it an air of what may be called primary worth. That is to say, land values are essentially non-reducable-land will not take unto itself wings and fly away, and there is always an air of stability and intrinsic worth about it which does not obtain in most other forms of investment. And while we would not intimate that it only takes muscle to run a farm successfully, we yet believe that a man who has spent his robust manhood, or the best years of his life, can yet "get an acre and live on it" with a great deal of satisfaction, comfort and profit. It certainly does not take much book "larnin" to "tickle" the soil between the rows of corn or around the other vegetables, with a hoe, and there are a few localities in our country where, with only moderate effort, a man can raise from the soil a good wholesome living.

We are constrained to believe that among railway managers and owners of today that these outward manifestations are indicative of an inward desire

that they are the promptings of humanitarianism and show a growing belief in an universal brotherhood. Many a man may be perfectly willing or even anxious to save if the way to do so safely were shown to him; but seemingly the safety of investments is so difficult to find out and often those which are supposed to have every appearance of being perfectly solid and reliable, turn out to be terribly the reverse, that it is small wonder that men lose confidence in almost every sort of offering in that line and so fall into the habit of "spending as they go" or of knowing how much they are worth by counting what is in pocket. Truly, saving is in no uncer

tain sense a duty-not only to oneself if without dependences for in the natural course of time, if no provision for the future is made, the poorhouse or some other charitable institution will be the last home, and in which case one is being cared for by people whom he never benefited in the least. Most people count such an ending in life as among the most regretable of all ways of ending this earthly sojourn.

However, in a more far-reaching, wider and deeper sense do we consider the mandate of save as being incumbent on railroad men. (And we wish to be understood as being perfectly well aware of the fact that the line of demarkation between saving and stinginess, or between economy and waste, is as well defined as between day and night.) When we contemplate the vast amount of money -cash-paid to the railway employés of this country every month, and of the years this has been going on, and of the vast residue that might have resulted from this had a liberal economy been practiced, we incline strongly to the belief that not only might a goodly number of the railways of the United States be now virtually owned by the employés, but many of the vexed questions which 'have and are engaging the attention of the very brightest minds and deepest thinkers would never have come up, or possibly would have arisen in a very much modified and less intricate form. Nor do we believe but what the future is just as tense, holds potentialities and possibilities more far-reaching and important than the past, and the economical hand of labor has but to reach out and grasp with firm hold a share of the prosperity that is to come.

of the Federation were looked upon with suspicion, or as utopian; subsequent history has also proved this view to be erroneous. Its aims and intentions are no longer doubted, but are subjects of general national commendation and confidence. Indeed, the intent of the

Civic Federation may be regarded in some sense as a counter action or irritant of the National Manufacturers' Association. This latter association was quite active when the Civic Federation was started, and has since grown and flourished until it seems it has borne its fruitage (whatever that is) and is certainly not proceeding with the velocity it once had. Indeed, two wings of the Association have seemingly been evolved, one of which, the conservative, veers strongly toward Civic Federation ideals, or away from the very radical wing of the movement.

The work of the Civic Federation has been and is one of deeper significance than a mere present settlement of differences of wages in any particular direction; it aims to discover some foundation on which can be built industrial peace. The concensus of opinion among its members seems now to that this can best be conserved in this country by a form known as the 'trade agreement,' under which employers and employed meet directly through their accredited representatives and make their proposals, try to understand one another's point of view, learn to recognize one another's fundamental rights, and then settle by 'give and take' those practical questions which are matters of bargaining rather than of conscience or conviction." It is a well-known fact that when the opposing forces of capital and labor agree to come together and submit their differences to each other "face to face" it is a pretty sure harbinger of peaceable settlement. Or, as one of the noted labor-leaders puts it, "it is better for employer and employed to get together and talk a week than for them to fight by means of strike or lockout for a year." This, as we understand it, has been and is the aim of the Civic Federation, and it is certainly interesting and cheering to see how heartily the leaders of labor and the representatives of capital, in this recent public-spirited organization, have come to esteem and respect one another.

