HOW WOULD YOU HAVE VOTED?

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says that the first duty of a doctor in an emergency case is to save the patient's life, not to prescribe a system of moral and economic conduct for him in the event that he survives. The "World" continues:

It is the duty of Congress to take such practicable means as may be adopted at once to remove the excuse for a strike. Whatever further adjustments are necessary can be left for the future. That is the common-sense method, and Congress is displaying far more intelligence and patriotism than its critics. . . .

A philosophic fire department might plausibly contend that its chief duty was not to extinguish the flames, but to frame a fireproof building code and strengthen the laws against arson. That would no doubt be an admirable public service, but in the meantime the building would burn down, the fire would communicate itself to other buildings, and a whole community would be left homeless. We prefer the Congressional way of putting out the fire first, and determining later whether it was of incendiary origin or due to defective wiring, and whether the owner can legally collect his insurance.

Yet why disregard arbitration? The action of the President and of Congress in so doing is defended by the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) "Gazette" as follows:

The Congress is the proper and the most competent board of arbitration. In this case the Congress had so much courage that it refused to dodge the responsibility and by a show of cowardice follow Congressional precedents of half a century standing.

The President and the Congress declined to delegate their authority and elected to stand or fall in the estimation of the public by the exercise of their own convictions.

Whichever side had lost the greater number of points by the decision of a specially created board of arbitration would have alleged prejudice, incompetence, or lack of understanding. Nothing would have been settled. The issue would have been left open for the promotion of other disagreements involving similar causes of discussion.

The President and the Congress could not have created a board and conferred upon it greater authority than they themselves enjoy. Having the authority, it was their duty to act. The Congress has had this eight-hour question before it for several years. It has been dis

cussed locally, and in very many cases determined by States and cities. No doubt every Senator and every Representative has experimental knowledge of the working of the rule. The evidence has been available to them all. No members of a possible board of arbitration should have been better informed. The Members of Congress are chosen for the specific purpose of regulating the business intercourse of States and individuals. . . . The principle of arbitration is in no way affected by the action of Congress.

With characteristic felicity and force of phrase the New Republic" thus dis

courses:

The eight-hour day, like the phrases "due process," "reasonable," "living wage," has not a definite and unequivocal meaning. It represents a general principle of action, a kind of norm for the industrial world. It cannot be applied rigidly, but its general intention can be made a standard in concrete cases. Congress should declare for it, and so establish in the minds of employers, men, and public authorities a standard to which they can appeal. The modern community requires an official declaration of what constitutes a civilized working day, and the President is right in believing that eight hours meets the consensus of opinion among those who have thought humanely and disinterestedly on the subject. . . . Mr. Wilson has done what high statesmanship in a democracy must do: he has interpreted the demands, principles, and interests of group interests, and lifted them up into a National programme. He has shown how to turn an emergency to constructive purposes.

The political necessity which compelled the President and a Democratic Congress to act as they have is thus explained by the Detroit. "News:"

President Wilson is running on a platform which recognizes the eight-hour day. That clause was placed in the Democratic platform because the leaders of the party believe that the American people are willing to recognize eight hours as the proper work period. The President cannot withdraw from that position.

nation.

The credit for the settlement must go to the White House, affirms the "State," and continues:

It is the President who has first brought the negotiations to a clear point where public opinion could crystallize on the eight-hour-day issue. It is the President who, after striving vainly to effect a settlement by other means, has undertaken the delicate but highly necessary task of arranging the matter by new legislation.

To the criticisms of Mr. Hughes, the Republican nominee for the Presidency, the Brooklyn "Citizen " replies as follows;

It appears by what Mr. Hughes said at Nashville yesterday that if he had been in Wilson's place the country would have been treated to a railroad strike. . . . Mr. Hughes would have insisted upon arbitration, and, rather than make any such compromise as Wilson effected, would have thrown the whole country into turmoil. . . . Far from being like Wilson, a man who looks to the actual conditions upon which any piece of legislation is to take effect, he would fall back upon some hypothetical principle and allow the whole fabric of society to be shaken rather than depart from it. . . . With Mr. Hughes, Government does not, it is thus appar ent, involve, as all our statesmen have thought, compromise and the giving way at one point so that some other point of importance may be obtained. . . . He would rather see the whole country go to smash than yield a point.

There are, no doubt, not a few of our voters who will applaud this. It will strike them as an evidence of strength when, in fact, what it is evidence of is incapacity for the work of government. But that it will not be approved by the majority is certain.

