upon this foundation it built the whole democratic edifice. Some plants have a shop safety committee, either skillfully and fairly appointed in line with the sentiment of the workers or elected directly by the workers. Both sides recognize the value of such a committee. A reasonably rapid but unheralded extension of function of such a committee to include matters of health, of the slighter grievances, and later of wages, hours, and conditions generally, is better than new machinery and elaborate new institutions of democracy. Mankind, so far as I know, has never done well with more democracy than it could properly assimilate and appreciate at the moment. But we may as well face the fact that the desire for selfexpression among workers creeps resistlessly on, and this instinct must be satisfied if prosperity and ordered liberty are to continue. Just as political autocracy and aristocracy have slowly disappeared, so must merely economic autocracy and aristocracy disappear.

In dealing with the problems of industry America can learn much from Eng. land and Australia. Australia is learning the folly of the coercive process of compulsory arbitration except within very limited areas. In England eightyfive per cent of labor is already organized, with all the symptoms of permanent class struggle or else of final labor control. Such an alternative is not pleasing to America and is not American. To do away with the class struggle and to establish a government of all through all under the leadership of the wisest and the best was, I believe, Mazzini's conception of a true democracy. The class struggle establishes caste and the law of the average and levels down initiative even while it levels up the mass.

THE MAN WITH THE SINE

In the tool-room of the plant I asked: "Who is the ablest skilled workman?" And when I learned who he was I talked with him. And I found out that the thing which made him more valuable than anybody else among the one hundred and fifty in the department was his ability to use the sine-bar, something that I had never heard of. The sine-bar is a new trigonometric instrument of exact measurement, largely developed during the war. It involves logarithms and is absolutely accurate, as the micrometer is not. I asked this young man how he learned to use the sine-bar, as I was quite sure he had never had trigonometry in college. said he had had only a common-school education, but when he became interested in the sine-bar he got hold of the drawings and tables of the draughtsman and, working after hours, perfected him. self in the use of the sine-bar. And with pride he took down his table of logarithms and told me about the sinebar. When anybody in the tool-room must have a measurement precisely right, he must go to the man who knows the sine-bar.

He

It would be a dangerous thing for the prosperity of the world and for the fu

ture of the race if hundreds of thousands of cases of initiative like this were not appreciated and rewarded and given the freest opportunity to work through to the top. This is America as distinguished from every other country in the world, and it is a distinction that ought not to be lightly thrown away. If we are to stop the movement towards a hard and fast class cleavage in the United States, it can only be by the rapid extension of the principles and practices of sound human interest throughout American industry. And government, although it can do something, can do far less than the authoritative managers of our great enterprises throughout the country.

THE STRUGGLE FOR UNIONISM This is not a union plant, although it One employs a good many union men.

of them had been the secretary of a union whose members went on strike in New York State. He had a wife and children. He tried West Virginia, and ran into a strike there. Then he tried but business East Liverpool, Ohio, slackened and he lost his job just after he had spent $400 of his savings to get his family into Ohio, and he was down and out. He was glad to be in a genuine open shop with a well-established industry, but he had no qualms about his course with organized labor except that he was sorry for what his family had had to suffer. He felt that he was fighting in his earlier years a young man's battle for his class and for his principles.

Another had once been in the union, but had had enough of unionism for a lifetime. Some years ago he was working in another great near-by plant. One Monday morning he "went out" with his comrades in defense of what he regarded as justice to his fellows. He had a wife and children and was obliged to get work soon, so he went from factory to factory, but found he had been black-listed. He was a pariah to all factory society because he had joined in a battle for the good of men of his kind as he saw it. For months, although he had but one leg and was a skilled mechanic, he had to dig ditches at small pay, until he slowly crept back out of a union into an open-shop haven.

There was a sense of exhaustion with their struggles on the part of these and other old union men, but I found none who denounced unionism. One of them said to me: "As long as manufacturers have the power of association and blacklisting and punishment, as long as combinations of profiteers have power to put up prices and starve men and bring the working class to time, unionism must exist."

