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1916

THE RAILWAY PROBLEM

permanent international tribunal. The threat of a great railway war, even if a temporary peace is patched up, should lead American statesmen to study how they may establish an industrial court to which the claims of contending parties can be submitted and the decisions of which can be enforced as the decisions of other courts are enforced. The first step-it might prove the final stepwe outlined in The Outlook of August 23. This would be the organization of a court whose duty it would be to familiarize itself with industrial conditions, and whose right it would be, on the complaint of any party or without waiting for a complaint, to investigate industrial conditions in any corporation on whose peaceful and efficient operation the welfare of the community depends. To this court should be given power to subpoena and examine witnesses and require the production of books and papers and to prepare and publish the results of its investigation with its judgment thereon. It is possible that such official publication would create a public opinion sufficient to compel acquiescence in its conclusions. When the Supreme Court of the United States decided that an income tax was Constitutional, the citizens began preparations to pay the tax; when the Supreme Court changed its mind and decided that the income tax was unconstitutional, the citizens stopped paying the tax, and those who had paid received their money back. In this country, for the great mass of citizens, public opinion is all the power needed to enforce law.

If in the case of railways and other public service corporations public opinion should not be sufficient, the next step should be taken; the decision of the court should be enforced by the full power of the Nation. It would be easy to enforce the decisions of such a tribunal on the corporation, for it could be put into the hands of a receiver exactly as it is put into the hands of a receiver if it refuses or fails to pay its debts. But how, it is asked, could the decisions of such a tribunal be enforced against. a labor union? I reply, by the same process by which the fulfillment of other contracts is enforced in courts of law.

Freedom of contract does not mean that parties are free to keep or to annul their contracts as they please. It simply means that they are free to make or not make them. But when they are made they must be kept. A citizen is free to enlist in the navy or

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refuse. There is no press gang in America. But if he enlists and deserts in time of peace, he is imprisoned; if he deserts in time of war, he is liable to be shot. A man may marry or not marry, as he will; but if he marries he cannot desert his wife when he gets tired of her. The law will compel him to fulfill his contract and give her support, and if he refuses to fulfill his contract and give her support the law will put him in prison. Nor is he left free to decide what support he will give her; the court decides that for him. If a contractor contracts to build a road or put up a building, he cannot, when the work is half done, abandon it because it does not pay; the court will mulct him in damages if he fails to fulfill his contract, and in some cases the court will require specific performance of the contract and punish with fine or imprisonment the failure to perform it. Collective bargaining has in organized labor taken the place of individual bargaining. A few leaders acting for thousands of workingmen agree for them on what terms the workingmen will do their work. It would be quite in accordance with the principles of Anglo-Saxon justice that those who make such a bargain should be compelled to see it fulfilled, and that if they enter into a conspiracy to prevent the fulfillment of the bargain they should be regarded as criminals and treated accordingly.

It would be grossly unjust to prevent or punish a strike if workingmen were left without any other means of redress for their wrongs; but it would not be unjust to prevent or punish a strike if an impartial tribunal were established to which they could appeal for justice and which would be clothed with power to compel justice to be done to them.

It would be intolerable to give the railway managers autocratic power to determine whether or not they will operate their railways. It is equally intolerable to give that autocratic power to the railway employees. The railways are the public highways of the Nation, the railway managers and the railway employees are alike the servants of the Nation, and it is for the Nation to determine by a properly constituted tribunal on what terms and conditions the railways shall be run. I hope that before this issue of The Outlook reaches its readers Congress will have worked out some scheme by which the present threatened railway war may be avoided. Even if that is done, it will still remain the duty of the American people to

work out some scheme by which the peril of such a railway war may be prevented in the future.

I see but two alternatives to the plan above outlined:

1. Compulsory profit-sharing; a law regu lating the maximum dividend a railway may pay to the owners; a law regulating through a commission the hours and conditions of labor; and a law compelling a division between the owners and the employees of all profits above a reasonable dividend and a reasonable wage.

2. Government ownership and operation. LYMAN ABBOTT.

AN ATTACK ON THE MOON

The Outlook in its issue of August 16 published an article on "The Moon and the High Cost of Living" from the pen of Mr. Lewis Edwin Theiss. In this article Mr. Theiss attempted to discuss with good-natured concern the effect of superstition upon American farming.

Apparently many of our readers have curiously misinterpreted his article as an attack upon American farming in general and upon the farmers of Pennsylvania in particular. We can answer for Mr. Theiss that nothing was further from his mind nor from the minds of the editors of The Outlook when they published his discourse upon the unregener

ate moon.