In the recent public meeting of the Civic Federation we see the mighty captains of industry, the noted leaders of

labor, and those other representatives of what we may call the great public. such as President Eliot of Harvard, Archbishop Ireland and others. Mr. August Belmont, who was chosen president of the Federation, has recently come into a good deal of public notice in connection with the troubles with employés of the Subway, and in the settlement of which no fault has been found, with him. His remarks at the Federation dinner were manly and to the point, promising in brief language, but with evident sincerity, to use his best endeavors and efforts for the work of the Civic Federation and for the promotion of the principles for which it stands. We know that the Federation numbers among its membership some of the very best friends of trade-unionism-men like Colonel Kilburn, Mr. Robbins and others, who believe with President Roosevelt when he points out the fact that "under our system of State and Federal Government,. it belongs chiefly with the States to deal with labor problems and conditions. Nevertheless the Federal Government can in many ways set a good example of intelligent regard for the advancement of the interests of wage-workers. The general usefulness of trade-unionism is recognized among men employed in the government service, but such unions must not interfere with the equal rights of other public employés who do not choose to join private and voluntary organizations." We know that the Federal Government has an opportunity to deal with questions relating to labor upon the most approved and enlightened plans, and thus to set an example which may have influence upon State legislatures in dealing with similar questions. It is to be hoped that the Civic Federation will take the hint conveyed in these wise words and let its influence be felt in those State legislatures where men prominent in its councils are regarded as being those whose convictions could be wisely followed. It seems a natural thing also that legislation of this character should originate in State Legislatures rather than be left wholly to the National Congress, because of the fact that the former

body is nearer the people and its members are supposed to be in closer touch and know more of the needs of those whom they represent. The great doctrine of brotherhood in which most of the members of the Civic Federation believe may seem to some utopian and unreal, and while, as the able editor of the American Review of Reviews states, "it is perfectly true that lofty generalizations will not settle the hard workaday problems that men meet in the carrying on of their business affairs-and while it is doubtless true, as John Mitchell holds, that for the present, in matters industrial, the best safeguard for peace may lie in the ability to fight-the man who does not see how valuable it is to establish kindly personal relations, and to cultivate a love of justice and a sense of mutual regard, is a man not only of low conscience, but of narrow and meager mental development. There remain some heads of great corporations and some large employers of labor in this country who regard with distrust, and even with abhorrence, the leaders of organized labor; yet no impartial judge at the Civic Federation dinner would have assigned to the labor leaders any lower rank, either in character or capacity than the capitalists and financiers who sat at the same table with them, or the numerous representatives of the press, the church and the university. Undoubtedly, in directness and force, the labor leaders were better public speakers than any of the other elements that made up the body. The great object of our American society, whether political or industrial, is to promote the general welfare and advance the common good.

We did not begin with classes in this country, and we must not end with classes. We must not cease to believe in the right education of every child, and we must make it a constant object of public policy to remove so far as possible the obstacles that would interfere with the moral and intellectual as well as the industrial advancement of every

workingman's family, whether in town or in country. And to a gratifying extent we are making progress toward this ideal. Vast as are becoming the fortunes of many individuals through their control of productive forces, the excessive centralization of wealth in few hands is more than counterbalanced by the growth, on the other hand, of diffused comfort and, above all, by the growth of the general intelligence. One of the greatest of all the benefits that the organization of labor has bestowed has been its training of men to think, reason, read, speak effectively in debate, and act together under the rule of the majority. Thus unionism becomes a part of the training of men for the duties of American citizenship, and for activity in all the relationships of a country like ours. One of the incidental evils of unionism in some foreign countries is its tendency to fix men as members of a class in their entire attitude toward the life about them. The freedom of conditions in America should in the future as in the past act as a corrective against this crystalization of men into classes. It is theoretically possible that the workers themselves may be, to a very large extent, stockholders in a corporation from which they derive their wages, and that thus, by a process of economic evolution, the men may actually become the capitalists, with no sharp opposing line of difference between the administrative organization on the one hand and the operative or working organization on the other. Everything that adds to the intelligence and skill of the worker will increase his productive capacity and his earning power. With his training for politics under our American system, the worker may be reasonably certain that in due time the laws of the country will not in any manner operate to his detriment."

