York once a year to rid themselves of a lot of pietistic talk and pose for their pictures while at dinner.

The nation-wide agitation that has been caused by the United States Supreme Court decision annulling the employers' liability law, outlawing the boycott and legalizing the blacklist has brought consternation into the ranks of the politicians. The Socialist and labor press throughout the country has discussed the decisions from every standpoint and mass meetings of workers have been and are being held in hundreds of cities and towns to condemn the jughandled justice that has been handed out to the working class by the smooth old gentlemen of the supreme bench who make or unmake laws to suit their sweet will.

The result of this widespread condemnation of the courts in general and the U. S. Supreme Court in particular is seen in a hint that has come from the department of justice in Washington to the effect that organized labor has nothing further to fear from the present administration, and that immunity from prosecution is promised the unions "until certain further matters in the courts have eventuated," whatever that may mean-probably it means until the polls are closed next November and Fat Man Taft, the pioneer in the judicial union-busting business, has been elected.

Meanwhile a new employers' liability law has been enacted by Congress, and the haste and unanimity with which it was railroaded by corporation lawyers and other representatives of "the interests," has created a suspicion that there is a "sleeper" in the new law or there may be a secret understanding that the courts will, in the fullness of time, smash it to flinders when a test case is made. Anyhow, the announcement was made when the bill passed (doubtless at the direction of the old fossil Cannon) that labor would get nothing more from the present Congress, which means that the anti-injunction bill and the eight-hour bill, first introduced somewhere back about the middle of the last century, will be permitted to sleep in their pigeonholes until the gang goes home to bamboozle the yaps once more.

Despite the decree that labor would not receive so much as a pleasant look before adjournment of Congress, A. F. of L. officials have been making strenuous efforts to secure consideration of the proposed amendment to the Sherman anti-trust act to prevent the application of the provisions of that law to labor organizations. But there is little hope that the bill will be reported out of committee, and so, despite the reported hint that the law department will cooperate in no more damage suits against unions, organized labor is very uncertain regarding the future-is "up in the air", so to speak.

Of course, the National Association of Manufacturers is claiming all the credit for jamming down the lid on all further labor legislation. The N. A. M. has established a literature bureau in Washington and the capitalists of the country are being deluged with circular letters asking for a piece of money and warning them that if the labor bills become laws their property will be confiscated and the end of the republic has been reached and “anarchy will reign." (curtain and red fire.)

President Tom Lewis, of the United Mine Workers, has gained his first notable victory. Although there has been no fear of a general strike at any time, Lewis inherited a discouraging situation when he assumed office. The mine owners were clamoring for a reduction of wages and insisted upon settling all questions by districts or individually. While the trade problems were being debated the

old agreement expired and the men were compelled to suspend work. Lewis insisted that the interstate agreement be revived and had his way in a special conference which met in Toledo the latter part of the month. The old 90-cent wage rate will be continued for another two years and minor questions were satisfactorily arranged.

Typically capitalistic have been recent developments in the textile industry. Chapter 1.-The mill barons meet and decide that in the interest of their business a wage reduction of 10 per cent will be enforced. Chapter 2.-The mill barons meet again and decide that they will restrict production in defiance of the law of supply and demand of bourgeois economists in order to maintain prices. Chapter 3.-The mill barons meet once more and vote to enforce the prevailing prices for one year. Nothing is said about restoring the wage reduction. The curtain descends with the heroic mill barons 10 per cent ahead of the game and the villainous employes working short time and making side jumps for the soup-kitchens.

There is also a sequel to this latter-day industrial comedy. The weavers, the strongest branch of the United Textile Workers, are withdrawing from the confederation. They object to paying an additional nickel a month to the international union for the purpose of strengthening the organization—but they will pay an additional 10 per cent a day to the kind masters.

Really, to watch the antics of some alleged union people and listen to their ignorant talk one cannot be surprised to learn that the masters take advantage of them. The big strike of four years ago, when the soup-kitchens were running full blast, did not teach the textile workers anything. Only a few months ago I heard some of their officials express sentiments that would indicate that in the textile industry at least the miracle of uniting the capitalists and laborers as one had been sucessfully performed.

