can States. The soul and vigor of this Northwestern democracy was everywhere an inspiration to Hughes. And as we went over State after State in this vast domain, with its fine sense of National unselfishness and freedom and equality and the right, I could not help thinking of poor little old New York, with the finest people in the world, but with as yet a too narrow-visioned public and political leadership.

And I hear again the genuine enthusiasm of the Northwest and the voice of Hughes as he said to them over and over: "New York and the Northwest must stand shoulder to shoulder-we go up or down together."

Suddenly, to the wonderment of many of the younger newspaper men of the Hughes party, we ran into the Western prohibition wave. Instead of receding, it is rising higher and higher. In Wyoming it shares, with the struggle over the Senatorship, the chief attention of the people. In Utah both parties have declared for it, and there is no question about the passing of the law or its enforcement. The Mormon Church will be behind it. "You know," said a leading Mormon to me, "there weren't any saloons in Utah until the non-Mormons began to move in. We are naturally a temperate people." In anticipation of the aridity which is to be, the most popular song of a very considerable Salt Lake element of the population is a paraphrase of "Tipperary :"

"It's a long way to San Francisco,

It's a long way to go.

It's a long way to San Francisco,

To the wettest town I know.

Then good-by, Tom and Jerry,

Farewell Rock and Rye,

It's a long, long way to San Francisco,
When Utah goes dry."

Perhaps I will write something more later about Utah, about something even more important than the prohibition situation in that State. Utah is on the verge of being one of the most progressive commonwealths in the Union. I know, like Vermont, it went for Taft. I know about the Reed Smoot machine, and the Mormon machine, and the Union Pacific influence, and the beet sugar influence, and all that. But the Repub lican candidate who won in the primaries the nomination for Governor this year was the Progressive nominee for Governor in 1912 -a Mormon ecclesiastic, a "stake" president with ten or fifteen bishops under him, a progressive of progressives. And thereby

hangs one of the most interesting tales in current American political progress.

The friends and foes of prohibition are to try conclusions again this fall in California. Every great vineyard in California has a great sign warning against it. But my best information is that there is a very strong probability that the first amendment proposed will win this time, and that saloons will be driven from the State of California. In Washington and Colorado attempts are being made at the coming election to modify the existing law. But nothing could be more futile than the effort. In Washington even the extremely conservative Blethen, of the Seattle Times," who fought prohibition bitterly, was out just before we came into the State with a declaration that all the power of his papers would be turned against any step backward. Like William H. Cowles, the very progressive owner of the Spokane papers in the eastern part of the State, he holds that the economic results as well as the moral results of one year of prohibition are beyond price.

And the same thing is

true in Colorado. Every witness of whom I made inquiry, including Governor Carlson, who is prohibition's most valiant champion in the State, told me the same story. The majority for it, if it were voted upon again, would be doubled and more.

Said

a prosperous and excellent citizen who took me about Denver in his car, "My cellar is But "still well stocked, and I voted wet. pointing to a corner where one of the leading saloons used to be "all these places are filled up and good business has covered every loss and more. Why, the Brown Palace Hotel never did so well. And I don't know," he said; "it's a more clean and wholesome town. If this thing comes up again in any form, I vote dry. A reporter for the Kansas City "Star," whom I met on our train, and who had been spending a week in Denver interviewing for his paper, and in the interest of the prohibition movement in Missouri, many leading bankers and merchants who had voted wet last time, told me the same story. It is dry for all of them if the matter comes up again.

It is in the air of the West-anything that injures man, woman, or child, whether it is political or economic tyranny or liquor, or whatever it is, has got to go. And there is very much of this sentiment that is naturally Republican. How, in the name of goodness,

1916

is Eastern Republican conservatism going to stand against it? If conservatism tries it again, it means another revolution and destruction. The best conservatism can do is to guide this liberal sentiment and balance it for the good of the whole Nation.

