him." Therefore, I say the coolie contract is misnamed contract,