Steel Works at Pittsburg, the Cramp Works and the Baldwin Locomotive Works at Philadelphia, the Patent Office and the President at Washington. It may be thought surprising that the owners of these various works were willing to show them to this body of inquisitive strangers, yet in only one instance was permission refused to inspect a factory. If a similar body of Americans had gone on a like quest through Great Britain or the Continent, I don't think everything would have been thrown open to them as it was done here. It speaks volumes for the supreme confidence of the Americans in themselves that they took the attitude expressed by one of them to me in the words, "See all you like and welcome, and beat us if you can."

Each delegate had been supplied by Mr. Mosely with a list of questions to be answered, which form an excellent guide for their investigations. The delegates showed great diligence and industry at their task; they worked hard and compiled voluminous note-books recording their observations, and so much were the notebooks in evidence that at one factory the Carnegie Steel Works, I think it wasthose who were conducting them around "kicked," and the note-books had to be shut up. The questions the delegates had to study were divided into: (a) Early training of the workers; (b) General condition of workers outside the factory; (c) Relations between employers and employed; (d) General questions which relate mainly to the working of the Civic Federation of the United States, and the desirability of establishing such an organization in England. Many of the questions are beset with difficulty, while the answers to others stand out with obvious clearness, and a month in the country would give the answer as well as a year. This applies to many of the questions under section (b); for instance, take question 32: "Is the American workingman more sober than the British?" Without going into the question of actual sobriety, it is unquestionably clear that the American drinks less than the British workman. In some factories visited by delegates in the course of their circular tour, beer or spirits are absolutely forbidden up to the conclusion of working hours; where that rule is not put in force, men very seldom drink beer at their midday meal. Coffee is the

usual beverage. Then I have spoken to numbers of employers on the subject of men being late at work on Monday mornings, as is so much the case in towns like Northampton, England, where there is practically no work done on Mondays, and even on Tuesday morning the men do not appear to have recovered from the effects of the holiday. Such a thing would not be tolerated in the States; the regulations appear everywhere the same—a strict record is kept, wages are docked if men are late, but that does not mean that they are allowed to make a practice of coming late. This is not tolerated. A repetition of these offenses and dismissal follows. "We won't keep men who drink or who come late as the result of it-that's all there is to it," were the words of one of them. When we come to look at statistics, we find that what has been impressed and borne in on us so forcibly by what must necessarily be rather cursory observation is borne out by figures. The British workman drinks just twice as much as the American. Per head of the population the consumption is as follows:

I have taken the alcoholic strength of wine at 15 for both countries, and the strength of beer at 4 for the United States and 5 for the United Kingdom. Represented in money, we spend annually more on drink than in the United States£58,500,000 more on beer alone.

"I guess you put a brake on your progress with your beer," was a remark I heard the other day. Several large employers I spoke to were emphatic in their opinion that beer was bad to work on. They think that it is heavy and acts as a sedative; dulls rather than stimulates. One would think that to the bracing air of this country it would be even more suitable than in England. One often speculates whether a sedative would not be of advantage to some of these feverish workers, especially in New York, this "City of Unrest." Whatever difference of opinion there may be regarding answers to some of the other questions, there can be none to this, as to whether the American or

British workman drinks the most. We are not concerned here with what might be done with the sixty-six millions if we were to reduce our drink bill to that of the Americans, which would enable us, for instance, to establish a fund for old-age Densions, together with paying off the national debt in about eighteen years; but in the comparison of the working power of these two competitors we are concerned in considering whether the one, as the American put it, is not handicapping himself, or putting a brake on his progress, with this load of beer.

One of the points on which the delegates of the Mosely Commission are unanimous is as to the advisability of our having an organization established in England similar to the Civic Federation, and they will recommend the various unions they represent to take steps to carry out that object. There are few of the other fortyone questions set for them to answer on which they will all agree; there are some that it will be almost impossible to answer. "Is it true that the average life of the American workman is shorter than that of the English workman?" Connected with this question there are others, as to whether the American does a larger amount of work in early manhood, but deteriorates young, thus shortening his working years, and is thrown out of work at an early age. To get at the facts regarding the average life of the workman here, I consulted some of the actuaries of the leading life insurance offices, among others Mr. Emory McClintock, of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. He very kindly placed all the available figures at my disposal, but admitted that there were none which would exactly answer my question. An investigation is now being made by a number of insurance offices acting together, in which the various trades and occupations are being classified, but the results will not be totaled up until next June. If this were published, it would be a help to answering the question accurately, but at present a final answer is not obtainable. The opinion of an authority such as Mr. McClintock should carry weight, however. He is clearly and emphatically of opinion that the average American workman lives longer than the English, and in this he was supported by the others I spoke to

on the subject. Similarly accurate or conclusive answers can hardly be obtained on the other questions as to whether the American is thrown out of employment at an earlier age. There is perhaps even a still greater objection on the part of American employers to take on men advanced in years than there is in England.