And Montana. I understand that somebody said, when the tour was being arranged, that we should slip past Butte in the night, because Butte was always a troublesome strike center. Nothing could be sillier. The Hughes meeting and experience in Butte were inspiring. There was no mass-meeting anywhere which gave expression to a more thorough Americanism. When the band played and sang, "We'll never haul the old flag down," you could hear the echo of the cheers from the surrounding hills. Montana is one of the most perfect examples of what has been wrong in American political life. For years it was a hot-bed of political corruption during the feud days of Heinze and Daly and Clarke. But this sort of thing never grew out of the heart and the mind of the people. It was the result of a greedy legal struggle over previously unsurveyed and uncharted angles of property beneath the surface which had turned out to be of enormous value. And these violently contesting economic groups sought to move legislatures and courts and the powers of darkness, each to his own behest. But that is all past now; these shady economic rights are at least legally established, the legislature and the electorate of Montana as well as the courts are lifted above those days, and the State has probably the most drastic corrupt practices act that exists anywhere in the world. Montana-keep your eye on that State. There is no commonwealth in the Northwest with greater possibilities of economic and political progress.

And

When we reached the Coast, in western Washington and California, we came again upon the trail of the Old Guard spirit and temper which brought on the Republican revolution. Now that Hiram Johnson is destined to become the Republican leader of the Pacific Coast, it is illuminating to compare his point of view with that of his reactionary adversaries. With Johnson a party is a channel for the expression of the popular will and an avenue of public service and nothing more. With his adversaries a party is a fetish, a purely theological church. The adversaries of Johnson on the Coast are mediæval in their thinking. I cannot illus

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trate it better than by alluding to the horrorstricken attitude of mind of the wife of one of the Republican candidates for United States Senator in that part of the country, who found out that one of the women workers from the East was developing a branch of the Hughes alliance among Democrats. She expressed the view that that kind of effort ought to be looked into, as very likely treasonable to the cause. The idea of a Democrat voting the Republican ticket was instinctively obnoxious! How could he? Why should he? He doesn't belong to the same church.

At the time that Hughes went through California the political situation involved for the moment an irreconcilable conflict. And he could only proceed quietly and steadfastly on his way and follow the course which he had pursued in every other State he had visited that is, accept the conduct and the escort of the at-the-moment prevailing Republican organization, and avoid taking part in local controversies, even where some local injustices had undoubtedly been done. 1910 and 1912 were good years for head-breaking, and there was a lot of it done that needed to be done. But the job this year of National leadership of a slowly reconstructing party is of a different sort. And the result in California turned out happily anyway, without the slightest intentional prejudicial effort one way or the other on the part of Hughes.

The days of political mediavalism and proscription and economic short-sightedness and trying to put it over on human folks generally are evidently done in California Republicanism also. The Progressive Johnson's splendid victory in the Republican primary, his control of the Republican organization, and his practically assured election as Republican United States Senator would seem to establish that. Don't you see that the wave of Republican liberalism has got started again all over the West?

Everywhere the trail of liberalism and democracy. Down to the southernmost point of California, where in the Exposition inclosure at San Diego, in the great peristyle of the organ, under a marvelously blue sky, with a background of buildings and foliage and parasols and women's dress of wonderful range of color-reminding you of the Stadium at Harvard on a perfect class daywith the flags blowing and the welcome from the great throat of the organ, many thou

sands of eager men and women, who seemed to have nothing to do but to listen, hearkened to the message of the man who might become by the election their great National leader. It was a vast audience of free men and free women who could actually sing "The Star-Spangled Banner," which is more than any other audience can do that I ever heard in this world-a fine, cheery people, a paradise even for old folks and babies.

What a country! As we wended our way back up the hot San Joaquin Valley with the temperature 104° in the shade-but you don't have to stay in the shade, as somebody interpolated-and on through again to the East, there rushed upon me, as frequently before, out of experiences in the West the conviction of the perfectly tremendous potentialities of the American people. Under the skin they are the same wherever you go. Can't combine efficiency with freedom? They can combine freedom with anything. What an international crime it is that such possibilities of efficiency and Americanism should lack fit organization and public guidance! So far as American citizenship is a byword among ourselves and abroad, it is solely because we ourselves permit our Government to put that face upon itself in domestic and foreign relations. The government that is pushed off its feet and its poise by class interest at home, or by barbarism on its border, or by arrogance across the seas. cannot fitly represent such a people as the people of the United States.