A fact that should not be overlooked is that in cities where efforts are being made to suppress free speech and public assemblage the police, as a rule, are not much better than irresponsible bands of crooks. In New York, where the unemployed demonstration was attacked in much the same manner as the minions of the Czar rode roughshod over the people of St. Petersburg on "Bloody Sunday," the World shows that $30,000 a month has been paid in bribes to the police in one district alone by keepers of gambling and crap joints and pool rooms. The World started a decoy gambling house and laid bare the whole rotten mess.

In Philadelphia, where an effort is being made to suppress Socialist meetings, the police are being shown up as river pirates, receivers of stolen goods, etc. In Chicago more than one cop has been caught in crooked work all the way from holding up and robbing pedestrians late at night to blackmailing keepers of disreputable resorts.

Just how these guardians of the peace and protectors of morals expect to convince the people that the Socialists are a bad lot while they are immaculate is not quite clear, although they may and doubtless do satisfy certain plutocrats that they ought to make liberal contributions to the police officials to break up meetings where citizens might gain some knowledge of their criminal methods. Socialist agitation may be checked here and there temporarily, but every act of coercion on the part of the police will only tend to more fully arouse the workers.

Immigration. I congratulate you upon your decision to discuss the Immigration problem in the columns of the Review. While it is reasonable to assume that had this question been previously discussed, our National Committee would not have accepted the resolution presented by the American delegation at the Stuttgart Congress, it is certain that it is never too late to right a wrong. I am convinced that this resolution was a serious mistake. Conclusions based upon false premises are bound to be wrong. The premise that races should be divided into "organizable" and "unorganizable" being erroneous, the conclusion that "unorganizable" races should be prohibited from immigration to this country is inevitably wrong also. Moreover, the fact that the "unorganizable" Japanese nation is almost as "civilized" as we, the "organizable" Europeans and Americans, proves beyond the possibility of doubt that historically, the authors of the resolution are totally wrong.

It may be argued by the upholders of the resolution that the unorganizability of, for example, the Japanese workingman, is due to their low standard of life, but those advancing this theory admit thereby that the Japanese workingman is not inherently unorganizable but that they are unorganized because of present economic conditions.

What, then is the thing to be done? Are we to favor the immigration of Japanese and similar peoples and change their standard of life by organizing them, thereby increasing the solidarity of the working class, or, are we on the contrary, to stand for the exclusion of the Japanese, thus intensifying race prejudices? In other words, are we to exclaim "Workingmen of all countries, unite!" adding "except workingmen of unorganizable races", or will we hold to our motto with no exceptions at all?

This is about the size of the Immigration problem, and considred in the light of both human experience and the animating spirit of the socialist movement, socialists can find but one answer in their efforts to solve this problem. The whole question is so completely covered by the Stuttgart resolution that socialists, as well as humanitarians of all sorts, must either approve of said resolution, or join the ranks of the reactionaries.

How can our National Committee's rejection of the Stuttgart resolution be otherwise explained than that in their efforts to please the conservative trade unions, some of our "leaders" have approved the false, reactionary view of the trade unions on the Immigration question. How can Comrade Berger simultaneously approve the socialist ideal of the The Brotherhood of Man on one hand and the "superior" and "inferior"

race theory on the other, a theory worthy of the ancient Roman patricians or of the American slave-holders of more recent date? Did Comrade Berger ask himself whither he was drifting when he wrote his aritcle on the "superior" and "inferior race" theory? Let us calmly and thoroughly consider this question, comrades, and I have no doubt as to our ultimate conclusion. H. S. VICTORSEN.

On Nominations. I suggest that the plan of nominating members of the Executive Committee be changed rather than the plan of election. It seems to me the fault lies there. Why not require ten locals in three different states to make a nominee eligible? A candidate who is not sufficiently prominent to be thought of thus widely would have no show for election. This would also prevent a number of locals in one state from nominating one man who, perhaps, is well known in the state but not outside. You may know how that goes. Locals will nominate one man for everything that comes up regardless of his fitness to serve in such capacities. I would like to have at least one woman on the Executive Committee and I think most members would, judging from the way they vote. But when many women are nominated under the present plan their vote is scattered and no one is likely to be elected. Granted that we should have one woman on that committee then the most feasible plan suggesting itself to me is to provide, constitutionally, for this by calling for the nomination of women members and placing and counting votes for them separately.

Edward J. Rohrer, Sec'y. Treas. Soc. Party of Iowa.

