out of action without affecting in some degree every other part. In spite, however, of the strike, the steel industry has continued throughout the month to limp along fairly well.

During the course of the strike there has been some violence. At Gary, Indiana, where disorder could not be held in check by the local police or the militia, Federal troops were sent under the command of General Wood. The troops of course have taken no side in the struggle, and apparently have not encountered the animosity that the local police or the militia have. Though some of the extreme radicals have tried to excite hostility to the Government by misrepresenting the use of troops as an attempt to suppress the workers, there are indications that even the men on strike regard the soldiers as protectors of their interests as well as of the public's.

Strike leaders have complained that the right of free assemblage and free speech has been denied in certain districts where men are on strike. There have also been bitter attacks upon the State Police in Pennsylvania. Inasmuch leaders generally have been unfortunately undiscriminating in their hostility towards State Police, the charges of strike leaders are largely discredited.

as labor

Arguing in support of the strike before the Senate Committee that has been investigating the steel strike, Mr. Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, declared that W. Z. Foster, the most conspicuous of the steel strike leaders, had been converted from the revolutionary syndicalism that he formerly preached. Inasmuch, however, as Mr. Foster had frankly announced his intention of converting the American Federation of Labor to revolutionary doctrine by "boring from within," Mr. Gompers's testimony has not changed the general opinion that the steel strike has been engineered, not for the purpose of improving labor conditions, but for the purpose of revolutionizing industry. That the strikers have failed to receive the sympathy of the public was early evident. Radical leadership, which has brought about a decrease of production at a time when increase is desperately needed, is bringing the whole cause of organized labor into disfavor.

Strikes in Greater New York. One day-October 13-it was reported, on the authority of the Secretary of the Central Federated Union of Greater New York, composed of local unions affiliated under the American Federation of Labor, that there were 220,000 workers out of work within the area of Greater New York, either because they were striking themselves or because the strikes of other men bad thrown them out of work. Even within such a limited area of this country it is impossible to get exact information concerning strikes. From the most authoritative sources of information accessible, we conclude that there were at the beginning of the last week in October at least 118,000, probably more, wage

How many other workers were on strike during this period it is impossible to ascertain. Scores of little strikes have been occurring of which no record has been made. Estimates of these unclassified workers on strike at different times in Greater New York alone have varied from 7,000 to 50,000.

To state the number of strikers out or workers idle conveys, however, no idea of the injury which a strike causes. It is not that so many people are idle and receiving no income, it is not even that those on strike alone are failing to produce the goods which mankind needs or are failing, to distribute them where they are needed, that is the only evil; in addition there is the evil that comes from stopping or clogging the whole machinery of productive industry. For example, the strike of the longshoremen has disarranged world commerce. On one day it was estimated that there were 495 vessels in New York Harbor that could not move because the longshoremen refused to work and were making it dangerous for others to work. Not only did this mean that there were some 25,000 people in New York City waiting for vessels bound for Europe or South Amervessels bound for Europe or South America; it also meant that there were goods and mail piled up in New York Harbor and elsewhere awaiting shipment.

Strikes in Various Parts of the Country. How many strikes there are in the country it is impossible to tell with any accuracy. Indeed, the situation changes kaleidoscopically. The disease that has struck our industrial life breaks out in one place as it subsides in another; one strike is scarcely over when another one begins. On the Pacific coast there was during October a tailors' strike, which by

the end of the month was in process of mediation. In Los Angeles the street and interurban railway employees were on a strike. In Seattle there has been a serious building-trade controversy which was on the verge of becoming a strike at any moment. Throughout the country some ten strikes broke out in the small packinghouses. In Massachusetts there have been strikes in two shoe factories, involving perhaps twenty-five hundred people. In Philadelphia there have been a number of small strikes. In Norfolk, Richmond, Petersburg, and Portsmouth, Virginia, there was a strike on the

street-car lines, which was settled in the third week of the month. There was also a settlement of a strike in Butte, Great Falls, and Anaconda, Montana, which had continued since July, and of the copper-miners in Ducktown, Tennessee.

Just before the middle of the month there were, according to the Division of Conciliation of the United States Department of Labor, sixty-two strikes in various parts of the country which were at that time unadjusted. Of course these were in addition to unnumbered smaller strikes.

The Need for Americanism. Experience has shown that no class or group within the community can be trusted to exercise great power without restraint. When the abuse of power by capital became intolerable, the American people roused themselves and put that power under control. Now certain leaders and organizations of labor are attempting to exercise similar power; and in their turn they must learn that the people, not any groups within the people, shall be

supreme.