I have been asked since my return whether there seems to be the sort of enthusiasm for the Republican party and its leader in the Western part of the country which presages a change of administration in Washington. It depends upon how you measure enthusiasm. If by crowds and applause, we had plenty of them. If by bands, we had far more than our share. I didn't believe, and I still refuse to believe, that there are so many bands in the world as met us at stations by the way. But what I saw convinced me that the test of what the American people propose to do in November is not to be measured by political ebullience. We have had twenty years of political agitation and revolution, which, with some evils following in their train,

have been fruitful of great good on the whole to the life of the country. But I think this election is not to be lost or won by enthusiasms, but by the presence or absence of a profound sense of National duty, by the presence or absence of a firm "set" on the part of the mind of the country toward the underlying need of the country. Measured by this test, I think Hughes in the West everywhere met the sober judgment of the electorate with respect to the qualifications of a National leader. He made throughout his journey a deep impression of a firm, deliberate, straight-out man who knows how to do his duty. He aroused those reactions which lie in the practical sense rather than in the emotion of the average citizen. He made his audience think or at least pretend to think, and inspired respect and confidence rather than ebullience. He gave evidence of a deep desire to help and of great ability to help his fellow countrymen, but he marked out no easy path. "Not demagoguery, not standpatism, but hard common sense," he said again and again, is the way to peace and safety. Coolly and accurately analyze the facts in every emergency, find out what is justly and fairly demanded by the facts, and then go and do it. Everywhere he made the impression of genuineness, of downright, unassuming, abiding sincerity.

I heard a man say that whether Hughes was elected or rejected depends a good deal in the present contingency upon whether Barnum was right or Lincoln was right in his estimate of the American people. I don't think that. No matter what happens, I am sure that the qualities which Lincoln discerned and anchored to in his hope for the future of the country lie deep in the nature of our whole citizenship. I am sure also that in the great Northwest the recent suspicion of Republicanism is slowly passing away. earlier and truer spirit within the party of a patriotic and triumphant liberalism is returning. I look for Hughes to carry everything that is naturally Republican in that whole section of country in November. The psychological "set" in the West, as in the East, is towards confidence in the record and character of Hughes, and towards a return of Republicanism to power in the Nation.

New York, September 12, 1916.

W

ITHIN the recent past we have seen the Congress of the United States enacting one of the most important labor statutes ever passed, for no other reason than that a general railway strike would paralyze the business of the country and cut off the means of subsistence of millions of people if it did not pass this law. This marks a new departure in American legislative history. We have had in the past plenty of legislation enacted at the behest of special interests, representing small groups of citizens, but the fiction of free action and due deliberation has been hitherto religiously preserved. It is important that we take note of causes and fix responsibility for this departure from tradition.

The anarchy of massed wealth in the United States has long been the theme of moralists. The anarchy of trades-unionism is working its way to favor as a topic to-day. But the fact has been singularly overlooked by all commentators that the responsibility for the contempt of both for laws, ordinances, and constituted authorities rests squarely upon the shoulders of the public, in view of the public attitude toward industrial disputes.

This attitude has been one of the most callous indifference, not only to the welfare, but also to the plain rights of both employers and employees. There is no large city in the United States that has not, within the past decade, seen well-doing manufacturers employing union labor, whose men were without grievances, ruined by the closing of their works by what is called ironically a "sympathetic" strike, while the extent of the public interest was measured by the remark that. nothing could be done, since" no violence had been offered," it being considered anything but violent to bankrupt a prosperous business man for no just cause. Within the same time, in these same communities, well-doing union workmen, supporting families and paying for little homes, have been turned out without warning by lockouts, determined upon, not because of anything the workingmen had done, but because of what it was concieved they might do. And the public has disregarded the incident. For what are hunger and injustice in the absence of "violence"?