At the same time observant visitors here, not excluding these Mosely delegates, fail to recognize the fact that many of the men engaged in arduous employments after a few years take up other employments less arduous. The puddlers of Pittsburg, for instance, never remain long at their very highly paid but extremely severe work. After from three to five years of it they go off with their savings to a more easy occupation, and thus the impression is given that the men get superannuated at an early period. From the lowest to the highest, men change their occupations with more facility here than in England. The workingmen who strain their vitality to the utmost at high pressure at highly paid employments. frequently retire to the cultivation of a small farm, or to occupations in which their acquired skill is applied to making some labor-saving machine do the hard work for them. How often during this pilgrimage have I heard the delegates say that the men do not really work harder here than in England! Here they are often human attachments to machines; they press the button, the machine does the rest; they have just to see that the well-lubricated machine does the work smoothly, without stop or blunder or hitch. cases, instead of being the I uman handle of the machine, they would in England have been the working parts; the wear and tear would have come more directly on their muscles and nerves.

In many

There was a considerable amount of difference of opinion among the delegates of the various unions as to the amount that was to be learned in America in their respective trades. The men connected with ship building saw nothing to learn here, and went away satisfied with the superiority of the English ship-building yards. The representative of the bricklayers said that the American bricklayer laid more bricks in a given time, but that the American style of work would not be tolerated in England. The walls are so thin

that they would be condemned as unsafe in England, and the bricks are laid parallel to each other with mortar between instead of being locked together as in England. British architects insist that they must overlap in every layer. The flimsier work of the American naturally does not take as much time. English employers could not expect us, it was pointed out, to get an equal amount done when the work was much more complicated. The payment in the two countries worked out on the average to show that the American got as much for two and a half days' work as the British for a week. The representatives of several other trades, however, were greatly struck with what they saw, notably with the appliances here in the way of labor-saving machines. "We have no machine like that; we do that by hand," were remarks one often heard when going around with them. In this country, where so many factories are of recent erection, it is not surprising that they should be filled with new machinery, but there were interesting scrap-heaps to be shown in many that the delegates visited which proved how quick the American manufacturer is to throw out anything that has been improved upon. The English manufacturer is much slower to move in this respect, and he is inclined to hold on to an antiquated machine as long as he can get any work out of it. There were some conclusions arrived at incidentally by the delegates, on which they formed very definite opinions, although they did not exactly come within the scope of the Commission. The representative of the plasterers, who is a member of the London County Council, thinks that England has nothing to learn from the States in the way of civic government. They all thought the telephone service of the large cities admirable in comparison to that in England, but formed a different opinion of the postal service, one of them experimenting by timing the delivery of letters which he posted in New York to himself, with results that showed the service in London to be immensely superior.

Taking in the whole situation, seeing what one can of the workmen at work, talking to these visiting workmen who are experts in their various trades, just a few great conclusions force themselves home on the mind through a throng of

conflicting detail. The workman is very much the same man on either side of the Atlantic. His environment is what alters, stimulates, or retards his potentiality. There was a strange story told me the other day to the effect that the Westinghouse Company brought over a large number of American workmen to the factory they had opened in England, and that, after a short time, they found that the work of their imported men could be beaten by men taken from the neighborhood of the works; that the Englishman on his own ground, in fact, beat the imported American. These facts, told me as they were by Americans, appear to me very significant, but fall in with some of the conclusions that strike home as the lessons of this Commission. We do not take sufficient account of many factors in this great problem. First of all, the climate. Look at the quickening effect of this bracing atmosphere on the more lethargic peoples. Jules Verne. wrote a book, a book, "Dr. Ox's Experiment," I think it was called, which describes the galvanizing effect on a lazy German town of supplying oxygen through pipes to the inhabitants. After passing the statue of Liberty and landing at the Battery, every immigrant must experience something of the sort. A great stimulating, vivifying, energizing quality is in the air of the country. One need not drink champagne here-one breathes it. Look at the effect on the Irish or Italian immigrant. The population of Ireland is exceeded here in the numbers of Irishmen, and Irishmen have accomplished immensely more here than on the other side, while the lazy Italian develops into a plodding, strenuous worker that Italy never knew. The essence of democracy he breathes also, and the workman of to-day may be the employer of to-morrow. The employers are more accessible to their employees— there is less of a dividing margin. Question 19 of the delegates' catechism is, “Are there greater opportunities for the workingman to rise in America than in England?" "Ten thousand times more," was the enthusiastic answer of one who in his progress from having been an immigrant workman to being a millionaire can speak from the personal knowledge of personal experience. When, in considering the environment of the workers, we

come to consider the standard of their omfort in either country, I unhesitatingly say it is higher here-higher because it is more civilized. The well-paid British workman probably has more good beef to eat, more good beer to drink, but there is a smaller percentage of baths in his house, and the American workman has a larger supply of literature in the form. of cheap books, magazines, papers, etc., or, if it may be said that the English workman has an equal supply, the American is unquestionably the larger consumer of it. The various co-operative methods by which the American workmen get at their amusements are interesting; they club together for lectures, concerts, theaters, excursions, etc. Their versatility and quick-moving adaptability for going from one employment to another more easily than in old countries are remarkable, but have also their drawbacks. Their very independence has its penalty. It is too much to say that America has lost the idea of the family home as it is known in England, but is not the tendency in that direction?