In an editorial in "Commerce and Finance," by Theodore H. Price, the well-known economist, we read the following:

We don't know anything about the writer of the subjoined letter, which is clipped from the Sun," but we print it just to show that there are two sides to a much-discussed question. We rather think that the well-fed men who sit in parlor cars and become apoplectic over the "menace of the labor unions" would change their views if for just half an hour they had to fire the locomotive that is pulling them. We wish they could all read Philip Gilbert Hamerton's classic book on "Human Intercourse." It was written long before trade unions had any political power, but in the chapter on "Confusions" it deals with one's inability to appreciate another's feelings in a way that reveals the cause of most misunderstandings and teaches a lesson that would prevent many quarrels if it were heeded. But we are forgetting the letter that led us to remember Hamerton's book. Here it is:

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"I have been reading your editorial articles on the threatened railroad strike. Why is it that most of them blame the employees? I am the wife of a locomotive fireman and I know what kind of a life they have about as well as any one.

"It is not more money that is the main thing they are fighting for, but shorter hours. Do you think twenty-five to thirty cents an hour is such a very high rate of wages for a man who stands and shovels tons of coal and rakes and fixes up raging fires, tends to steam, watches signals, and tries not to make black smoke, especially on some of those very warm days we have had?

My husband has come home fairly fainting many a night. He leaves the house every morning at five o'clock and gets home any time from seven to eleven o'clock at night. He has worked all summer every Sunday and asked to be relieved last Sunday, the first one all summer, and was refused.

"Tell me what other employment has such hours, day in and day out, Sundays, holidays, every day just the same? Most lines of employment give some respite from the work. A man is a slave on the railroad, and I think he is entitled to his right to fight for shorter hours."

HOW WOULD YOU HAVE VOTED? NO.

So would the New York "Times." Despite the fact that in general it supports President Wilson, it describes the legislation at Washington as "A National Humiliation,' and speaks of it as follows:

The blackmailing of the whole Nation under the threat of a strike, the extortion from a Nation's Legislature of a special Act granting the demands of the brotherhoods without time to inquire into its justice or its practicability, puts upon the country an intolerable humiliation; it reduces 100,000,000 people to a condition of vassalage, no longer permitted to make laws that freely express their will, but held up, as the highwayman's victim is held up, and forced to instant compliance with the terms imposed upon them by the leaders of organizations comprising only 400,000 of their number. . . .

The brotherhoods deceived the public for a time; they appear to have deceived the Presi dent. They insisted that their demand for eight hours was not arbitrable. It is the general opinion that the President erred grievously in not insisting, with equal firmness, that they consent to arbitration. Instead he appears to have yielded to their demand at once and then to have employed his time in seeking to compel the railroads to yield. An increase in wages is eminently a fit matter for arbitration, certainly

for deliberate examination and inquiry, to the end that justice shall be done. That the President should have insisted on. The railroad presidents proposed arbitration, were willing to arbitrate; the brotherhoods refused. That is the net situation, and the public understands it perfectly.

What ought to have been done? The Boston "Herald " tells us :

Either the President should have referred the whole question to Congress in the first place, after requesting a two weeks' truce from brotherhoods and railroad presidents, or he should have insisted on arbitration at any cost. By trying to make a personal triumph of the affair, and by having to appeal to Congress only as a confession of personal failure after the date for the strike was actually set, Mr. Wilson has thrown the whole railway situation literally into the danger of intermittent anarchy, and American industry into the unsettling pool of politics.

Referring to ex-President Roosevelt's and Governor Hughes's experiences, the Lewiston (Maine) Journal" says:

Some one says that a lockout or strike prevented by surrender to special privilege elicits a worse peril ahead than it professes to avert for the present. As the Kaiser blundered seriously when he refused to arbitrate the reasonableness of the hell which he projected on Europe, so Wilson's obedient Congress loses to the common sense futurity of all American business by legally putting present prosperity on the unfair list-thus hastening the severity of a certain reaction. . . .

Having turned down the Roosevelt principle of reference and public regulation, we now get plausibility instead of ability in Congressional and executive life, while rate regulation loses to concentration of political power in the White House. . . .

When legislative price-fixing was undertaken in New York seven years ago, Governor Hughes won the applause of right-minded men and women by vetoing such a bill and did effective work for the consumer by creating a splendid Public Service Commission, which has regulated monopoly power and effectively helped the consumer. But Wilson had and has no such economic forecast.

The Chicago" Evening Post" inquires:

Are four rich and highly organized labor unions the dominating force in this country, or does government still rest in the Congress of the United States? . . .

The offense is no less because it is committed by the aristocrats of labor instead of the aristocrats of capital.

Riding along unopposed for years, from wage

advance to wage advance, riding at last over the President himself, these brotherhood chiefs have become mad through the arrogance of their conceit. . . .

They have taken their fight from a contest with the railroads to an open assault upon the rights of free government.

A railway strike is an important thing. But more important is the upholding of the principle that the Congress of the United States cannot and will not abdicate its power to legislate for all the people at the bullying demand of an organized class-benefit-seeking minority.

