The

the boycott, the manner in which it conducts itself toward other unions, and its rules and general policy. verdict of intelligence concerning most of those matters is SO clear that discussion would hardly be warranted. A wise policy will prevent any labor union from discouraging the introduction of improved machinery, from refusing to accept or opposing fairly formulated efforts of employers to obtain greater loyalty from employes, from counseling against the ownership of homes, from upholding the boycott, from preventing the industrial education of intelligent youth and from permitting controversies with other unions to interrupt work or occasion inconvenience to blameless employers. That particular organizations have grievously erred in these matters is perhaps much better known than that some have stood steadfastly for sound principles.

These defects in the current beliefs and practices of some prominent labor organizations have been pointed out in no spirit of intolerance. The evils are wide-spread and serious; they must be plainly pointed out and bravely overcome; but they are not necessary accompaniments of such organizations. In fact, as to most of them the history of several highly successful unions can be cited to show that among organizations composed of the most intelligent workmen they are likely to be eliminated. It is even more true that the much less pardonable practices which involve blackmailing employers and combinations with unscrupulous representatives of Capital to rob consumers and destroy competitors are merely temporary consequences of an early recognition of strength which is not restrained by a sobering consciousness of responsibility or by ability to perceive the consequences of such injustice.

ARBITRATION THAT DOES AND DOES NOT. The conclusion is that while the labor problem must always persist, the organization of labor will continue and will increase its power to be of service not only to workmen but also to society. The principle of organization will not

only survive the defeat and destruction of those organizations which obstinately adhere to vicious principles and practices but the genuine progress of the labor movement will be substantially advanced every time such deserved defeat is administered.

Ob

While this progress is being made toward the attainment of better things and substantial results are awaited, the public properly searches for a means of preventing or mitigating the annoyances and losses that spring from the interruption of production caused by labor conflicts. Until employers and employes learn such sweet reasonableness in bargaining together as to avoid strikes how shall their number and their evil consequences be reduced? viously the demand is for a temporary remedy for a difficulty which ought ultimately to disappear. With this fact kept carefully in view it is safe to consider the remedy of arbitration. This has actually been one form. To be arbitration at all it must be wholly voluntary. The term compulsory arbitration is self-contradictory, and however it may be disguised it really means. the creation of new type of court endowed with authority to make contracts relating to labor services. Arbitrationvoluntary arbitration-is a term SO grateful to the ear to which it comes as a substitute for the clash of bitter industrial struggles that it seems ungracious not to commend it without qualification. If men cannot agree what can be better than to submit their differences to the settlement of a disinterested and impartial third party? If men cannot agree. This qualification begs the entire question. Reasonable men can agree and unreasonable men must become reasonable or be replaced, in industrial affairs, by those who are. One way in which unreasonable men arrange for their own replacement is by getting themselves into situations out of which they cannot be extricated except through the assistance of others. The adjustments of industry are too delicate to endure, without injury to all concerned, the frequent

interference of the disinter

ested. A strong personal interest is the element which is most effective in preventing irreparable mistakes. Arbitration may be the smaller of two evils, but no one should fail to recognize it as an evil. Aside from the fact that it leaves the determination of matters of primary industrial importance to persons who will neither gain nor lose by the success or failure of the industry, it is evil in its consequences, because, when there is reason to rely upon its being arranged for, that fact constitutes an incentive to making, and insisting upon, unreasonable demands. The easy going policy which consents to the submission of questions vitally concerning the welfare of an enterprise to persons who have no stake in its success naturally leads to the easygoing method on the part of arbitrators which is expressed by "splitting the difference" between the conflicting demands of both of the contending parties. This is the almost uniform result of arbitration. If you will turn to the decision and award of the recent Anthracite Coal Strike Commission you will find that that ablest and most impartial of arbitration boards was not able to avoid this nearly inevitable result. In its pages you will read the contradiction of every substantial averment of the striking mine worker. will find that the wages of the employes of the anthracite operators did not, in April, 1902, compare unfavorably with those of bituminous miners or men in other employments of similar character. You will find that the conditions of life and the standard of living in the anthracite counties of Pennsylvania was not lower than in comparable regions. You will find that the substantial averment of the striking mine workers. You will find the United Mine Workers described as a body too strongly influenced by bituminous coal interests to be a safe factor in the anthracite industry. You will find that boys voted in its meetings and gave reckless tone to its management. will find that the period of the great strike was one of lawlessness and violence, which the leader of the organi

You

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zation could not or, at any rate, did not effectively check. So much the gentlemen of the Commission gathered from unimpeached and unimpeachable testimony, and so much they clearly, concisely and fearlessly set down in the permanent record of their arduous and graciously accepted task. But after bravely announcing these facts in terms quite equivalent to declaring that the strike had no justification, the Commission yield, as any other arbitrator would have yielded and as nearly all arbitrators will yield in future controversies, to the impulse, commendable in itself, to deal generously with those who have relatively little and awarded general advance in wages!

"COMPULSORY ARBITRATION."

