demands and differences of opinion. But conferences of this kind implied in practice the existence of some form of association among the employees and their representation by influential leaders. It implied as the result of a successful conference some sort of an agreement defining the terms of employment for a specified period; and it implied also the recognition of a set of rules which would help to determine the justice of the conflicting demands of the economic litigants. It implied, in short, the organization of both employers and employees, a definite theory of the economic relations between them and of the social and economic issues involved in their disputes. Like every serviceable piece of practical machinery its successful working embodied a creed, and it could not make any very permanent conquests, until that creed was defined and somewhat generally accepted.

Senator Hanna did not seem to be the man to give an explicit and persuasive expression to such a creed. He was not a student of economics. He had no knowledge of the history of industrial conflicts in other countries and other times. His general economic point of view was that of an extreme individualist who wanted public interference in business confined to the encouragement of private and class interests. Nevertheless, the desirable creed obtained a rough but very effective popular expression at his hands, and it did so because in his own life he had always lived up to the creed which he explained and advocated. The wholesome aspect of all his thinking was the close, the inseparable relation between it and his own personal experience. In so far as his business and political life had restricted his personal experience, his theories were correspondingly partial and inadequate. But in all the human aspects of business his personal experience had been large and edifying; and the thought in which it was reflected became luminous as well as sincere.

The ideas contained in his capital and labor speeches of 1902 and 1903 had for years been lurking in his mind. They had received occasional and very partial expression in his conversation and letters. But no immediate practical exigency had arisen which compelled them to overflow, and the only references to the labor question in his earlier speeches had been

prompted by the vindication of his own personal relation with his employees. But between the spring of 1901 and the summer of 1902 he was, as we have seen, actively interested in several attempts to settle labor disputes by the use of certain methods. These experiences fermented in his mind, and stimulated his thought. Even then his ideas might have gone unexpressed, had he not consented, as usual without premeditation, to address in August, 1902, two Chautauqua meetings. The speeches delivered at that time, an article in the National Magazine on "Socialism and Labor Unions" and a final speech made before a labor union in Columbus, Ohio, in April, 1903, constitute his longest and most important utterances on the labor question. They deserve careful consideration, not merely for the light which they shed upon their subject-matter, but because they enable us to understand Mr. Hanna himself very much better. For the first time in his public career, some of those essentially social values, embodied in his personal life, received explicit expression.

He almost always began with an account of his own practical experiences with a prolonged and embittered strikethat of the Massillon coal miners in 1876. This one terrible instance, nearly thirty years before, had taught him to see the waste, the futility and the criminal danger of allowing such conflicts to settle themselves without any recognition of the endangered public interest. He had believed ever since that some effective machinery should be provided for the settlement of industrial disputes, and he welcomed the program of the Civic Federation, because it recognized a public responsibility in the matter and attempted seriously and intelligently to grapple with it. In his own words the Civic Federation was merely trying to apply the "Golden Rule" to the adjustment of such a quarrel - which meant that each of the two contestants should not oppose the legitimate demands of the other and that each should abandon any practices of their own, inimical to the best interests of society.

The employers, on their side, should recognize that unions were an indispensable and useful agency, not merely to protect labor against capitalistic selfishness, but for the gradual creation of a better understanding between the wage-earner and the wage

payer. Mr. Hanna never went so far as to advocate a thoroughgoing policy of recognizing and favoring union labor, but the tendency of his doctrine looks in that direction. If the laborer can obtain his fair share of the industrial product only by organization, his attempts to organize should be approved rather than opposed. "The natural tendency," he said in his Chautauqua speech, "in this country, ay, and in the world over, has been the selfish appropriation of the larger share by capital. As long as labor was in a situation which forced it to submit, that condition would to a very large degree continue. If labor had some grievance and each laborer in his individual capacity went to his employer and asked for consideration, how much would be shown to him? Not much. Therefore, when they banded together in an organization for their own benefit which would give them the power, if necessary, to demand a remedy, I say organized labor was justified." It is essential, he adds, that employers should admit the existence of such a justification, and establish a foundation for joint action and mutual good-will by conferring with the unionized laborers and their representatives and entering into agreements with them.