By this criminal indifference, manifest through many years and unshaken by the protests of a few far-seeing men, we, the general public, have trained two groups of citizens, second to none in their power in modern society, to the belief that justice and equity count for nothing in industrial disputes, and that the entire reliance of both sides must be upon force. Opposite as the poles in many of their views, the trades-unionist and the employer have always held one belief in common that the general public interest in labor disputes is exactly limited to their relation to public convenience, and that the moral factors in them do not appeal to the public mind. The effects of this have been the more disastrous in view of the increasing ethical temper of society in dealing with other social questions. If a workingman's child is knocked down by a passing vehicle, a modern ambulance hurries to the spot, and the little one enjoys, in a modern hospital, care which the wife of the President could not have commanded a half-century ago; but the father of that child may be turned out of the shop where he makes his living by an employer desiring to "get the union," and society cares nothing for the fact or the consequences. If a drunken man pauses and sings a maudlin song at 1 A. M. on the walk in front of the employer's house, an officer-or two, if necessary-comes at once; but if his plant is closed by a "sympathetic strike," society cares not," so long as no violence is done."

From this results the undying bitterness of both sides in industrial disputes. There is none of the victor's usual good nature here. "We won," says the employer, "but it wasn't because we had the right of it, though the union hadn't a leg to stand on. We won because we could get on without the men who went out, and they knew it. If our contracts had not been just as they were, we should have been beaten, with all the right on our side." We won," says the victorious union official, "but it wasn't because we had a good case, though we were only fighting for the necessaries of life. We won just because the warehouses were empty and the mills full of partly finished orders.

If they hadn't given in, we could have ruined them, and they saw it and came down."

By this indifference, we, the general public, have trained up two sets of men who are, in the simplest meaning of the words, dangerous to society. For that man is a social peril who honestly believes that his rights count for nothing in the minds of his fellowmen, and that in matters as fundamental as his right to do business or his dependence on his work for his living he has no resource except physical force.

The popular philosophy of labor disputes is very clear and very simple. It declares that the right to work or quit and the right to hire and discharge at will are natural rights of man. To abrogate the first would be to introduce involuntary servitude; to interfere with the second would be to deprive the individual of the right to do his will with his own property. Therefore we may do nothing "so long as no violence is offered."

This view is so shallow that we should not have been contented with it for an instant had it not accorded with our mood of moral laziness. To realize this let us look at the relation of the public to the railways, and to their continuous operation.

Every railway starts, not with a private exercise of private rights, but by a public grant of one of the powers of a sovereign state, for certain purposes, to certain individuals. This is, of course, the power of eminent domain, by which the public is partner of every railway company in the United States through every hour of every day of its existence. Here is Smith, running a grocery under the natural rights of man; he wishes to enlarge it, and Jones refuses to sell the lot next him. But the railway comes from the State capital and takes Jones's lot forthwith at a price fixed by the

court, because the railway has had granted to it by the sovereign people the right of eminent domain. The money to build a railway comes from the people-part from a generous land grant, more from savings banks and insurance companies which invest their incomes in railway securities. Then the people pay the rates the railway charges. The little town changes. The slaughter-house falls to ruin; the butcher buys his meat from the great packing company to which the farmers ship their cattle and hogs. The wagonmaker dies; his son goes to the city, and gets the sixth fire on the left side in the wagon factory there. The city dairymen go out of business, and a milk train takes milk from the village every morning. In the course of years the whole business and industrial structure of the country is built over because of the railway, which was not only built by the people's money and sustained by their payments of rates, but which is founded on a delegated governmental power.

The right of the people to compel the continuous operation of that railway is one with the right of self-preservation. It is one with the right of defense when attacked by a foreign foe. In our fatuous indifference to the moral rights both of employers and of workingmen, we have had the experience which from the beginning of things has overtaken those who have found that an injustice to others only buries the barbs of injury in one's self, and that in the very act of ignoring the rights of others we perforce ignore our own. The way out of our present tangle must be sought along the line of assumption of our neglected responsibilities and practical vindication of our own neglected yet undoubted rights. And our first step must be the clear recognition of the fact that we ourselves have sowed the seed now.coming to harvest.