terpreted. An application of a wrong interpretation will produce an imperfect result.

The wish of every normal mind must be that it shall receive justice. More than justice no person has a right to ask or receive. Less than justice no person has a right to offer or accept. The requirements of justice demand that no person shall wish another to do that which that other person cannot do with perfect justice to himself. They also require that each person shall do for others all he can do with justice to himself.

The source of weakness in human conduct is in the fact that persons do not study problems, with the view of determining what they have done to give them the right to expect from others or of determining what they can give to others for what others have done, on the basis of justice to themselves. Workingmen seek increases in wages through their power to compel payment, rather than through their power to make their work worth more to their employers. Employers resist demands for increases in wages through their power to obtain the labor they require at the wages they are paying, rather than through causing their employes to know wages cannot be increased without injustice to capital. So long as these methods are used disputes between labor and capital will continue. Only when those on each side of the problem recognize in those on the opposite side brothers, not antagonists, can conditions be established that will enable the one

to satisfy the other that the thing being done, or proposed, is just. When this can be done men will learn that justice is established, not by demanding, but by doing justice. Herein lies the solution of all questions involving equitable divisions of the joint product of labor and capital.

LAW AND PUBLIC SENTIMENT-ARBITRA

TION.

A law not approved by a clearly defined public opinion cannot be enforced by a government of the people by the people. This truth is aptly illustrated by the success of compulsory arbitration in New Zealand and its failure in Australia. The law was sustained by public opinion in one country and not in the other. When public sentiment is sufficiently strong to declare the justice of submitting all disputes or differences between employers and employes to arbitration it will be done voluntarily. There are many examples of this kind. According to the testimony of Mr. William Henry Sayward, secretary of the National Association of Builders, a perfect system of arbitration for the settlement of difficulties between employes and employers exists in Boston. Through a form of arbitration, adopted jointly nine years ago by this association and the labor organizations of Boston, controlling brick and stone construction work, harmony has resulted, and strikes have been prevented in other branches of the building industry by

the failure of the bricklayers, stone masons, iron workers and hoisting engineers to join in sympathetic movements.

The results of a strike can never be confined to those directly responsible for it. The incidence of its losses spread throughout the community and many times throughout the state and country. This gives society at large an interest in every controversy. Public sentiment should be clearly stated and so well expressed that no mistake can be made in understanding it. It should require the settlement of all disputes by arbitration. It can require this as easily without as with a compulsory law.

CIVILITY COSTS NOTHING AND BUYS

EVERYTHING.

This aphorism was used by H. G. Eastman in his lecture on "Advertising" to illustrate the point that spending large sums in inducing people to come to a store and then repelling them from buying goods by permitting them to be met by uncivil employes was very poor business. This principle may have another application equally forceful. If civility is a good investment for a merchant when cultivated by his employes toward his customers it is equally good an investment when cultivated by an employer toward his employes. Civility begets civility, just as surely as vice begets vice. It should be practiced by all toward those with whom they come in contact, and most em

phatically toward those upon whom they are dependent for the successful handling of their business.

Civility is like a fine oil used to reduce friction in machinery when practiced by employers toward employes. A man cannot perform the service or do the work assigned him with efficiency unless he can respect himself while doing it. While he may do this regardless of the bearing of others toward him, it is infinitely easier for him to do it if all friction is removed between him and others by a consistent exhibit of mutual respect finding expression in mutual civility in deportment.

A condition of unvarying civility, founded on mutual self-respect, cannot be established by purchase. It must come from good-will and just appreciation of the position each holds in the industrial organization, giving recognition to the fact that success depends upon each one's duty being well done. While civility cannot be bought with money, it has a real money value which will be clearly visible in a real money value clearly visible in the results of everv business where it is correctly practiced.

AN EIGHT-HOUR LABOR LAW IN OHIO.

Those who represent the cause of organized labor are not the only ones who have worked hard to secure the enactment of measures designed to carry their theories into practical application, and then to find in the application about as many objections as were supposed to exist in the conditions they sought to reform. Establishing eight hours as a legal standard for a day of labor is one thing. To make its adoption mandatory upon all classes and conditions of employment is quite a different thing. Placing the legal rate of interest at a fixed per cent by statute law accomplished a great good, but seeking to punish all transactions made at a different rate is productive of great evil, and the sufferers from the evil are the ones whose demand the enactment of such laws seeks to protect-the bor

rowers.

This is the case with workingmen. There are many occupations the character of which imposes no greater hardship upon an employe who gives ten hours of service than is imposed upon other workingmen employed in other employments rendering eight hours of service in a day. As payment must be based upon service performed, those employes who are perfectly willing to give ten hours of service per day and want to earn ten hours' pay, will be deprived of the privilege under the operation of a mandatory law, forbidding any person to employ another more than eight hours per day.