These are wise words, and we look earnestly forward to the future actions of the Civic Federation, believing it will fulfill the high expectations of the public, the employers and the employed.

nation to do so as it would be for an individual to do such a thing.

The second part of the immigration problem, that of our treatment of aliens after having been admitted, is a field that has either been much neglected or shunned by those whose lifework, in a large sense, has been the development of the human family. Truly this is a very intricate and far-reaching question for the general government to study and worthy the best thought and largest heartedness of our people. For the most part these aliens neither know our language nor do they have the remotest idea or conception of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship in a free country; nevertheless they possess traits of character and integrity of physique which might be assimilated with similar qualities in our people to the lasting good of future generations. It certainly would not be an unwise determination on part of our scholars to study this alien population in all its various qualities-its spirituality, its hopes and aspirations and to ascertain its relationship in its new environments to that it left in its former home. Not all are ignorant, but many are much more learned in the arts and sciences than the average of those who make up the populace with which they will mingle. So it seems as if our sociological economists do not consider the standard of life of the aliens from the standpoint of the alien. They fail to impress upon his mind the ideas of his former life and existence in a way that might lead up to a desire in him to conform and imbibe of the spirit of freedom of this his adopted country, and show him that it is a freedom which carries with it an amount of individual responsibility to which he has never before been subjected and in which the chief source of his freedom must develop. He should be taught that while his former habit was that of doing the will of someone else, his future actions must in large measure be evolved from a sense of inherent rectitude of the action itself and as it bears on the corresponding rights of others. It seems we often, or perhaps constantly, fail to impress upon the alien mind the

esteem and sacredness with which we prize the privileges of individual and collective liberty which we enjoy, and as illustrating the point the story goes that a Russian in Chicago, who used to believe Americans cared first and foremost for political liberty and would certainly admire those who had suffered in its cause, finds no one interested in his story of six years' banishment beyond the Antarctic circle, and is really listened to only when he tells to sportsman the tale of the fish he caught

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during the six weeks of summer when the rivers were open. 'Lively work then, but plenty of time to eat them dried and frozen through the rest of the year,' is the most sympathetic comment he has yet received upon an experience which at least to him held the bittersweet of martyrdom."

It is easily seen how a lack of sympathy in this direction and a seeming indifference of the blessings of liberty we enjoy, tends to confuse the minds of the foreigner in both directions, and which may easily lead his mind into ways and thoughts contrary to a proper evolution of his future understanding of citizenship. As showing this lack of tutellage and adaptability of the alien to mingle his former life in the great stream of our national life, there comes a story from New York that is pathetichideous, perhaps-of a young Russian Jewess who was employed as a stenographer in one of the offices downtown, where she became engaged to be married to a young man of Jewish-American parentage. She no doubt felt keenly the difference between him and her newly emigrated parents, and on the night when he was to be presented to them she went home early to make every possible preparation for his coming. Her efforts to make the menage presentable were so discouraging, the whole situation filled her with such chagrin, that an hour before his expected arrival she ended her own life. explanation of her act was that, although the father was a Talmud scholar of standing in his native Russian town, and the lover was a clerk of very superficial attainment, she possessed no standard by which to judge the two

men.

The

She neither understood nor realized the great difference in favor of her father's probably profound attainments and the smattering of current attainments of her lover, and this lack of standard can be charged to the whole community; for why should we expect an untrained girl to be able to do for herself what the community so pitifully fails to accomplish? And herein is the aid of the scholar invoked and neglect of the voluntarily assumed obligations of the government condemned. As to the tangible beauty and worth to be derived from a close, patient, and scholarly study of the deeper and more spiritual side of the immigrant problem, Miss Jane Addams has to say this: As scholarship in the first half of the nineteenth century saved literature from a futile romanticism and transformed its entire method by the perception that the human is not of necessity the cultivated; the human is the widespread, the ancient

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