The term compulsory arbitration in the literal sense of the words is a verbal absurdity, but it refers to a definite idea and one fairly understood by all. Those who favor it urge that when men will not reasonably agree on a contract relating to wages or other conditions of employment, and will not agree to let some third party make a contract for them they ought to be compelled to adopt the latter course. The adherents of this view are very apt to begin the argument with the assertion that "there are three parties to every strike"the strikers, the employer and the public. They quite understate the number; there are five. There is, of course, always the public or rather the consuming public. Then on the side of labor there are always those, mistaken and misguided, perhaps, but American freemen after all, and entitled to that liberty under the law which has been described as "freedom to do as you please and take the consequences,’’ who are willing to work on the terms rejected by the strikers; as well as those who have declined to work. On the side of capital, there may be supposed always to exist some one, over sanguine, perhaps, but entitled to experiment as he would with his own, who would employ the strikers on their own terms; as well as the former employer. Compulsory arbitration shuts its eyes to both those willing to work for the re

jected terms and those willing to become employers on the terms demanded. It sees only the old employers and the old employes and would force them to continue the industry on terms very likely to be unsatisfactory to both. Manifestly, when this court of so-called arbitration has issued its decree containing the terms of a new labor contract, it must have some effective means for its enforcement. But by what process, consistent with freedom, is an employer to be compelled to pay wages that he believes must lead to bankruptcy, or employes to work on terms which they regard as so unjust that they prefer idleness to their acceptance? Such power is beyond the limits of governmental authority, as they are established in the conditions essential to the preservation of human liberty. Men must be free to tract or not to contract, to work or to refuse to work, to remain in an employment or to leave it, to utilize their wealth as capital or to withold it from the fields of production, to open their workshops or to close them, and there can be no limitation upon their rights in these particulars except as fixed by their own voluntary contracts, which does not dangerously reduce the liberties of the citizen. Public opinion may praise or condemn the manner

con

in which you or I exercise Our legal rights and privileges, and in the face of it we may be driven to act otherwise than as we would. This pressure is legitimate, and when the public is not led astray by prejudice or wrongly instructed by damagogues the compulsion of its intelligent opinion often has salutary results. There can be no objection to this sort of compulsion, and if it leads to the arbitration of individual disputes, which would otherwise have caused prolonged and bitter strikes, it probably leads to the choice of the least evil of the available ways of escape from a condition too evil in itself

not to result in some more or less permanent inconvenience. The difference between the compelling pressure of. public opinion and the exercise of governmental authority is wide. If such authority is used by officers of a government to which power to compel arbitration has not been delegated, then the government has undertaken to override its own laws, and regard for the law by the officers of government constitutes the whole difference between a despotic government and one which rests on the will of free people. The humblest American citizen and the wealthiest American corporation are alike entitled to exercise every right which they possess under the laws which the people have made, and when any particle of the power or the prestige attaching to official positions is used to curtail the liberty of either that or both is endangered. Public opinion may condemn a particular act which is not in violation of any law, and, if unanimous and strong, it will usually be obeyed; but the hand of government must never be lifted to hasten the compliance. So long as the act is legal, government and the officers of. government have no business with it. If the popular respect attaching to the most exalted office in the land has ever been made a means of compelling men to submit to arbitration the manner in which they shall exercise the rights which no one denies are theirs, there has been a misuse of official position and a precedent has been established which, if followed, will sooner or later seriously impair the quality of American liberty.

Compulsory arbitration has been rejected by organized labor, and when. Americans generally comprehend what is meant by the term they will have none of it whether through statutory enactment or by the unauthorized action of even the highest officer of their government.

Undoubtedly a conspiracy had been formed to prevent me from flunking. It had for its head W. C. Brown, vice president of the Lake Shore and New York Central Road and extended on down the line through the general superintendent to the yardmaster at the Collingwood yards just out of Cleveland.

In an unguarded moment I had expressed a desire to take a night ride on a locomotive during a fast run.

"How would the Twentieth Century do?" asked the vice president in his quick and snappy business tone.

"Bully," I replied in an off-hand way, as though plunging through dense darkness at seventy miles an hour was my customary after-dinner recreation.

"There, that will fix you; I mean it," declared Mr. Brown. "Here's your pass," as the boy who had been sent to C. F. Daly of the passenger department returned. "You take the train here in a half-hour, get a good lunch and then a fine dinner before you arrive at Cleveland, and eight miles out of there you get on the engine and ride to Buffalo."

I felt like a schoolboy caught at his pranks, but, swallowing a big lump, I hastened to the depot and crawled into a dark corner of a Pullman, thinking to escape detection. It was no use, for a man with brass buttons soon came along and thrust one of Mr. Brown's miserable telegrams in my hands. It read: "J. F. Dane, conductor train No. 26— Inform Mr. X., who is a passenger on your train, that arrangements have been made for him to ride on the engine from Collingwood to Buffalo."

"Do you have to do it?" asked Dane, a puzzled look on his face.

"If this keeps up I don't see how I can duck it," I replied gloomily.

