seems to be but little probability for the success of such a measure. Beyond doubt the exporters here do all that is possible to find a paying market for their articles.

Perhaps something might be profited if direct purchases from American manufacturers were more common. Orders for goods are often answered by referring to the "European agent" of the firm, generally in England, by whom all the American business transactions. with Europe seem to be conducted. VICTOR EK,

HELSINGFÖRS, FINLAND, July 30, 1903.

Vice and Acting Consul.

MR. MOSELEY'S INDUSTRIAL INQUIRY.

(Translated in the Bureau of Statistics from a paper published by the Union of Metal and Mine Workers of France, dated August 12, 1903.)

Apropos of Moseley's second commission, composed of educators. and scientific experts, which is about to visit the United States for the purpose of studying at first hand the forces and factors underlying America's success, the following discussion of the former commission, translated from a paper by the French Union of Metallurgical and Mining Industries, is just now of special interest:

Last year Mr. Alfred Moseley, an English business man, invited the secretaries of the trades unions of Great Britain to go with him to the United States for the purpose of seeing for themselves the rapid progress and enormous industrial development of that part of the world. He had been struck, in the course of his travels in America, with the gigantic powers of its production. He had seen with regret that in England neither employer nor employee was aware of the danger that was developed by a competition that was growing greater every day. It was to enlighten the workmen that he had organized the commission of inquiry commonly called the "Moseley Industrial Commission." The delegates left England, accompanied by Mr. Moseley, in October, 1902. There were twenty-three of them. They divided into two groups, one of which went direct to Canada and the other to New York. The delegates were to furnish individual reports and had absolute freedom as to form and expression of opinion. Mr. Moseley asked each to fill out answers to a series of forty-one questions submitted by himself. These were arranged under four subheadings, and related (1) to the early instruction given to workmen, (2) the relations existing between employers and employees, (3) to the general condition of the workmen outside of the industrial establishment in which they are employed, and (4) general questions. Twenty-two out of the twenty-three filled out the lists. These replies, etc., preceded by a report edited by Mr. Moseley, have appeared in a volume, of which the following is a fair, though brief, analysis. Separate copies, including the replies of each delegate, have been made for circulation among the workmen of the industries represented. A photographer accompanied the commission and took pictures of such things and places as were deemed of value to the report.

The lack of time, the thousand and one obstacles met with in so long and varied a trip, and the scanty preparation, due to haste and ignorance, led the members of the commission to confine themselves to their particular lines. Very few felt themselves capable of pronouncing a general judgment. Their reports are little better

than notes at any time. All the information of a purely professional character we have to leave out, to take up the proportions that deal with the general conditions of America's industrial organization.* "In writing my impressions of America," one delegate says, "I am sensible of the difficulty, if not of the danger, of making general comparisons and of trying to draw conclusions. Our time was too limited and our field of exploration too vast to permit of a complete and detailed inquiry into the industrial, economic, and social conditions of a country like the United States of America."

Limiting our analysis of the work of the commission to its general conclusions, we omit, with that object in view, the replies made to the various questions and lay stress on the information which permits us to complete the first impressions obtained.

INSTRUCTION OF YOUTHFUL EMPLOYEES,

The opinion of the commission seems to be unanimous in regard to the value of the instruction given to the youthful employees in the United States compared with what is given to the same class in Great Britain and Ireland. All the delegates were impressed by the degree of general instruction received by the young people in American industrial concerns and by the facilities afforded-unknown in England-to obtain a secondary or even a higher education.

"My opinion is," says the delegate of the Manchester spinners, "that the young American is better equipped than the young Englishman for the battle of life by the preliminary education which he receives. The children of American workmen stay at school till they are 14, 15, or 16 years old, and in the latter years of their school life they acquire just such knowledge as fits them from their very entrance into industrial life to be useful to themselves and to their country. The children of the English working class leave school too soon."

The delegate of the tailors says: "The American school system is very much better than ours. In certain States the boys and girls are able to pass from the kindergarten to the higher schools without costing a dollar to their parents. In many States the frequentation of the universities even is gratuitous. England is a quarter of a century behind the age, and each year augments the difference.” The delegate of the bookbinders confirms that judgment, for he says: "The system of education appears to be very well adapted to the wants of the nation. The ambition of a great number of workmen is to see their sons attain a fine position. This ambition is encouraged and aided by the facilities offered to the child who has a taste for study." "That ambition is so much the easier to understand," says the iron and steel delegate, "when one knows that the wages of the parents are much higher than in England. The wages of the little ones are not needed in the family." He cites a fact from the census of 1900 to show that the metal trades at that time did not employ more than 1,901 children under 16 years of age. Another delegate, visiting an ordinary school, found fully 50 per cent of the children remain there till their fifteenth year (the law compels them to stay till they are 14), and as many as 25 per cent of the children stay till they are 16 years old.

The delegate of the tailors says, further: "At home [in England] the poverty of the parents is responsible for the ignorance of the children. In America the poverty of the father is an added reason for the child to receive the best education the nation can give. The American nation is so impregnated with this point of view that I have heard employers express a certain repugnance to employing any child before its eighteenth year."

This, then, is the general instruction given to the children of the working

* The quotations of the workmen may not be word for word like the text of Mr. Moseley's book, for it has been put back into English from the French translation.

classes.

But when the delegates came to study the system of professional education and apprenticeship in the United States they generally gave the preference to their own country. It is, for example, the opinion of the delegate of the parliamentary committee of the trades unions that England leads in these lines. It seems to him that in America the professional schools serve the youth of the middle classes-young men destined to direct industrial establishments later-rather than the children of the working classes. He thinks that in this respect the position of the poor is better in England than in the United States. 'The apprentice system," he says, "if it ever existed in the United States, is in a fair way to disappear. In the language of Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, the subdivision of work, resulting from the introduction of machinery, has killed apprenticeship. To-day it is necessary to get skilled labor in Europe, particularly in England." The delegate of the machinists and those of the shipbuilders are also of the opinion that the English system of apprenticeships is the best.