This is the issue raised by revolutionary leaders and by the mass strike. The object of these leaders in calling such strikes is not primarily to raise the wages or better the conditions of the workers, but to coerce the public by making whole communities so uncomfortable that they will bring pressure to bear on employers to yield to these revolutionary leaders' demands.

The issue thus raised is the ancient one of the right of the majority to protect itself.

It is imperative that the people should equip themselves with laws and especially put into authority officials that will maintain this right. Legislative representatives who refuse to pass laws for the protection of this right because they fear the so-called labor vote are false representatives and should be turned out. Executive officers in State or Nation who are timid or vacillating or incompetent in enforcing the laws that exist are as dangerous to the public as cowardly or incompetent officers in battle are dangerous to an army, and they should be replaced by men who can and will act.

But, more than that, labor men, espe cially newcomers to this country, who are not inheritors of its traditions of liberty and law, should not be left to be the prey of revolutionary agitators and

propagandists. The American people must awaken to the necessity of carrying on a counter-propaganda of Americanism.

It is an elementary and self-evident truth that the preservation of American ideals depends upon the acceptance everywhere

of the principle that above the interests of any individual or group or class is the welfare of the Nation as a whole.

"NOTHING to nothing in the ninth

and nobody at bat" is the way one of the delegates representing the public has described the situation in the Industrial Conference at Washington as this is written.

Unkind though it may seem, this is not far from an accurate summary of the efforts of the men and women representing the public, the employers, and the employees of the country who have been meeting at the President's summons "for the purpose of reaching, if possible, some common ground of agreement and action with regard to the future conduct of industry." One has only to look in on a single session of the Conference to realize its difficulties. At one of three long tables in the high white assembly hall of the Pan-American Building are the men who represent the employers of the United States. At a second table are the selected spokesmen of the American Federation of Labor. They wear the same determined look which you see on the faces of the employers, and they are just about as well dressed. Samuel Gompers is here. He looks like a dignified old Indian, and he says "ain't." The third table is lined by men who look as if they had been chosen from the other two, and, indeed, there are representatives of both capital and labor in the public group. Here are Bernard Baruch and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., financiers who walk to the Conference from their hotels, while the labor delegates ride; and here are Charles Edward Russell and John Spargo, Socialists. Here is Charles W. Eliot, who at eighty-five has as keen a mind as the youngest man at his table, and here is Judge E. H. Gary, with the grim eye, high cheek-bones, and facial immobility of Victoriano Huerta.

Some one of the public group rises and reads a proposal from manuscript. Some one from the employers' group takes the floor declaring that his people could never accept such a proposition, and submitting another proposal. Whereat some one from the labor group rises to protest that the employees could never tolerate the suggestion made by the representative

of capital. A weary, baffled look is seen on the face of Secretary Lane, the Chairman of the Conference. A motion is made to adjourn in order that the proposals may be threshed out by the General Committee of Fifteen, composed of five delegates from each of the three groups. The Conference adjourns after sitting only fifteen minutes.

This sort of thing has gone on day after day until one can hardly find fault with the Washington wag who said, "The best thing this Conference does is to adjourn." The truth is that the difficulties in the way of the organization and procedure of the Conference are tremendous. A heterogeneous body of men and women of all shades of political opinion, and, in the main, with little experience in parliamentary procedure, is called together and expected to do in a few days or weeks what experts would hardly attempt weeks what experts would hardly attempt without a year or two of preliminary study and planning.

The first thing the Conference did was to appoint a General Committee of Fifteen and adopt the resolution that "all matters presented to the Conference shall be considered, without further act of the Conference, as referred to the General Committee for its consideration." However, it was also agreed "that no communication shall be reported from any committee with recommendations unless such recommendations are concurred

in by a majority of each group recommended in such committee." This rule that the Conference may not act without the majority support of all three parties to it seems thoroughly sound, but it is this rule which has prevented the Conference from obtaining concrete results. Time and again the public group and the labor group have been in agreement, only to have action blocked by the employers' group. Occasionally the employers' group and the public group have favored action which the labor delegates have blocked. But it is noteworthy that in the main the public group by a majority vote has on most propositions lined up with the employees rather than with the employers. The question of collective bargaining is a

good illustration of this. The employers have held out for their right to refuse to deal with labor delegates chosen by their employees from outside the particular shop in which controversy may arise. The public group have supported the labor men in their contention that the em ployees in any plant have a right to be represented by whomsoever they may choose as spokesman, whether he is ac tually employed in that plant or not.