Just as I would begin to sink into a feeling of security against detection another Mr. Brass Buttons would show up with another one of Brown's telegrams. To make matters worse, H. A. Ziessel,

division superintendent at Chicago, began to work the wires overtime after we had passed Elkhart. Finally as we approached Cleveland the baggageman came in with a yellow message which read: "See that Mr. X. is provided with a suit of jumpers, a cap and a bandana handkerchief." While I was being led into the baggage car and outfitted, the train pulled into the yards at Collingwood. There I entered the cab.

Jack Dollingshead, a somewhat diminutive fireman, gifted with Sandowic muscles, said I could sit ahead of him, the farther ahead the less chance I would have of being thrown out of the cab window. He also made a funnel of his hands and glued his mouth to my ear to inform me that we were twenty-six minutes late and there was likely to be "something doing." The lights of the Collingwood yard hadn't disappeared before that "something doing" appeared in the unexpected form of a cloudburst, which the papers said the next day was one of the worst in years.

In a trice there were three men in that cab who could not have been more drenched had they plunged into the Red Sea before the waters were parted. To make matters more delightful, the torrents of rain which struck the boiler head instantly turned to blinding steam, which sizzled and hissed like a thousand serpents and made "seein' things" at night impossible. In desperation, I crawled up behind the engineer, only to be struck in the back by a deluge of rain driven by a hurricane through the opposite gangway and window. Finally

I landed in the center of the cab and stood there dancing an impromptu hornpipe as the big monster reeled and twisted and jumped with the impact of a 500-ton train being hurled through space at a sixty-mile clip.

By the time Dollingshead discovered that there was a nail under the window sash and had extracted the same, I was standing in a river of water in the steam

room of an improvised Turkish bathhouse. When I crept up in front of Dollingshead again and looked ahead it was into black, inky, nothingness. I felt creepy. How was the ossified sphinx over on the right side of the cab to see the signals or the track? I asked the fireman if the operating rules did not call for reduced speed in such a storm.

"Not for the Twentieth Century Limited when she's behind time," screamed the little man of muscle.

"How do you do it?" I asked, thoroughly frightened as she heeled over on the off side of a two per cent curve. "Trust in luck and keep her going." They kept her going all right, and I resolved that if luck favored me it would be the last time I would go further forward than the rear Pullman. Soaked to the skin, I suddenly remembered that my doctor had told me that the one thing I must avoid at all hazards was wet feet.

"No matter where you are, or what you are doing," cautioned the doctor, "if you get wet feet don't keep 'em." So I off with my dripping shoes and elevated my feet on the hot boiler head and left them to dry out.

Dried out and the storm over, I began to take an interest in things. Having heard of track tanks and of taking water when going forty-five miles an hour, I wanted to see how it was done. Dollingshead motioned for me to get down on the cab floor and look steadily at two square holes in the forward tender plates over which iron doors swung loosely. When the water came rushing into the tank with the force of a battering-ram the doors flew outward and a second cloudburst occurred. Drenched to the skin again, but still wiser, I was compelled to repeat the drying-out process on the top of the boiler. Dollingshead apologized, but the grin on his face killed it for me.

I had just gotten myself comfortably fixed when I felt a sudden sensation akin to the bottom falling out of everything. The fireman sprang to his perch, and confided to me that we had "dropped over the brow of Ripley Hill, and were

off for a straight down shoot of twentyone miles."

"We've had rotten luck," he shouted, "and are thirty minutes late. Just watch your Uncle William over there throw her down this hill."

"Who threw that brick?" I asked the fireman.

"Brick?" he laughed. 'That was only the town of Van Kuren which we passed through."

"You'll have to show me if that thing flying at the cab was a town."

"You couldn't see it. We came down that hill twenty-one miles in thirteen minutes, better than ninety-six miles an hour."

Dollingshead was

soon engaged in raking the fire, and as we swung around a sharp curve at the bottom of the hill there not more than 1,000 feet ahead was a fiend swinging a red lantern vigorously across the track. I remembered that a 500-ton train going above sixty miles an hour could not be stopped under 3,000 feet, and so I shut my eyes and waited, expecting not to open them again in this world. Wheelock made three moves simultaneously, reversing the lever, closing the throttle and making an emergency application of air. From the sound behind us I was sure all five Pullmans and the baggage car were piling on top of the engine and tender. Dollingshead had been unable to get the rake out, and applying the air with the fire door open operated like a ten-horse-power bellows on a fiery furnace. The cab instantly became filled with smoke and lurid flames, which leaped upon Dollingshead, burning his hair, eyebrows and mustache and one side of his face. My suit of jumpers also was burned merrily.

Grasping the hose, he turned it on me for the third cloudburst of the evening. Before my conflagration was put out and the rake gotten out of the fire box, we had shot past that red light, which, we discovered, was being swung for a train coming in the opposite direction. Dollingshead rubbed oil on his burns, and glancing at the engineer ruefully, said: "Bill if you're not careful you'll burn some one up some time."