The Boston "Journal" charges that the President and Congress have submitted to a hold-up of the Government of the United States, a Government never before coerced into a decision. The "Journal" proceeds:

They have nullified the principle of arbitration in the United States, a country that professes to live and let live by that principle.

They have defied and defeated public opinion in a country which by its Constitution is committed to government by the rule of public opinion.

They have thereby betrayed the faith and defeated the ideals of the people whom they were chosen to serve.

Most of us have favored the eight-hour day, and expected that some time it would be given the sanction of law. But we did expect it to come by free choice. We never anticipated it as a ransom for the country's life. . . .

Terrible as would be the consequences of a great strike, there are sacrifices worth making in the preservation of a free government. If it came to a choice between a country-wide railroad strike and an abject surrender by the Government, the people would choose the strike and fight with a will.

There are worse things than a strike, affirms the Philadelphia “Ledger," and one of them is legislation changing the basic conditions of a great industry when such legislation is enacted under threat in response to a pistol pointed at the Government. "This is not government by injunction, but it is government by intimidation." The "Ledger" concludes :

petuates itself indefinitely. But no matter to what gigantic proportions the figures may grow, the "factor of safety "never changes. Always there is (1) the conservative basis of the original loan; (2) the constant improvement in the security resulting from the gradual liquidation of the principal; (3) the guarantee of the association, fortified by its bank stock held as security; (4) the double liability of the members of the association; (5) the assets representing the capital stock of the bank, equivalent to at least five per cent of the amount of bonds outstanding; (6) the joint liability as guarantors of the eleven land banks in the event of default by any one of them; and (7) Federal supervision at every point in the process. The fact that these bonds are to be certified by the Farm Loan Commissioner; are to be free from National, State, municipal, and local taxation ; and are to be a lawful investment for all fiduciary and trust funds and accepted as security for all public deposits, should make them an unusually attractive investment.

Suppose peculiar local conditions make it impossible to form an association, how is the individual farmer to get his loan? The Act provides that in such a case the Farm Loan Board may authorize loans to be made through approved corporate agents, who must indorse them, and shall be entitled to expenses and a commission for so doing.

There is also a provision in the Act authorizing the Farm Loan Board to charter "jointstock land banks." This is criticised as setting up a "rival system of capitalistic banks," and as offering an opportunity to evade the co-operative idea and some of the other good points incident to the "associations" and "Federal land banks." It is true that one of these privately owned joint-stock banks may make farm loans for any purpose to any person and for any amount; but the security must be the same as in the case of the Federal land banks-a first mortgage for not more than fifty per cent of the value of the land and twenty per cent of the permanent improvements; its operations must be confined to its own State and one contiguous State; it cannot exact from the borrower any charge or commission not authorized in the act; it cannot charge him an interest rate greater than 6 per cent per annum nor more than one per cent above the rate at which it is selling its bonds. These bonds carry no certification by the Farm Loan Commissioner, and their total issue is limited to

fifteen times the capital and surplus of the issuing bank, instead of twenty times, as allowed to the Federal land banks. It is therefore manifest that they will be less desirable investments and must be sold on a higher interest basis, which means a higher rate to the original borrower. It is therefore extremely doubtful, to say the least, whether they will pre-empt the good territory and restrict the Federal banks to the "financial deserts." There would seem to be quite as much justification for the anticipation that they will be hopelessly handicapped in the competition with the Federal land banks, and will have to confine themselves to loans which the Federal land banks are precluded from making.

Our knowledge of the various factors entering into the situation is not sufficient to enable any one to prophesy with any degree of safety. Undoubtedly a foundation has been laid. Willing hands are already at work on the superstructure. If errors or omissions are discovered as they probably will be there is an ever-existent power of correction. The Act ought to provide a safe and attractive outlet for hundreds of millions of accumulated capital; reduce by many millions the annual interest charge on the farming industry; stimulate the improvement of existing farms and greatly increase the area of tilled land; encourage the "back to the land" movement; and increase the quantity and reduce the cost of foodstuffs. Whether it shall actually do these things, and to what extent, depends largely upon the mental attitude of the people. It is not desirable that honest criticism or helpful suggestions should be discouraged, but it is highly desirable that such criticisms and suggestions should be founded on knowledge and expressed with sincerity and fairness.

When any measure which has been long under discussion finally becomes law, there always arise critics to point out its damning errors and prophets to foretell its inevitable failure to accomplish the results intended. Criticism and prophecy are two of the easiest, cheapest, and freest things in the world, and there are few indulgences which give more pleasure to their devotees. Manifestly, therefore, they should not be curtailed. In pri

vate affairs and personal matters it is usually unwise to answer the critic, while counterprophecy is a waste of time under any conditions. But in public matters it is perhaps (Continued on page following illustrations)