Prohibition versus Brotherhood. "Smash the Saloon" is like the cry "Lynch Him". It is the mob-voice unguided by heart or brain.

Brother reformers in the big cities, deal gently with the saloon. Be sure you're right, then go ahead. But don't prohibit and don't raid. You double the graft, you develop a syndicate of secret dives, you harden the liquor dealer, and you make the local politician to laugh.

We are stumbling along drearily enough to-day, with a pack of unenforcible laws, that refer to "closed saloons for all day Sunday", and similar jocose items of the merry wags in the legislatures.

Add to our load with a little more about "No saloons at all”, and our backbone will snap.

If you wish to cure certain evils in the saloon, right you are, and we are with you. But abolish the saloon, and you sow vice with a wide gesture.

Lean down from the height of your flashing car, respectable citizens all, who vote an upper-class ballot; and try to see these problems with a heart of pity, and with a neighborhood viewpoint.

The evils are more intense even than you think-more sickening and wide-spread. But the kindness and good fellowship of the poor, in which the saloon is a central factor, are greater than you dream. The comradeship, of the underworld is stronger than the graft.

Is there a single function which by right the church should be fulfilling that the saloon has not acquired? It gives hospitality and welcome to the poor, warmth to those in rags. It feeds the hungry. It is always open, always bright, always warm.

All of living service to the community that some sacramental agency should perform is to-day left to the troubled liquor dealer.

Till the church unlocks its curiously carved doors, and warms, its nave and humanizes and spiritualizes its clergy and worshipping well

to-do, the feet of the young men will lightly turn them to the little cafe around the corner.

It has been the saloon versus the church as channel for the great warm human currents of community life. And the saloon has won. Three times shame on the church that those tides have flowed elsewhere. Let her not talk of Prohibition in the great city till she manifests a desire and a capacity in herself to receive and direct and interpret that flow of the lonely and holy spirit of man, so wistful of a little joy.

The saloon is here to stay. The beneficent coffee house and the cosy little sideboard at home will not supplant it in our generation. Upper-class virtue wreaked on the head of the liquor dealer and the policeman will not cleanse the city. But if we can once release the immense unusual goodness of the race, we will make head against our worst problems. And we can only do this by knowing that the liquor dealer and the district leader and the policeman belong to the human family, and are already nearer the hearts, as well as the vices, of the neighborhood, than we that wish to do them good.

Arthur H. Gleason.

The Lewis Lectures. Thanks for sending me a copy of Lewis' "Evolution, Social and Organic". I heard most of the lectures in Chicago, and you know how much I appreciated them at the time. But they gain on re-reading. The information conveyed by them is not only accurate, but so happily divested of all academic ponderosity, that it may be assimilated by every novice and used as a basis for further study. Lewis may call out opposition here and there among intellectuals and close thinkers, but it will be only in narrowly contested points or on topics which are just evolving and taking on a definite form, and which have not yet been settled among scientific specialists. Such points cannot lead the reader astray, but can at the very worst place him on one or the other side of the coming controversies. This will not do him any harm, but rather draw him All the into the thick of the intellectual struggles of our days. lectures are highly stimulating, at least to me, and I can find untold delight in scanning them over again and again and enjoying the manifold suggestions for research which they contain on every page. I am very glad to hear that these lectures find an unprecedented sale. They will contribute to the clarification of minds inside and outside of our movement as few other books have done, and they will do it in a way that avoids the onesidedly political and economic point of view, which is such a marked feature of most of the socialist literature. Arthur Morrow Lewis is not only a Marxian, but also a dialectic monist, and this makes his work one of the most significant and I hope you will valuable for the Socialist movement of America. soon follow up this first volume by a second one. Ernest Untermann.

Hebrew Socialist Fellowship. Appreciating the success of our Christian comrades and believing that the ethics of Judaism and Socialism are identical, a number of Hebrew Socalists of New York City have decided to issue this call for a permanent organization of the disciples of Moses and Marx, the two Jewish intellectual giants. The H. S. F. will have for its objejct the propagation of the principles of Hebrew Socialism-as first expounded by Moses on Mount Sinai, and subsequently elaborated by his lineal descendant Karl Marx-among Rabbis. Talmudists and orthodox Hebrews in every synagogue and Mikwah in this broad land. For further particulars inquire of the secretary, Ben Lichtenberg, 1044 Forest Avenue, New York, N. Y.