The chief obstacle to an agreement springs from the fact that the representatives at the Conference are essentially delegates. That is, they are there to represent constituencies which know pretty definitely what they want and which are not ready to make very large concessions. On the whole, the representatives of labor seem to have gone to the Conference with a clearer idea of just what they wanted than the representatives of capital. But neither group has gone to Washington with very much of the conciliatory spirit. Both the employers and the employees have been too much interested in some of the immediate conflicts in industry, such as the steel strike, and too little interested in working out general principles for the conduct of industry which will secure justice for all.

The Industrial Conference looks like a peace conference after an indecisive war. There is war in the eye of Gompers, there is war in the eye of Gary. Both labor and capital want war. The Industrial Confer ence labors under the same difficulties which would have handicapped a peace conference between the Allies and the Teutonic Powers in the summer of 1917.

With this situation confronting them, the delegates representing the public have been too much inclined to play the rôle of mediators and too little inclined to assert the rights of the public as ag gressively as the other two groups have asserted the rights of capital and labor respectively.

As this is written, only the letter dic tated by President Wilson from his sickbed has prevented the dissolution of the Conference.

Even if the predictions of pessimists

should be fulfilled and the Conference should dissolve without having agreed on anything, it still cannot be said that no good has been accomplished. The meeting of men of such widely divergent views as John Spargo and Judge Gary is bound to be good for both. One of the most interesting features of the Conference, incidentally, is the way in which the attitude of other members of the public group has changed toward Mr. Spargo. At the outset, men like Gary and even men like Baruch were inclined to regard him with some suspicion. The proposals which he made seemed sane enough, but were rejected on the fear that there was in them some hidden trap, some cunning device for committing the whole group to Socialism. But gradually Mr. Spargo's colleagues have come to appreciate that he is in some ways the ablest man in the group. He is now consulted on nearly everything and sits always beside the Chairman at the head of the table in order that his advice on knotty questions of parliamentary procedure may be always available.

The Industrial Conference has had not a little value as a mirror. It reflects conditions in the country at large so that all may see who choose to look. I think the three most interesting things reflected in this mirror are the following:

First, there still exists a not inconsiderable body of capitalists in this country who have learned nothing from the indus

THE

trial stress of the past twenty or thirty years. Judge Gary belongs to this group. The picture he presented in the session of the afternoon of October 20 was rather pitiful. He had just returned to Wash ington from New York, where, it was understood, he had consulted with some of the best financial minds in the country. He had asked permission to present a statement of his views to the Conference, and it was generally expected that this statement would contain something new, something stimulating, something constructive. Instead, he read what was virtually a repetition of a private letter he had written more than a month before, a mere statement of his unwillingness to arbitrate the steel strike and of his belief in the open shop.

The second conclusion to which one is impelled by a study of the Industrial Conference is that the effect of the activities and whole attitude of "Reds" like William Z. Foster and reactionaries like Judge Gary is much the same. There is a Bolshevism of the extreme right no less than a Bolshevism of the extreme left. Neither the Reds nor the reactionaries know much economics. Neither the Reds nor the reactionaries care much for the public interest. The important thing to note just now is that the tendency, if not the deliberate purpose, of the ultra-conservatives is to inflame the ultra-radicals. And unconsciously they are strengthening the Reds.

HE primary and indispensable foundation stone of justice, freedom, and individual liberty in a democracy is law and order. And yet it is more difficult to establish and maintain it in a democracy than in any other form of government. For in a democracy it must be brought about by the voluntary and concerted action of all the people, or at least of a strong majority of the people, while in a military autocracy it can be maintained by the physical power of the despotic minority. Mobocracy and autocracy are both forms of despotism and are equally antagonistic to a democratic system. As De Tocqueville said, "The yoke of servitude is no easier to the neck when held there by a million hands than when held by one." Group, class, or mob warfare, if persisted in, inevitably results in the destruction of democracy, for "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

Industrially the American people are living to-day in a condition of class warfare. Skirmishes and pitched battles are being fought all over the country in this war, the two parties to which are organized capital and organized labor. Neither party can be absolutely destroyed without destroying the very structure of American society. What, then, is to be the final outcome? Is the war to be persisted in until we all go down together in inextricable ruin, or is there some basis of settlement by which the rights of both

parties can be preserved and society can again devote itself to the work of fostering and developing productive industry for the benefit of all?

