come it.

-Traubel.

THE HE gift of science was power to overcome poverty. How has the spirit of commerce treated the gift? It has ever regarded the machinery of science as an instrument to create wealth, not for humanity, but for a class of machine-owners. Could the degradation of ideas further go? Men of genius have given the world great inventions, capable of yielding a superabundance of commodities. The wealth-giving powers are laid waste and made the instruments of degradation for the majority. Viewing the resultant misery, unscientific moralists often rail at the machines and their inventors, instead of turning upon the methods of traffic in men and traffic in goods which abuse and frustrate genius.

-Chiozza Money.

I DON'T know where I'll be but I'll be in the procession of man:

I may be first or last: what difference does it make? I may be much or I may be much or nothing: Look for me: can you find me? in there: in the throng-in the endless winding moving panorama:

Look in the farthest back place: there you'll see me: where the crush is greatest: there I'll be. Not with the artists: not with the famous: no: with the crowding jamming nondescripts: there: I'm not proud or humble: I like the touch of the unknown: I'm at home with unlettered things: the university scares me.

I reach for a spot where life is commonest: I find my part in the mix of the street: I drop out of sight: but I'm never out the procession: I never step aside, letting it go on without me: I'm with it for good and all: I may be tired: I may be jostled: I may be hurt: I may even be angry but I never step aside.

-Traubel.

movement and the necessity of understanding its policy and its methods really lie in this one fact that it claims and always has claimed to have discovered a system of industry which is democratic. Industry, the co-operator says, is controlled within the movement, not by a small class for its own interests, but by all classes for the interests of all classes, by the people, for the people; and the power which determines industrial operation is not the necessity of making money, but the needs of the individuals forming the community. And we have proved, he continues, not only that it is possible to democratize industry in this way, but that our system is just as efficient and just as materially successful as the capitalist system. Not only that, but it is more truly economical avoiding the waste and friction of competition of the capitalist system.

Now, if these claims of the co-operator are correct, and they seem to be, then a careful study of the co-operative movement is necessary to any consideration of the industrial problems which confront us at this time.

-John H. Dietrich.

IN strike times a judge orders work

ing men not to assault or not to do other things they know are unlawful as well as the court does. One of the strike breakers makes affidavit that he has been threatened with assault, and the accused strikers are haled before the injunction judge. Are they assumed to be innocent? Are they permitted to face their accuser and crossexamine him? Are they accorded a jury trial, as is the meanest horse thief or kidnapper. To all these questions the answer is, No!

The court is not bound by any rule or law. Government by law is sidetracked for government by the individual. The court punishes the strikers as he sees fit-not for violating law but for contempt of court. It may be said that this is a quick method of ending the dispute. But the cure is worse than the disease.

-Anonymous.

WHAT are you doing for the cause?

Not for yourself. For all. Not to keep yourself going. To keep the race going. What are you doing for tomorrow that you didn't do yesterday for today? I don't say for what cause. I say for any cause. I don't ask you what you are doing with tasks I might set you. I ask what you are doing with tasks that you yourself set. I know what you do in eating and working at your trade and sleeping at night.

You do that in order not to die. Everybody does that. I ask you what you are doing in order to live. I know what you say. I read what you write. I have heard your promises. But this is not enough. This hardly tells me what I want to learn. I know what you do with what you have to do. I want to know what you do with what you don't have to do.

*

-Traubel.

THE HE co-operative movement has among millions of men stopped the practice of short weights and improved the quality of all the necessities of life. It has saved for people millions of dollars not only by eliminating the salesman superbly trained to sell people things they do not want. It has successfully fought among millions of men the thriftlessness of the credit system of the small store, and it gets along without the expensive middleman whose operations form the most significant part of the increase in prices over the cost of production.

The co-operative movement stands today as one of the most practical and most successful efforts in industrial welfare. It has established a new principle in the matter of distribution of the profits of industry. In the practice of the principles of democracy, and in the vast number which it reaches, its success has been astounding.

-John D. Dietrich.

I PUT everything aside for life. Property, Honor, Wages. All go for life. My revolt is based upon life.

Your resistance is resistance against life.

-Traubel.

PEOPLE do not rebel against sensible laws. A man instinctively wants to do what is right, but he objects to laws he feels are saddled upon him. As you break down respect for law, you break down respect for truth telling. -Francis L. Wellman.

I

CALL to witness the economic system of America, with its socially inadequate conduct of stores and factories. I call to witness the homes of the poor where there is so much unwarranted suffering. I call to witness the uneducated and undeveloped mass of working men and the similarly undeveloped captains of industry. Not by profit-sharing schemes, not by old age pensions and industrial insurance alone, but by fundamental changes only can the results we want be attained-not by autocracy, nor by anarchy, but democracy, the kind of democracy taught and practiced by the co-operative movement.

-John H. Dietrich.

THE present position which we, the educated and well-to-do classes, occupy, is that of the Old Man of the Sea, riding on the poor man's back; only, unlike to the Old Man of the Sea, we are very sorry for the poor man, very sorry; and we will do almost anything for the poor man's relief. We will not only supply him with food sufficient to keep him on his legs, but we will teach and instruct him and point out to him the beauties of the landscape; we will discourse sweet music to him and give him abundance of good advice. Yes, we will do almost anything for the poor man, anything but get off his back.