The purpose of a good many shortsighted persons and of certain great com. mercial organizations at the present moment to make the closed shop "a battling issue," to lock horns with trade-unionism in a final great encounter, is disquieting. Can we learn nothing from history and can we see no better remedy? Unionism is, and always has been, merely a fighting weapon. Industrial autocracy and ex

ploitation, not always deliberately brutal, but thoughtless and class-conscious, have created unionism, and made it necessary to the economic freedom of great areas of employment. Trade-unionism has given collective strength to a great body of reasonably intelligent skilled workers of the free countries, and has lifted standards of justice and profit for the whole working class, whether organized or not. Unionism will exist until the need for it passes. But it is not necessarily a permanent institution. The greatest victory that unionism will ever win will come when there is no further need for unionism.

THE STRAIT-JACKET

There is no reason whatever that the democracy of industry in the United States should follow the path of England and set up a permanent class cleavage between employers and employees, between trade unions and management unions. The democracy of industry in the United States may follow a far more American channel. But it cannot be done through great associations of manufacturers and employers aiding and abetting bitter struggles against the closed shop and making a gigantic public issue thereby. Under those circumstances, the universal strait-jacket closed shop, with all the evils which might follow in its train, will win perhaps through a process not very different from civil war. But the management of American industry has it in its own grasp to make all strait-jacket and un-American methods of battling for human rights unnecessary. A relatively small percentage of American labor has as yet developed a hard and fast system of fighting those whom it regards as its natural foes.

The way to stop any uneconomic or un-American trend of labor is to develop the practical brotherhood of genuine human co-operation inside of every great industrial plant in the country, and to do it soon. Such a plan will spread from the center of great industrial management more swiftly than from any other source. The square deal is still a great solvent. Spending endless energy and time in trying to prevent labor from organizing and using a fighting weapon like the closed shop, as long as the lack of a square deal seems to make such fighting weapons invaluable to class justice, is a foolish and futile method for men to employ who are big enough for the management jobs of America.

As long as there are arrogant, autocratic employers there will be struggles for the closed shop. As long as political machinery seems to be in the power of the capitalist class the labor class will seek to wrest it away through counterintimidation, or the threat of a labor party, or widespread direct action, or some other equally undemocratic method. But the earlier management of industry had a great deal to do with creating the labor disorder. And it is up to the management of American industry, alert, able, and sensible, to cure it.

I

HAVE noticed recently a concerted movement on the part of more or less respectable friends of mine to get people generally to read more books. Publishers as a rule, I think I may say without injury to their feelings, rather incline to this thought. The book reviewers also seem to write more favorably of most books than they did. I have written several books myself that for some years have failed to attract the attention of an eager public, and which I should be glad to have issued in new editions if I could feel reasonably sure that they would not crowd out Shakespeare and Milton and other important writers who, like myself, are not being read so much as of yore. But my main purpose is not to further the sale of my own works, as interesting as they may be to some folks who believe they can still borrow money from me, but it is to call attention to this new book movement with a view to persuading people here and there to look into it. I really have something of interest and importance to communicate.

Of course the danger of taking on anything more in the intellectual line than we have on hand at present is that it may cramp us in other directions: if we get into the habit of reading books, the movies will feel it, and if the receipts from the movies should begin to drop at this critical time, there's no telling how soon the end will come. The railways have gone already; the steel business isn't feeling over-well; in fact, without going too much into particulars, about the only thing at present that seems to stand between us and destruction are the movies. If we should all begin to stay home even a couple of evenings a week and take to reading the Bible and Homer and, say, one of my former works that isn't really so bad as they said it was at the time, where would we be then? This is a question that we must consider carefully. Much as I favor in the abstract buying a book a week, I realize that the safety of the Republic requires me not to stop too quickly patronizing the Gish sisters and Charlie Chaplin.

