employee. Amendment of the judicature act so as to permit a State to appeal from its own supreme court to the Federal Supreme Court on a decision against a State based on conflict with the Federal Constitution.

14. Mediation and minimum wage.1 The industrial commission (State or Federal) shall appoint, remove, and fix the compensation of a chief mediator of industrial disputes. The chief mediator to hold his position until removed by the industrial commission, and to appoint such assistants as may be needed, and to fix their compensation with the approval of the industrial commission. He should appoint temporary mediators for special cases, without requiring them to give up their private business or offices. The chief mediator and all assistant mediators to be selected from an eligible list prepared by the Civil Service Commission on a nonassembled examination, with the assistance of the industrial commission and the advisory council.

The chief mediator and his staff to have no powers whatever of compulsory testimony and to be prohibited from arbitrating any dispute, from making any public recommendation, or from revealing in any way, directly or indirectly, any information which they may have secured from any parties relative to an industrial dispute. Any violation to be sufficient ground for immediate removal by the industrial commission. The powers of mediators to be those solely of voluntary mediation or conciliation, but the chief mediator shall offer his services in confidence to both sides of a dispute which, in his judgment, is of public importance.

The chief mediator and his staff to be wholly independent of the industrial commission, except as to appointment and removal, to the extent that they be prohibited from reporting any facts or recommendations whatever to the industrial commission or any other authority, relative to the merits of any industrial dispute.

In case the mediator is unable to secure an agreement through conciliation, he shall recommend arbitration to both parties, and if both consent to abide by the decision of arbitrators he shall proceed to assist them in selecting a board of arbitration in any way, and consisting of any number of members, that both sides may agree upon. If agreement is not reached within a specified time on the third party to the board of mediation, the chief mediator shall appoint the same.

In case both parties do not consent to arbitration the mediator shall recommend the appointment of a board of mediation and investigation, which shall have power to make public its findings and recommendations, but such recommendations shall not be binding on any person. If both parties shall consent to such a board the mediator shall assist them in creating the same, and shall appoint the third member if the parties can not agree on the same within a specified number of days.

In case both parties accept either a board of arbitration or a board of mediation and investigation, such board, as the case may be, shall have power of compelling testimony. The Newlands Act and the Department of Labor Act should be so amended that all mediation and conciliation, whether on railways or in other industries, shall be consolidated under the mediator of the Federal industrial commission. The Federal commission should cooperate with State mediators.

In case of women and children, minimum-wage boards should be created by the State industrial commissions.

15. Trade disputes. Congress and the State legislatures to enact laws similar to the British Trades Disputes Act of 1906,2 relieving employers' associations and labor unions, as well as their members, officers, or agents, when acting in their behalf, of criminal suits, damage suits, and injunctions on account solely of combination or conspiracy connected with a labor dispute, when the act would be lawful if done by one person. Such laws would permit the use by either side without legal penalty of its

This recommendation is intended to provide for strictly voluntary methods of mediation and conciliation. Commissioners Weinstock, Ballard, and Aishton, who signed this report, dissent from this provision, believing that there are times when compulsion in labor disputes is thoroughly justified. See Report, pp. 409, 410.

2 For text of this act see Bulletin No. 74 of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, p. 168.

weapons of closed union shop and closed nonunion shop, of strike and lockout, boycott and blacklist, peaceful picketing and strike breaking, peaceful inducement to break a contract to work or to break off allegiance with a union, in pursuance of an effort to win a labor dispute. The law would not prevent prosecutions for conspiracy where the act if done by one person would be a crime.

16. Foundations. Any proposed legislation on this subject should be preceded by a complete investigation of all foundations and endowments, else the law would have effects not contemplated by the legislature or Congress. Such an investigation would include all endowed charities, endowments of religious organizations and universities and colleges. The investigation should be complete, covering all aspects of the question, and bringing out both the advantages and the disadvantages of such foundations and endowments.

17. Subsidies. The Federal commission to have charge of all subsidies granted to the States for the promotion of industrial education, safety, employment offices, and other matters, as Congress may determine. The commission to meet the expenses of State officials when called together for conferences on standards of uniformity. Subsidies to be granted on condition that the standards are maintained.