The criticisms of Mr. Theiss's article which have come to us can be divided perhaps into three classes. The authors of many of these letters seem to resent Mr. Theiss's comments as those of the "superior" city man venturing in unfamiliar fields; others seem to be of the impression that the superior country folk have been frankly pulling Mr. Theiss's urban legs, doling out to him tales of superstitious beliefs in a laudable attempt to hoax a newcomer in things agricultural. Still a third class writes in the defense of the unattacked farmer by declaring that the same kind of superstitions of which Mr. Theiss complains can be found with as great a frequency along Broadway as in the byways of the back country.

Now the city man who ventures upon a farm is quite as fair game for satire and fun as any other human being who invades a new field of industry. The city man who, when informed that his country neighbor had

bought two expensive new silos, expressed at fervent hope that they would not die, was only one of a legion of well-intentioned blunderers in country districts. The farmer who instinctively resents advice from such outsiders can cite many instances to justify his thought and attitude.

We confess that, despite all this, we are still persuaded that Mr. Theiss is only too accurate in his belief concerning the prevalence of superstition upon the farm. We say this without any effort to contradict those of our correspondents who contend that an equal amount of superstition is prevalent in our towns and cities. And it is extremely probable that the superstitions, both urban and rural, which have endured for at least two thousand years, through all the varying changes of government and religion that have taken place in that interval, will continue to dwell in our land long after Mr. Theiss and his critics have passed beyond the realm of journalistic controversy.

Mr. Theiss in his article refers to those who have been unable or unwilling to profit by the so-called new science of agriculture as men with "granitic mind." He tells how these men of "granitic mind" borrow their ideas from their fathers, and how these ideas have in each generation set as hard as plaster of paris. We wonder whether in writing this Mr. Theiss realized that this same problem of the ancestral incubus confronted the farmers of the Roman Empire as directly as it does our American citizens to-day.

"I observe a practice which I learned from my father,' said Agrasius, not only never to shear my sheep, but not even to have my own hair cut, on the decrease of the moon, for fear that I might become bald.'" So speaks a character in Varro's Rerum Rusticarum." We are quoting from "A Virginia Farmer's" delightful volume on

Roman Farm Management”—an annotated translation of the agricultural treatises of Cato and of Varro. Now Varro in much of his advice concerning farming is a modern of moderns. In the preparation of seed-beds and the application of the practice of green manuring" he could teach much to many of our present-day farmers; but, like the men of whom Mr. Theiss has complained, he also was subject to the delusions of moon power. He wrote (we are still quoting from the translation by A Virginia Farmer "): "The lunar seasons also must be considered. They are divided into two terms, that from the new

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1916

"HIS SUPERFLUOUS EXCELLENCY"

moon to the full, and that from the full moon to the new moon. . . . Some agricultural operations may be undertaken with more advantage during the increase of the moon, others during the decrease, as, for example, the harvest or cutting of wood."

In com

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village had become dry, and here was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the god Thor. These men were seeking water with a divining-rod.

We wish it could be said that this modern survival of an ancient lightning myth was the

menting upon this passage, "A Virginia only superstitious remnant adhering to our Farmer" writes:

The rural confidence in the influence of the moon upon the life of a farm still persists vigorously; thus, as Pliny counseled that one wean a colt only when the moon is on the wane, so it will be found that the moon is consulted before a colt is weaned on most American farms to-day; for that may be safely done, says the rural oracle, only when the moon's sign, as given in the almanack, corresponds with a part of the almanack's "moon's man or anatomie" at or below the knees, i. e., when the moon is in one or the other of the signs Pisces, Capricornus, or Aquarius; but never at a time of day when the moon is in its "Southing."

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Surely this is unprejudiced testimony from a writer whose every word betrays a scholarly familiarity with both the theory and the practice of farming.

There is another superstition, to desert the moon for a minute, as ancient in lineage as any having reference to the progress of Diana, which Mr. Theiss might have cited in his indictment of the granitic mind. We should not be at all surprised to learn that a belief in this curious survival tentatively exists even among some readers of The Outlook who have been no nearer the country than their corner grocery store. An instance of its very lively existence has been well described by John Fiske in his "Myths and Myth-Makers :"

An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had assumed the likeness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain pointing to something in the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceeded to try the experiment, but with no variation in the result. Something in the ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not pass over that spot without bending down and pointing to it.