Then there is the baseball industry, which showed signs of languishing last year until somebody discovered it concealed a worm or so of corruption and it was thus advertised enough to get back its stride; it would be a pity to read books and not have time to keep up with the batting averages, or the names of the principal players, and how much they are getting and what they wear and eat. Then there are golf and tennis and business and other expensive sports which must be maintained. It is necessary to keep informed about what is or

is not going on; we must also consort with our neighbors and listen over the telephone; among and between all of these things, does it also come within our line of duty to read books? One sees them around occasionally on tables, reads about them in literary supplements, and hears them referred to intimately by those who talk as if they had really read them. But to read them ourselves is quite another matter. The habit is too easy, not to acquire, but to practice. You can read a book any where, standing up and sitting down, in trains and trolleys. There was a man who acquired a book education by reading on horseback. Now that electricity has come in, the danger of reading in bed is reduced to zero; so that if you once break down the barriers and get into the habit of reading you are lost; there is nothing you can talk about to your friends; they wouldn't know what you meant. You don't have to go anywhere or do anything; it costs practically nothing; indeed, the amount you save in carfare each week by not going to places that now you don't want to go to will buy twice as many books as you read. No wonder so many people instinctively shrink from it; it not only costs too little, but it is an occupation that would make them practically independent of other entertainments. A desperate outlook in these paternalistic days.

Please believe that I say this not in any mean or derisive spirit, but in all seriousness. If you doubt me, try the experiment for yourself. Let us say that you are an average American. Very well. Now the average American has recently been declared by an eminent scientist not to be any further advanced mentally than an eighteenyear-old boy. Well, that is enough. have an eighteen-year-old boy, and if you are as far advanced as he thinks he is you know it all.

I

And say you start the habit of reading a book a week. You can curl up anywhere and take a fall out of that book, and you don't care what happens-if it's a good book of course, like "The Tale of Two Cities," or "Kim," or "Ivanhoe," or "Treasure Island." You settle down after dinner, if you are a married man, with a cigar and the right light over your shoulder, and just as you've got settled, even to the ash-tray right at your elbow, your wife steps up and says, "Come on, dear; it's Norma Talmadge" -and what are you going to do about it then?

Or maybe you are a business man; try quoting "Kim" to a customer, and, not to be too dignified, see where you get off.

The fact is that if you should, in

some moment of weakness, be led into this pernicious habit of reading good books you would be immediately cut off from the society of your kind. If you did not acquire the reputation of a highbrow, you would take on that of a bore; those you meet would begin to regard you with lack-luster eye, your profits would decline, your family would desert you; the world indeed would only be paying you back in kind; because you had discovered something that made you independent of it, it would take its revenge by drawing away from you; it would leave you stranded.

Now the fact is that, however much we may console ourselves with such mental resources as we have been able secretly to develop, none of us quite likes to be stranded in just this manner. Perhaps in those moments of high rapture when the book has wholly "got" us we flaunt the world metaphorically, sitting in our chair in our cozy corner alone in the house; but, after all, we are part of our world, whatever it is that has been built up around us; we cannot abjure it in this mediæval fashion; we must listen to it, cajole and be cajoled by it; let it lead us around and accept its rewards and punishments.

At least outwardly. And here I come to my secret. It is wonderful; it is absorbing; it works; and I fain would let you in on it, if you'll promise not to tell. It wouldn't do to have it get out; this would spoil everything; so I beg of you to keep it to yourself. If certain people I know should find out what I am doing, it would ruin me. I am quite safe in writing this because they never read. And, what is more, they don't suspect that I do; at least they don't suspect I read in the way I do, but only in the way they think they read, which -as I have indicated-is not at all. The rule is simple; I never let them see me read, and I never refer to anything I have read. The only thing that remains is to tell how the thing can be done. How is it possible for us to conceal ourselves from others long enough to acquire a habit which, if known, might prove to be fatal?

It is perfectly easy. All you need do in the beginning is to get a leather book cover, the outside of which is marked in conspicuous letters "Income Tax Reports." You put it over the book you read, and there you are. If you are reading Rabelais or Stephen Leacock, for example, and burst into loud laughter, your sympathetic friend merely glances at you, shakes his head, and says, "Poor chap! He's only in the early stages yet!" He has no feeling of superiority for you that he might feel, for example, if he knew you were a bookworm. He has been hysterical himself over income-tax reports.

