plate the proposition that a partial payment for our labor is to be found "in the joy of taking part in the great machine of men and women working together to produce as much as possible."

Let us be fair and moderate, and consequently cheerfully recognize the modicum of truth in this new version of the classic maxim, "Laborare est Orare," (To labor is to accomplish).

trated attention, nerve-racking application and tireless endurance, on the part of its attendant, but seldom the exercise of a faculty beyond the automatic.

Now, if the "full consummate blossom" of civilization has produced men whose faculties find their fullest employment in the mechanical routine of shop and factory life-in driving millions of tacks each in the same manner,

in tending an automatic machine which requires the infinite repetition of the same motion, in performing the specialized functions into which modern trades have been differentiated, or in doing the dirty and laborious work of the scavenger and laborer-then the academic theory of the partial payment of the laborer by the "joy of work" may be justified, but not otherwise.

The exercise of the creative or artistic faculty is held to be a "joy" by every genuine artisan. It should not be charged as the fault of the wage-earner that the limitations of his employment debar him from emulating the artistic example of a William Morris or from applying the theories of Ruskin. Like another Caliban, he is pent up by the irresistible power of a magician who, in this instance, works mightily for cheapness of production, careless of the cheapened producer.

But, even handicapped as he is by present conditions of labor, the manifold achievements of the American artisan furnish an absolute contradiction to the theory that his "moral fibre has been rotted" to any alarming extent by the trade union, for he is, man for man, confessedly the most efficient workman on the face of the globe today.

It is entirely conceivable to the average wage-earner that the president of a great university may find joy in the strenuous and potential work of shaping and directing the intellectual development of thousands of fortunate youths. We can perceive the incentive for endeavor, to one's fullest capacity, in such an inspiring field as this, but we respectfully submit that it is scarcely fair to suggest that the drudgery of the workshop gives back an equal inspiration and reward.

The actual and prevailing mental attitude of the trade unionist towards his work is this, that he lives by it, not for it. Self-interest, to say nothing of a sense of duty, impels him to perform his task efficiently, but he vehemently protests against being compelled to expend all of his time and all of his energy in the mere getting of bread and butter. Trade unionists seek such a reduction

of the hours of labor as will: (1) distribute among the wage-earners the advantages accruing from improved processes of production, from labor-saving and profit-making machinery, and from the results of applied science; (2) absorb the surplus of unemployed labor; and (3) increase to the normal the "chance of life" of those whose existence is now shortened through unhealthful or dangerous conditions of employment.

The limitations of space forbid a detailed statement of the far-reaching philosophy of the shorter-hour demand in both its economic and social bearings; but the contention of trade unions is that reasonable leisure is an essential requisite for the production of the most efficient labor, for intelligent citizenship, and for well-balanced men. The relative status of industrial peoples appears to substantiate this claim, for the union of these qualities is common only where the shortened workday prevails. The reason for this is by no means obscure. The man who, as Carlisle says, "expends his energy grinding in the treadmill of industry," has no surplus strength to expend in pursuing those things which make for the higher levels of being. His inevitable tendency is to sink into a rut. The strenuous tension of modern industry exhausts his vitality.

We are speaking of the average man. Epictetus, the slave, may become the founder of a philosophy; the energy of an Elihu Burritt may evolve a savant from the blacksmith's forge; the divine gift of poesy make of Robert Burns, the Scottish ploughboy, a singer for all time; a luminous character and prophetic foresight may make it possible for the Illinois rail-splitter, Abraham Lincoln, to become the leader of his countrymen in life and their revered martyr in death-but the iron bands of surroundings grip tight the man of average faculty and enterprise.

But it may be, and often is, said, that this is all a question of degree; that the modern workday gives sufficient leisure and opportunity for the wage-earner. It all depends, again, upon the point of view. If the Gradgrind conception of the desirable laborer-simply hands and

twentieth century workman to be satisfied?

This "commodity of labor," so long held by the Manchester school of political economists to be the subject of arbitrary regulation by the inexorable law of supply and demand, has at length demonstrated that it is a commodity plus a human organism; an organism with the power of volition, whose exercise can and does materially modify the quantity of the commodity to be placed upon the market.

For good or for ill, the wants of the laborer have multiplied, his faculties have become developed, and his aspirations have been awakened. It is the glory of trade unionism that it has played no small part in arousing in him that righteous discontent which impels him, like Oliver Twist, to ask for more and ever more-but, unlike the timid charity boy, he is not to be browbeaten by the officious Bumbles of conservatism. Here, I say again, is the test which shall stretch to the uttermost the elasticity of democratic institutions. It is scarcely a kindness to breed men in the faith of political equality if industrially they are forced to submit to despotism. It is not wise to awaken in them a thirst for knowledge, if they have not means and leisure to slake this thirst. It is highly injudicious to permit them to acquire an appreciation of the beautiful in art and nature, if by the conditions of their employment the major portion of their existence must be spent in unremitting toil among base and barren environ

ments.

But entirely apart from this phase of the subject, the trade unionist holds that existing physical conditions among wage earners justify the shorter hour demand, and will continue to justify it, while the "chance of life" of any number of the working class is, by reason of the conditions of employment, less than that of a like number of the same age of the so-called independent classes.

In other words, the trade union maintains that the social service rendered by the manual laborer justifies him in insisting that society has no right to expect him to shorten his life below the

normal limit, by reason of ill conditions in this service, for which there is remedy.

That the average wage-earner is compelled to do this under the present working day, is amply evidenced by a multiplicity of statistical data, especially by the table of risks issued by insurance companies.

It is no flight of the imagination to claim that the total mortality upon the battlefields of industry exceeds that of the most sanguinary conflicts presided over by the great commanders of bloody wars. The stories of the latter are writ large on the historian's page. The former are the commonplaces of peace, unchronicled and unsung. It is one of the strongest counts in the social indictment that multitudes of men, women and children, die before their time, because they are manual laborers. Many perish of overwork, of that fateful and merciless tension of machine work. The mine swallows its regiment of victims, the number of employes injured or killed on transportation lines mounts to startling figures. The widespread application of electricity has brought added perils to large classes of workers, as has also the construction of the great steel buildings of modern business. Factory life produces anaemic hosts, who fall an easy prey to the germs of disease. But the list is too long for even mere enumeration.

"The process of determining what prices a given industry will bear," said President Eliot, "is now a process of combat. The weapons have been chiefly strikes, boycotts and lockouts. This is certainly a very stupid way of arriving at the determination. Conference and discussion between the workman and the capitalist are the rational modes of arriving at the practical answer to the question."

We are in unanimous concurrence with the conclusion arrived at in the latter sentence. The strike and the boycott are rarely used against the employer who agrees with President Eliot on this point.

But our critic cannot well be ignorant of the fact that, until very recently, at least, by far the larger number of em

that until labor presented itself in such an attitude as to compel a hearing, capital was not ready to listen."

In a speech delivered in Hartford in 1860, Abraham Lincoln said, referring to a strike of shoe workers: "Thank God, we have a system of labor where there can be a strike."

It may be remarked, in passing, that in the light of recent judicial decisions, Abraham Lincoln would find himself

"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind," observed the Concord philosopher. The trade unionist realizes that he is not attending a May Day party, but that he is up against the bruising realities of existence. We are conscious that some of our methods may be crude, that our manners

"Have not that repose

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere," but both methods and manners have