This all seems drifting away from the Mosely Commission; but I think it is not. The great lessons of the quest will be found to be learned, not from any special panacea that touches the spot in a detail of piece-work or time-work, but in the great conditions naturally upspringing from, on the one side, men working on the surface of a virgin continent across whose breast"Fecundity" is writ large with fullest meaning. On the other, the

An

progeny of generations of workers toil in a confined area under conditions that have become almost inherited. There is a good deal of brag and boast and surfaceshow of energy on the one side, on the other appearances of being hidebound by labor traditions and conditions. I doubt if the average workman works one bit harder in the new country than in the old. Expeditions like this commission. cannot but work for good. Nations and continents cannot be brought too closely in conference, like the other day when representatives of the biggest industries. of America and England debated all the afternoon about an eight-hour day. eight-hour day for the workers of the world there is a flag-pole for the unions to rally to. The world has become too small a place for anything less effectual than world conferences. Ten hours in Germany, eight hours in Britain, is anomalous. The capitalists have here their Morgan. Who is to be the Pierpont Morgan of the Labor Trust of the world? The delegates will each bring back to his trade a number of detail suggestions and a mass of information; but the general verdict will not be in pointing out any great superiority in favor of America. They have been much impressed with the high pitch to which both capital and labor have been organized here. The lesson to be learned from this might naturally make for conflict in hard-fought strikes; but they have recognized in the Civic Federation an organization that could bring arbitration to bear on and to avert such conflicts.

J

The

AMES BRYCE is universally recognized as one of the intellectual forces in the British House of Commons. When he rises to make a speech, every one listens with the deepest interest, feeling sure that some ideas and some instruction are sure to come which no political party in the House can well afford to lose. Some men in the House of Commons have been orators and nothing else; some have been orators and instructors as well; some have been Parliamentary debaters more or less capable; and a good many have been bores. In every generation there have been a few who are especially regarded as illuminating forces. House does not think of measuring their influence by any estimate of their greater or less capacity for mere eloquence of expression. It values them because of the lessons which they teach. To this small order of members James Bryce undoubt edly belongs. Now, I do not mean to convey the idea that such men as these are not usually endowed with the gift of eloquent utterance, or that they cannot deliver speeches which would entitle them to a high rank among Parliamentary debaters, no matter what the import of the speeches might be. My object is to describe a certain class of men whose Parliamentary deliverances are valued by members in general without any special regard for their form, but only with regard to their substance, for the thoughts which they utter and not for the manner of the utterance. James Bryce would be considered an effective and even a commanding speaker in any public assembly, but nevertheless, when the House of Commons and the public think of his speeches, these are thought of mainly for the truths they tell and the lessons they convey, and not

1 This forms the sixth of a series of articles on living British statesmen. The first, on Mr. Balfour, was printed in The Outlook for August 16; the second, on Lord Salisbury, in The Outlook for September 6; the third, on John Morley, in The Outlook for October 4; the fourth, on Henry Labouchere, in The Outlook for October 18; the fifth, on Lord Aberdeen, in The Outlook for November 1, 1902. Other subjects of articles will be Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Sir William Harcourt, John Redmond, John Burns.

for any quality of mere eloquence which adorns the exposition. In a certain sense James Bryce might be described as belonging to that Parliamentary order in the front of which John Morley stands just now; but of course John Morley has thus far had more administrative experience than James Bryce, and has taken a more distinct place as a Parliamentary and popular leader. Of both men, however, I should be inclined to say that their public speeches lose something of the praise fairly due to them as mere displays of eloquence, because of the importance we all attach to their intellectual and educational influence.

I may say also that James Bryce is not first and above all other things a public man and a politician. He does not seem to have thought of a Parliamentary career until after he had won for himself a high and commanding position as a writer of history. Bryce is by birth an Irishman and belongs to that northern province of Ireland which is peopled to a large extent by Scottish immigrants. We are all rather too apt to think of this Ulster province as essentially un-Irish, or even anti-Irish, in tone and feeling, although some of the most extreme among Irish Nationalists, men like John Mitchell for instance, were born and brought up in Ulster, and in more recent days some conspicuous Home Rulers have sat in the House of Commons as representatives of Ulster constituencies. James Bryce has always been an Irish Nationalist since he came into public life, and has shown himself, whether in or out of political office, a steady and consistent supporter of the demand for Irish Home Rule. Indeed, I should be well inclined to believe that a desire to render some personal service in promoting the just claims of Ireland for a better system of government must have had much influence over Bryce's decision to accept a seat in the House of Commons.

Bryce began his education in the University of Glasgow, from which he passed