The American who wishes to come to a reasonable conclusion on these great problems must, first of all, form some clear conception of the development of democracy among English-speaking peoples. The history of English-speaking democracy naturally falls into four great divisions. They are, in the order of their development, political democracy, religious democracy, educational democracy, and industrial democracy.

Modern political democracy, or "government of the people, by the people, for the people," had its first root and beginning in Magna Charta, was permanently established in this country by the American Revolution, and was revivified and reinforced by the Civil War. It does not mean that every man shall be a ruler, but that every man shall have a free opportunity to express his choice as to those who shall rule him.

Religious democracy, so far as modern civilization is concerned, was established by the Reformation, which was really a social rather than a theological struggle. It means, not that every man shall be a minister or bishop, but that every man shall have a free opportunity to express his choice as to his minister or bishop.

Educational democracy is the one original and unique contribution which this

In the third place, the most comforting conclusion to which one can turn from a contemplation of the Industrial Confer ence is that the public really holds the ultimate power if it cares to exercise it. The group representing the public at the Conference has not yet asserted itself fully. But it has given evidence of what the public might do if it should become at all conscious of its own power in resisting dictation from either capital or labor. It is extremely unlikely that the Industrial Conference will end the class war between labor and capital which is now going on or will prevent the intensification of that struggle which seems impending, but it has given an encouraging evidence of the existence in this country of a great body of fair-minded men and women who are bound by hard and fast obligations to neither capital nor labor, and who can be depended on in any crisis when the broader interests of the country are threatened by the nar row ambitions of any class. That those interests are now so threatened there is no question. One of the farmer delegates was right when he said to me, "The whole country is headed for a smash-up.` It behooves Americans to go about solving the problem created by the industrial war with the same intelligence and determination with which they went at the problem created by our declaration of war against Germany.

Washington, D. C., October 22, 1919.

UNIONS

country has made to the development of democratic principles. It began with the foundation a hundred years ago of the American public school system. It means, not that every man shall be a high school principal or a college president or a member of a Board of Education, but that he shall have a free opportunity to express his choice as to these educational rulers and his opinion as to the standards of education that shall universally prevail.

These three forms of democracy are pretty well established and very gener ally recognized. The American people are at present engaged in a struggle to make equally clear and firm the princi ples of industrial democracy. This does not mean that every man shall be president of a railway or of a manufacturing corporation, but it does mean that every man shall have a free opportunity to express his choice as to conditions under which he works, and for the general laws and regulations which must govern industry in a civilized community.

It may be fairly said that fifty years ago so-called American "captains of industry" were despots; often benevolent, high-minded, and well-intentioned, but nevertheless despots. They conducted American industry upon two principles which were inimical to social welfare, namely, "Charge all the traffic will bear" and "Combine for profit in restraint of trade." trade." After twenty years of discussion and agitation the American democracy, in

the Inter-State Commerce Law of 1887 and the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1891, said to organized capital, You shall neither charge all the traffic will bear nor combine for profit in restraint of trade, and organized capitalists must submit themselves to the superior authority, regulation, and control of the General Government. It was a hard and bitter fight, and the power of organized capital was so great that many men despaired of ever making it submit to law and order. But the reform was accomplished, and with it the very standards and spirit of organized capital in this country were changed. Men cannot be made virtuous by law, but certain standards can be set up by law to which men are compelled to conform, and habits which are at first compulsory become under practice voluntary. The result is that organized capital in the United States, having been put under democratic control and made to conform to the principles of law and order, is now itself, on the whole, democratic and orderly. It has grown to prefer arbitration, treaties, open and aboveboard diplomacy, and judicial procedure to warfare.

What has been the history of organized labor, the other party to the present industrial strife? In the early part of the nineteenth century labor was forced to make war upon despotic capital in selfdefense. Less than a century ago a law of England made it a penal offense for workingmen to gather either publicly or privately for the purpose of conferring about wages and conditions of their

work. But ultimately labor succeeded, by fighting, in creating the trade unions, which have grown to a position of great power in the English-speaking world. The trade unions are now to organized labor what the corporations are to organized capital. After a long and painful struggle they have reached the point which the American corporation reached fifty years ago, and are now, in many if not most cases, conducting their business upon the principles of "charging all the traffic will bear" and "combining for profit in restraint of trade"-principles which the American democracy compelled organized capital to abandon twenty years or more ago. Those who wish to destroy the trade unions are as out of harmony with American democratic principles and institutions as those who wish to destroy the industrial corporations. If capital may organize, labor may organize. But is it organize, labor may organize. But is it not perfectly clear that organizations of labor must be made amenable to the same laws of democratic governmental control and regulation which are applied to organizations of capital? Is it democratic justice to permit a trade union to cratic justice to permit a trade union to charge all the traffic will bear and to combine for profit in restraint of trade while an association of stockholders is forbidden by law to do the same thing?