-Leo Tolstoi.

We boast of vast achievements and of power,

Of human progress knowing no defeat,

Of strange new marvels every day and hour

And here's the bread line in the wintry street!

Ten thousand years of war and peace and glory,

Of hope and work and deeds and golden schemes,

Of mighty voices raised in song and story,

Of huge inventions and of splendid dreams.

Ten thousand years replete with every wonder,

Of empires risen and of empires dead;

Yet still, while masters roll in swollen plunder,

These broken men must stand in line-for bread.

OF

-Berton Braley.

F the many injustices and wrong growing out of our modern industrial system, none is so grievous or so inexcusable as that of the employment of young and innocent children who should be in the school room, the playground or the home; developing their physical, mental and moral well-being. Surely, in our day, with the wonderful productive forces of steam and electricity, and the highest developed machinery found anywhere on the globe, there is not even a semblance of an excuse to exploit the labor of children of tender years for profit and private gain to the detriment of the manhood and womanhood of our day, and the future of those who are now too often dwarfed through the rapacity of conscienceless employers.

-Declaration of A. F. of L. Convention, 1901.

*

LINCOLN said no man was good

enough to govern another man without that man's consent; and I say to you that no man or body of men is good enough to control another man's job without the other man's consent.

Because, a man cannot be a free man so long as it is within the power of a few men at their pleasure to shut down the industries of a Great Nation and make millions of willing workers walk the streets in idleness.

-Edward Keating.

THEN, when, in the history of the world, did the slave owner make any extraordinary effort for the freedom of his slaves: When was it during the old system of freedom that the lord and baron stood for the rights and the defense of freedom of their serfs: When did the slave-owner of the South fight for the freedom and the rights of black slavery? And, pray, just imagine chambers of commerce, employers, business men contributing their money for full-page advertisements, once, twice or three times a week in the newspapers for the open shop, to protect the freedom and the rights of the employes.

-Samuel Gompers.

WHEN these Federal judges come

to Washington at the expense of the taxpayers, what do they do? They meet with the Chief Justice. They are dined every evening somewhere. They are run to death with social activities. They are killed with social favoritisms before they get down to business. That is especially true in respect to the genial Chief Justice we have, who dines out somewhere every night. I would like to pause right here to say, Mr. President, that I do not believe there is any man who can stick his legs under the tables of the idle rich every night and be fit the next day to sit in judgment upon those who toil. Honest though he may be, he cannot get away from the atmosphere that will surround him, and ninety-nine times out of one hundred, it will affect him and get him in the end.

-Senator Norris.

IF there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it crack. -Wendell Phillips.

No movement of humans has ever been put to a greater test than the American Trade Union movement. Tried through the fires of antagonism, bitter and relentless, by a system of corruption, of attempts at subordination-presumably under the guise of the friendship and consideration drive has been made against our movement and our men. It is not necessary for me to enter into details, but a movement that has survived all the bitterness, all the antagonism that could be leveled against it, a movement that has stood its ground against corruption of the most gigantic character, a movement that still faces the work unafraid, determined take one step backward, not to raise the foot in that direction, or to raise the foot at all except to plant it one step farther in the progress and freedom of the human family.

*

-Samuel Gompers.

to

I AM a preacher of the gospel. I

stand at the bedside of mothers and children. The saddest funeral is that of a little baby whose parents stand beside the casket and say: How can a God of love stand for this? I say it is not a God of love but the industrial conditions that make 240,000 of those funerals. If the pulpit pleaded for the women and children of Belgium, I say in God's name let us plead for the women and children of America!

-Rev. C. S. Lackland.

*

ALL these things, we find tend to

produce industrial unrest, with all its consequent and far-reaching ills. There is, therefore, no gainsaying the fact that labor has had many grievances, and that it is thoroughly justified in organizing and in spreading organization in order better to protect itself against exploitation and oppres

sion. We say frankly that if we were wage-earners we would be unionists, and as unionists we would feel that keen responsibility of giving the same attention to our trade union duties as to our civic duties.

-Statement of Employers on U. S. Commission, Industrial Relations, 1915.

Rich and poor, at home or in the Army, should be under common orders to work or fight as necessity may demand. This habit once contracted by the peoples of the earth would soon make an end to war. Everybody then would be able to see that wars do not pay and act accordingly.

-Senator McLean, in speaking on Soldiers' Bonus Proposals.

scorn

VERY full-blooded young person has in his arteries a certain amount of scorn. Literary young persons have usually directed this against philistinism, the middle class monotonies, and any provincial obtuseness to those finer values discriminated by the cultured and by those who possess Art. But in our day the fullblooded young persons have got their scorn direct against a more important evil - against the ground-plan of money-competition built on industrial slavery which orders our civilization and makes all our judgments of value, even the most cultured, impure. Indeed, we suspect everything that is called culture we suspect it of the taint of pecuniary elegance.

We have armed our critical judgment with Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, perhaps the greatest book in our day, for it combines a new flavor in literature with a new and great truth in science. This theory has taught us how to see through culture. We know something about knowledge. We have been put wise to sophistication.

-Max Eastman.