To get on good terms with the bet literature in comfortable privacy,

out danger, by adopting this system will be found an easy task. As you acquire more skill, you will naturally turn to other subjects for protection than the income-tax reports; you may become intimate with Milton and Dante under the alluring legend of "Our Annual Seed Catalogue," "Film Favorites," "Baseball Records," and so forth. Also, at comparatively slight expense, you can acquire a set of covers in sizes to fit almost any book, from the Temple Edition of Shakespeare to a quarto of Plutarch.

It is only necessary to conclude with a word of caution to the wise. As your liberal education, thus screened from the outside world, grows in importance, a corresponding measure of self-control will be necessary. The temptation is often great to disclose your secret. Eternal restraint is the price of liberty. Keep mum. If your friends should suddenly become aware that you are well read, your doom would be sealed. Think of the educated people we shun because they are so indiscreet as to talk of what they read!

PROFITEERS (THE). By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $2. If the stories of mystery, crime, and detection written in such abundance by Mr. Oppenheim were to be ranked according to their merit and interest, we are afraid that the present example would stand pretty near the end of the list.

LITTLE RED FOOT (THE). By Robert W. Chambers. The George H. Dolan Company, New York. $1.90.

It is refreshing to turn from Mr. Chambers's later novels and remember that in his earlier literary career he wrote one of the best American historical stories, "Cardigan." In his new book he carries on the story of the agitation and fighting in New York beween Albany and Canada in the days

preceding and following the outbreak of the American Revolution. The horrors of the Indian and Tory raids are described with historical accuracy and dramatic intensity. The love story included stands out delightfully before this historic background.

VISION HOUSE. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $1.90.

As in earlier stories by these authors. the interest of travel and sightseeing is here combined with that of romance. The hero is introduced as "the only American V. C.," although the fact seems to be that he was really a British subject, and therefore technically, as well as by merit, entitled to receive the Victoria Cross. The tale has its improbabilities, but it is exciting and readable.

MUSIC, PAINTING, AND OTHER ARTS HISTORY AND METHODS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN PAINTING. By James Ward. Vol. IV. Illustrated. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $6.

This volume is of particular value to lovers of Venetian painting. More than half of the text comprises a discussion of the painters of Venice from the Bellinis down. The rest of the book tells us much about the painters from other Italian centers. The author's style, while clear and compact, is not particularly magnetic.

MODERN TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE.

By

Lorado Taft. Illustrated. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. $5. This work by a sculptor who is also a critic of wide knowledge and facile power of expression will be valued by all art-loving Americans. The wealth of illustration (there are over four hundred pictures) makes the book extremely useful to readers who, after enjoying Professor Taft's luminous comments, wish to form their own judgment as to the recent developments in sculpture which are so fully treated in the book.

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER. By Kenneth L.

Roberts. Harper & Brothers, New York. $3. Literally, "Schieber" is "one who shoves." The Germans, it seems, now apply the name Schieber to the man who makes money unjustifiably, who gets something at a low price and "shoves" it along to some one else at a high price. Mr. Kenneth Roberts, an acute, unconventional, and very informative observer, says:

He is a man who cheats by dealing in goods in which he is not legitimately entitled to deal, such as flour and bread and sugar and meat. These goods are supposed to be under Government control so that everybody can have an equal amount. But the Schieber sells them at a high price to those who are unwilling to subsist on a Government ration. . . . If the Schieber cheats by selling at a profit the foodstuffs which he is not supposed to sell, then there are hundreds of thousands of people in Germany cheating by purchasing from the Schieber the food that they are not supposed to eat. . . . Therefore I

say that Germany is a land of Schiebers.

Crossing the frontier into Poland, we find that the distinguished ex-Premier of that country is still apparently as much of a national idol as ever. The author tells us that Paderewski has lost neither his popularity nor his influence. In fact, Mr. Roberts adds in his slapdash, slangy fashion: "Anybody who says that Paderewski hasn't the love and the admiration of the entire Polish nation is talking through his hat as well as through his overcoat and goloshes." The reader who seeks information about Paderewski must read fifty-five pages to get it; the book has no index. But all the chapters are worth reading even if the text is repetitious and its wit crude.