Labor cannot invoke the aid of Justice without accepting the conditions which Justice imposes. Therefore a primary step which the American democracy must take in endeavoring to settle the industrial warfare which threatens our National life is to insist upon the incorporation of the

OR four weeks the publication of The Outlook has been suspended owing to a strike, not in The Outlook office, but in the pressrooms in which are printed most of the weekly and monthly publications of New York City. The most important events of those four weeks are connected with the industrial unrest prevailing throughout the country and are reported and interpreted elsewhere in this issue. Here we can only give very briefly such a record of other events as is necessary to preserve unbroken our current history of the world.

THE PRESIDENT'S ILLNESS The illness of the President was unexpected but not unnatural. The burden of organizing this country for war, the sense of responsibility due to the knowledge that the peoples of Europe were looking to him personally to lead them toward peace, the feelings of disappoint ment and depression which at times he could not escape, the warm and sometimes acrimonious debate inevitable in a democratic country of independent thinkers, considering whether the country should enter upon a new and untried international path, combined to weigh upon him in a manner which even his intimates could hardly realize. While

the reports of his physicians (now no longer to be issued daily) were necessarily brief, and while their brevity tended at first rather to increase than to lessen popular anxiety, the fact that at this writing he has issued a veto message to Congress affords reassuring evidence that his enforced rest has proved to be the medicine he needed, and to justify the hope that he may soon be able, both for his own sake and for the welfare of the country, to resume his place as the active head of the Nation's affairs.

THE TREATY IN THE SENATE

Slow as seems the progress of the United States Senate in debating and formulating its conclusions as to the Treaty of Peace and League of Nations, there was real progress in the month of October. When the Senate by a vote of 55 to 35 on October 15 defeated the attempt to deal with the Shantung matter by amendment, it established the position that reservations and not amendments were to be the practical course. The Shantung amendment was supported by Shantung amendment was supported by 32 Republicans and 3 Democrats as against 14 Republicans and 41 Democrats. At the time it was pointed out that even the Shantung matter might be dealt with adequately by reservation; such, for

trade union, and thus to make its contracts inviolable under the law, to make its treasury susceptible of a judgment for damages awarded by a court of justice, and to forbid it from conspiring in restraint of trade.

This of course is not a new proposal. The trade unions have opposed it in the past because they did not wish to assume the responsibilities or duties of corporate entity. But is it fair that they should have the privileges and power of corporate institutions-that is to say, recognition and collective bargaining without the legal responsibilities which should go with such corporate powers?

The incorporation of the trade unions would give to organized labor two great benefits which it has been struggling for many years to obtain by warfare, namely, the advantage of official and social recognition and the right of collective bargaining. Until the trade union is thus legally recognized as a factor in American industry and legally put under the regulation and control of the Government, the methods of profit-sharing, of shop councils, and of labor representatives on boards of directors, highly desirable as they are and forming perhaps the goal of that ultimate partnership which ought to be established between labor and capital, are only palliatives. For partnership and, brotherhood and co-operation in any form of social activity can exist only under democratic law and order, for which it is futile to hope as long as the present state of industrial warfare continues,

MONTH

instance, as Senator Lenroot proposed in the words," The United States withholds its assent to Articles 156, 157, and 158, and reserves full liberty of action with respect to any controversy that may arise under such articles."

Senator Lodge and other Senators not of the mild reservationist type at once took the ground that if no amendments seemed advisable by the Senate, reservations drastic enough to secure American National rights and liberty of action should be adopted. The defeat in the Senate, therefore, of the Johnson amendment aiming to give equal voting_power in the League's Assembly to the United States with Great Britain did not alarm the advocates of thoroughgoing reservations.

Meanwhile the Senate's Committee on Foreign Affairs has been redrafting the reservations which it will propose to the Senate to include in its final resolution giving its "advice and consent" to the Treaty if such a resolution is agreed upon. Fourteen such resolutions have been before the Committee, and nearly all of them have been agreed upon by a majority of the Committee. The proposed preamble reads as follows:

The Committee reports the following reservations and understandings to be