He had the utmost confidence in the practical value of such conferences. Frequently misunderstandings would be avoided, unreasonable demands mitigated, and comparative good-will restored merely by a frank discussion and ventilation of mutual grievances. "It is truly astonishing," he says in his article on "Socialism and Labor Unions," "to consider what trivial disagreements have occasioned some of the most serious strikes. I have seen two parties stand apart, each with a chip on his shoulder, defying his opponent to knock it off and moved by emotions and considerations that were very far from promoting the welfare of either party. There is more to overcome in the way of feeling on the part of capital than on the part of labor. Capital has been for many generations intrenched behind its power to dictate conditions, whether right or wrong; and the abrogation of this power is not going to weaken in the least degree the strength of the hitherto dominant party, for a manufacturing corporation can make no better investment than in the hearty coöperation and good feeling of its employees."

While he justified the organization of labor in the interest

both of the wage-earners and their employers, he feared certain of its tendencies. He regarded it "as an imported article" which had aroused a natural prejudice against itself in this country, because its policy was that of aggressive warfare against capitala warfare which was to be relentless and which was "at variance with American institutions," because it introduced a spirit of mutual suspicion and antagonism instead of a spirit of mutual confidence into the heart of American industrial life. But he believed that the program of the Civic Federation would "fit the unions to their surroundings and conditions in the country." The Federation would not countenance sympathetic strikes, the boycott, or any restriction of production in order to enhance prices. If the unions insisted on these policies, they would be converting themselves into industrial and social outlaws. As a condition of recognition they must make themselves worthy of approval by abandoning all practices based on an essential antagonism between their own interests and the demands of industrial efficiency and social well-being. He hoped to make the Civic Federation a constructive educational agency, which would gradually teach the two contending parties how far they could properly go without destroying a fair basis of conciliation and fruitful coöperation.

His purpose was fundamentally to re-create good feeling between employers and their employees by means of a personal intercourse and the mutual application of the "Golden Rule." "My theory is," he said in the Chautauqua speech, "that when you bring the men to you, every employee will feel that you are treating him as a man. Appeal to his heart and to his mind and you will succeed in establishing a bond of confidence." In all his utterances on the question he reiterates this fundamental idea. "Every man is vulnerable in some part," he says in his article on "Socialism and Labor Unions," "and it is a rare thing to find any man proof against methods of kindness and justice. If every man is treated as a Man, and an appeal is made to his heart as well as to his reason, it will establish a bond of confidence as a sure foundation to build upon. This is the condition aimed at by the Civic Federation-absolute confidence on both sides. Many of the ills that have crept into labor organizations are importations from older countries and will

not live here because thay are not fitted to our conditions. While labor unions may have proved a curse to England, I believe that they will prove to be a boon to our own country when a proper basis of confidence and respect is established. We have, perhaps, been too busy and too engrossed in our rapid expansion to look upon the ethical side of this question, and have forgotten that two factors contributed to the prosperity of our nation, the man who works with his hands and the man who works with his head-partners in toil who ought to be partners in the profits of that toil."

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It will be admitted, I think, that the foregoing program is based upon a sound analysis of the immediate causes of ordinary strikes and that it prescribes a remedy which offers in the present emergency a fair chance of being useful. Of course the machinery whereby Mr. Hanna proposed to bring organized capital and organized labor together broke down. The Industrial Department of the Civic Federation did not continue to be an effective agency either for the settlement of labor disputes or for the establishment of better relations between American wage-earners and wage-payers. The employers came in the end to resent its unofficial interference. The unions no longer allow their leaders to coöperate with the Federation. The ill-feeling and the mutual suspicion between the two contestants have increased during the past ten years. But it is not fair to dismiss the whole program because the Federation itself did not prove to be as permanently useful a conciliating agency as it was during Mr. Hanna's leadership. The results which Mr. Hanna hoped to accomplish informally by the agency of a private organization backed by public opinion evidently demand a more powerful and authoritative engine of the social will-one which he himself might have been loathe to call into action.

Nevertheless it would not be fair to attribute the temporary success of the Industrial Department of the Federation merely to Mr. Hanna's personal and political influence. This factor counted, but it would not have counted much, unless Mr. Hanna had been disinterestedly engaged on behalf of what he believed to be a practicable plan of conciliation. His success was due, that is, not merely to his personal hold on business