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM TYRANNY OF THE COUNTRYSIDE (THE). By F. E. Green. The Labor Publishing Company, Ltd., London.

The conditions that make the British farm laborer and village worker dissatisfied with their lot are feelingly and forcibly presented in this unusually plain-spoken book. Rarely has "Hodge's" case been more effectively presented.

SCIENCE

NEW STONE AGE (THE). By Harrison E. Howe. Illustrated. (The Century Books of Useful Science.) The Century Company, New York. $3.

"The New Stone Age" is the age of cement and concrete. This volume discusses the raw material necessary for the different types and explains the preparation involved; it tells about the parts which chemistry and other sciences play in cement and concrete and scientifically sets forth just what happens when these materials set and harden. Finally, it informs us concerning the various uses of cement and concrete.

BOOKS RECEIVED

FICTION

BRASSBOUNDER (THE). By David W. Bone.
E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $2.
FOUR CORNERS. By Clifford Raymond. The
George H. Doran Company, New York.
$1.90.

TOO OLD FOR DOLLS. By Anthony M. Ludo-
vici. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $2
HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
CASE OF KOREA (THE). By Henry Chung.
A.M., Ph.D. Foreword by Hon. Selden P.
Spencer. The Fleming H. Revell Company.
New York. $3.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION ANNALS AND ANTIQUITIES OF RAJASTHAN ; OR, THE CENTRAL AND WESTERN RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. By Lieut.Col. James Tod. 3 vols. The Oxford University Press, New York.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN HIS STEPS TO-DAY. By Charles M. Sheldon. The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1.25.

MISCELLANEOUS

IMMIGRANT HEALTH AND THE COMMUNITY. By Michael M. Davis, Jr. Americanization Studies. Brothers, Harper &

New York.

MESSAGE OF SADHU SUNDAR SINGH (THE).
By B. H. Streeter, M.A., and A. J. Ap-
The
pasamy, B.A.
Macmillan Company.
New York. $1.75.

"What

hands ?"

66

mill

FOUND INDUSTRY GROPING

One cannot study the woolen industry without looking deeply into the work of the American Woolen Company-not because this organization controls most of the American

the industry might still be groping along the byways where he found it.

He found the industry utterly disorganized. Mill was fighting mill in his native New England hills. It was a struggle for labor, for wool, for

the big mill you see over there." Through the gray spring drizzle that was descending upon Lawrence came the clean sparkle of a delight ful region of Colonial homes. From their flower-beds came a wet fragrance; their lattice-work was covered with vines.

"How do you people of Lawrence feel toward Mr. Wood?" we asked, curious to know what the big Massachusetts mill town thought of the master of its industrial destinies.

"I see by the papers that he made $125,000 out of his mills last year. I'm no Anarchist or Socialist. But that's too much for any man to make."

How near right the driver's figures were I don't know. But judging from Mr. Wood's industrial value to the country, I should think his services would be cheap at ten times that figure.

We were on our way to Shawsheen Village, midway between Lawrence and Andover, to learn something more about the American Woolen Company and its founder. There is something strange and elusive about him. History has more to say of many a lesser figure than will probably ever be recorded about William M. Wood. Yet his influence impinges upon human life at perhaps more points of contact than the influence of any other big industrial leader we have. What Harriman did for railroading, what Rockefeller did for oil, what Gary did for steel, William M. Wood has done for wool.

because the American Woolen Company found out how to fit its stride to the enormous needs of modern times and showed other mills how. And one cannot study the American Woolen Company without studying the character of Mr. Wood. For, while he could leave his desk tomorrow for a long absence and know that the work would go right along without a hitch, there would be no American Woolen Company if it were not for William M. Wood, and

for capital, for distribution of the finished product. There was incredible waste. Cost of production knowledge was non-existent. Wages were low, cost of finished weaves high, working and sanitary conditions bad. Co-ordination and team-work between mills were unknown. In their place were suspicion and intermill conflict. The finer weaves all had to come from England. No one had ever even taken the trouble to make a survey of the facts of pro

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