My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, as I perceived that these men were engaged in sorcery. During the long drought more than half the wells in the

modern civilization. Until the time comes when it is unnecessary for such excellent agricultural papers as the "Rural New Yorker" or the 66 Progressive Farmer " patiently to explain to some of their readers the folly of farming by the moon, and until our city dwellers cease to shiver at the thought of a broken mirror or of thirteen at table, it will be difficult for any part of our country wholly to free itself from the charge of superstition. Such an educational process as Mr. Theiss asked for in his article on The Moon and the High Cost of Living is the only solution that exists for this distinctly superfluous problem. A discussion of the percentage of superstition among farmers is no more invidious criticism than the discussion of the percentage of farmers having blue eyes and brown hair. We have all sinned together in prolonging these curious survivals of a darker faith and an older time.

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"HIS SUPERFLUOUS EXCELLENCY"

James Bryce in his "American Commonwealth" dubs the American Vice-President "His Superfluous Excellency." Perhaps if the office could be made more useful and less ornamental we would have a less dim memory of some Vice-Presidents and of many candidates for the office.

How many of our readers, for instance, can offhand say in what year and with what "running mates" the following gentlemen ran for Vice-President-they all ran within thirty-six years and on Republican Democratic tickets: Henry G. Davis, John W. Kern, Nicholas M. Butler, Arthur Sewall, Whitelaw Reid, W. H. English, John A. Logan?

or

Before the political conventions of this summer The Outlook, under the title "Hit or Miss," gently pointed out that it might be worth while to spend a little time, thought, and care in selecting candidates for the VicePresidency, and that it was unwise for a party to stake its political all on the life of one man. This editorial adjuration had just about as

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A newspaper paragrapher, commenting on our remark that the Vice-Presidency is not a joke, says that some Vice-Presidents have made it so. Rather, one feels, the reason lies in the American happy-go-lucky way of looking at things not of instant importance, together with the fact that, as a Vice-President rarely has anything to do except to preside with dignity over the urbane Senate, he is usually even more out of the Presidential running when he : has served his term than he was before. It has been proposed to make the Vice-President a member of the Cabinet or an official representative of the Administration in Con

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gress. Perhaps college debating societies might take up the important question, How shall we make our Vice-Presidents useful as well as ornamental ?

One agreeable echo of our "Hit or Miss " editorial came all the way from Honolulu. Our Hawaiian contemporary, the "Commercial Advertiser," prints a sound and vigorous editorial and historical review of the subject, quoting especially from Bryce's exposition of the insignificance of the Vice-President as compared with the importance of the Speaker of the lower house. We quote the comment

of the Hawaiian paper:

The true secret of this difference in place between these two presiding officers, it is ventured to suggest, lies in the fact that the ablest men, real leaders, such as Carlisle and Tom Reed and Blaine and Roger Q. Mills, are invariably chosen as Speakers, while neither the political leaders nor the ablest men in the parties are invariably chosen as Vice-Presidents.

We heartily indorse the conclusion drawn : "There is no politics in this matter; it is above politics, and should interest every one regardless of his politics."

B

THE RAILWAY CONTROVERSY: ITS

PROGRESS

EFORE these lines can reach our read

We re

ers the country will either be plunged into what we believe will prove to be nearly as serious a condition as that of civil war, or President Wilson will have succeeded in averting that war by persuading the contending parties to yield as to some of their demands and to submit others to arbitration. ported last week how this controversy arose. For at least a year the four great railway trade unions-namely, the engineers, the firemen, the trainmen and brakemen, and the conductors-have been making demands upon the railway managers for certain increases of pay and certain modifications of conditions of work. The two parties could not agree, and the railway unions threatened to strike. The railway unions are now stronger than they have ever before been in their existence. Formerly the unions acted independently although sympathetically in labor controversies. The sympathetic affiliation of the four groups of wage-earners employed in operating trains has now been changed into an

almost organic union. In a general railway strike to-day all conductors, trainmen, engineers, or firemen who are members of their respective unions, whether they run passenger trains or freight trains, will be called out. Many people seem to be of the impression that the strike is simply to be a freight strike. This is a mistake. The leader of one of the unions was quite correct in his facts when he said, as reported, that an effective strike would stop every railway wheel in the country.

The President originally proposed, as we reported last week, that the men be paid upon an eight-hour basis instead of a tenhour basis, and that the other elements of the discussion be submitted to arbitration. The railway managers declined this proposal, asserting that every question at issue should be submitted to arbitration. The men replied that, as they had been at work for one year while asking for improved conditions and. increased pay, they were not willing to leave the question of pay on an eight-hour day (Continued on page following illustrations)

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GENERAL SERRAIL, COMMANDER OF THE ALLIED FORCES IN GREECE General Serrail is seen at the left; at the right is General Vambrakakis of the Greek Army

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