The delegates of the bricklayers and plasterers say that professionally England is ahead of the United States. The delegate of the Sheffield cutlers (workingmen) also notes the lack of advantages enjoyed by apprentices in America. "The employers find," he says, that the apprentices produce more weariness of spirit than they render services. The child leaving the school wants to earn money, and much of it, as soon as possible. Besides, the division of labor is so great that the European long term of apprenticeship is more rarely useful in the United States than in Europe."

THE WORK DONE BY MACHINERY.

The development of machinery and its extremely judicious utilization struck the delegates very forcibly. It appeared to them as one of the essential causes of the superiority of the United States in certain branches of industry. "The head of an American concern or undertaking, said in substance one of the delegates of the machinists, is endowed with a remarkable spirit of initiating; he is always ready to introduce into his establishment the very latest and most perfect machines. This spirit of initiating is, besides, a characteristic of the nation." The delegate of the printers said that at Chicago, as well as elsewhere, there is a feverish rivalry among the printers in incessant changing of machines. Often one has hardly been adopted before it is rejected to make place for another just invented or perfected.

Again, everyone is trying to reduce the manual labor to a minimum. "Everything that tends to reduce it," said the delegate of the leather industry, "is eagerly adopted." One can say the same of every industry. The search for processes to reduce the number of hands employed and yet keep up the amount produced, or even to increase it, is the constant effort of every American employer. The specialization of machines has attained such a degree that the delegates could not suppress their surprise; and yet, according to the delegates of the shipyards and of the textile industries, England is as well equipped in those lines as is the United States. The introduction of new machines and the degree of perfection secured in the equipment do not arouse any opposition on the part of the American workman; oftentimes they are received with favor. The work really becomes less troublesome and the former wages are never reduced; sometimes they are increased, and when not, the workman knows that they will be later. Here is what the typographical delegate has to say on this matter:

"I have spoken with the members and with the leaders of the Typographical Union of Chicago on the question of the machine and the results of its introduction into the trade. They were unanimously of the opinion that while at first the effect was disastrous to labor, the later results were higher wages and fewer hours of labor. Books have come down in price and the newspapers have increased in size; they all employ as many hands as ever."

Besides, the laborers participate in the improvement of the machines upon which they work. Employers encourage them to make improvements by compensating them liberally for inventions. Mr. Moseley goes into this matter to some extent in his report. "In many establishments," he says, "a box is set up somewhere into which ideas, plans, projects, etc., of the employees are thrown, the employers asking, by means of a little placard, that this be done. Suggestions as to improvement of machinery and as to improvements in administering the works are wanted, asked for, and often received. The contents of the box are examined regularly and many of the ideas suggested are tried. If they are adopted for good the inventor or party making the suggestion is rewarded, sometimes by a portion of the accruing profit or by an advance in position. Precautions are taken to preclude the possibility of anyone suffering from the jealousy of other employees or of the bosses."

The Americans know how to get the most from the machines incessantly perfected, incessantly renewed. Employers and employees are in accord to get the most possible out of them. There is no fear among the operatives working by the piece that their wages will be reduced when the production is increased. Rapidity of production is still further aided by the extreme division of labor and by a most skillful manipulation of the equipment.

CONDITIONS OF LABOR, HYGIENE, ETC.

The reports of the commission do not permit of an exact estimate of the rates of wages in the United States compared with those prevailing in England. Still, it is very evident that the wages in America are higher than in England. Some delegates say the difference is fully 50 per cent in favor of the United States; others put the difference as high as 100 per cent. "The American employer," said one delegate, "understands that the laborer at low wages is the dearest labor, and he is not afraid to say so."

The delegates were almost unanimously of the opinion that the working hours per week were much longer in the United States than in England. The following table tells its own story of the relative hours of labor in the two countries:

Here is an opinion on the same point given by the delegate of the parliamentary committee of the congress of trades unions:

66

"In the United States," he says, than in England; in no case shorter."

the hours of labor are in some cases longer

The commission came to no general conclusion or opinion as to whether piecework or day labor dominates the United States. The list of questions contained, among others, the following interrogatory: "Does the American produce, on an average, more or less in an hour than the English workman?" The delegates are of the opinion in general that the American does not exhaust himself any more at his work than does the English workman, but that his productivity is greater because of the mechanical arrangements and the better methods of manipulation found in America. Many of the delegates say that they had always heard the intensive production (of America) talked about, but had never heard a word of the conditions under which it took place. They were led to believe that the American workman was worked to death, always at a high pressure, obliged to carry on his work at a rate that led to premature old age. They found that tale a myth; that the American workman does not exhaust himself any more at his work than does the British workman, nor does he grow old any earlier or faster; furthermore, when their forces or powers are enfeebled, instead of being sent away, as happens too often in England, they are given lighter work. The delegate of the bricklayers was the only one of the twenty-three who seemed to believe that the American workmen were dealt with in a usurious spirit. He is of the opinion that what he says in regard to bricklayers will hold good not only in the building trades, but in all others.

In the list of questions one finds the following: "When those who are paid by the piece (piece workers) increase their individual production by means of their own skill or personal activity, do the American employers reduce their salaries in order to hinder the workmen from getting more than a certain sum?" The replies were to the effect that the employers are ever busy increasing the means of augmenting their own production, and they are too well pleased to see the individual workmen increase their output to risk a diminution of their wages.

"In