18. Federal fund for social welfare. A Federal inheritance tax on all estates above $25,000, beginning at 1 per cent on the excess above $25,000 and rising to 15 per cent on the excess above $1,000,000 for the class of direct heirs, such as wife, children, and parents. Higher rates for more remote relatives and strangers. The Federal inheritance tax to be a supertax, added upon the existing rates assessed by the States. Provision, however, to be made, that any State which repeals all inheritance-tax laws, or refrains from enacting them, shall receive from the Federal Government, say 50 cents per capita of its population per year. The administration and collection of this tax to be placed in charge of present assessors and collectors of income taxes, who already collect income taxes on estates in the hands of executors. Revenues derived from inheritance taxes to be placed in trust with the Federal Reserve Board for investment in securities approved by Congress. The fund to be known as "Federal Fund for Social Welfare." Expenditures of income derived from such securities to be made under the direction of the Federal Industrial Commission for such purposes of industrial and social welfare as Congress may authorize. Should the income from investments not be adequate to meet the authorized expenditures, further investments to be withheld and the principal to be expended. Revenues derived from activities of the commission, such as head tax on immigrants, etc., to belong to the fund. Also unexpended balance to be held in the fund for disposition by Congress.

19. Immigration. We are convinced that very substantial restrictions on immigration, in addition to the present restrictions, should be adopted, and that comprehensive measures should be taken to teach the English language and otherwise "Americanize" the immigrants. * * * Since immigration is one of the principal issues between capital and labor, its administration should be turned over to the proposed Federal industrial commission, where capital and labor will have an equal voice. This would place all administrative positions in the service, up to and including the commissioner general, under the civil-service rules proposed in paragraph 3.

20. Farmers and farm laborers.3 We recommend to Congress and the various States that steps shall be taken to lighten the burdens of the small farmer, and make it more possible to encourage the tenant, farm laborer, and city dweller, to become land proprietors.

1 In discussing this recommendation the report favors the legalization of the secondary boycott. Commissioners Weinstock, Ballard, and Aishton, who signed this report, dissent from this provision. Report, p. 407.

2 Dissented from by Commissioner Weinstock, who says, "I am of the opinion that we have abundant immigration laws already on our statute books which if enforced will keep out of the country unfit immigrants." Report, p. 404.

* Based upon the increasing amount of absentee landlordism and farm tenancy revealed by the investi gation. See discussions, Report, pp. 14-16, 127–131, 399.

We recommend that Congress and the various States pass rural credit acts that will give to the small American farmer the same privileges and benefits that for so long a time have been enjoyed by the small farmers in Germany and other European countries, which, following Germany, have adopted rural credit systems. We recommend serious consideration to adapting the Irish land bill and the Australian system of State colonization to our American conditions. * * * We believe it not only desirable but practicable for the Federal Government, through its Department of Agriculture, to secure large bodies of land at appraised actual values, that have been thoroughly tested by experts for their quality, issuing bonds for the payment for same, if need be, and to cut them up into small parcels, making the necessary improvements, and selling them to qualified colonists with small first payments, making the balance payable in say 30 years on the amortization plan, the deferred payments bearing only the same rate of interest that the Go ernment itself is called upon to pay, plus a small addition to cover the cost of Government administration. We believe, in this way, the most effective check can be created on the one hand to minimize farm tenancy, and on the other hand to make it possible for the farm laborer and the farm tenant to become land proprietors. We believe that this, if carried out wisely and intelligently, will have a large share in minimizing industrial unrest and in adding to the wealth of the Nation, both materially and in the quality of its citizenship.

21. Corporation control. We are not in favor of public ownership as solely a matter of impro ing labor conditions, and before such can be recommended there should be a more complete investigation and regulation and a clearing up of the values that will be paid and the administrative control that will follow. More immediate and necessary is a series of laws that will take the control of politics out of the hands of corporations and place it in the hands of the people. Several of our previous recommendations are intended to accomplish this purpose in so far as labor and capital are concerned, but we should add effective corrupt practices acts, designed to protect the secret ballot, to limit the amount of money and number of paid electioneers in elections, to prevent intimidation, and so on, as far as elections are menaced by political machines and wealth. Direct primaries for the nomination of candidates protected by corrupt practices acts. Constitutional and legislative initiative for State and Federal Governments. * * * The recall of elected officials, including executives and judges of the lower courts, but not judges of the supreme courts or members of the legislature. Proportional representation, as adopted in Belgium, South Africa, Australia, and the Irish Parliament, by which all parties or factions would be able to elect their own representative in the legislatures or Congress in proportion to their numbers and without making deals with other parties.

REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS WEINSTOCK, BALLARD, AND AISHTON.

This report dissents from two recommendations contained in the report of Commissioners Commons and Harriman, to which reference has been made in footnotes. Additional causes for industrial unrest are presented, and the report concludes with some discussion of certain prime objections that employers have to recognizing and dealing with organized labor. These objections are based on the fear of (1) sympathetic strikes, (2) jurisdictional disputes, (3) laborunion politics, (4) contract breaking, (5) restriction of output, (6) prohibition of the use of nonunion-made tools and materials, (7) closed shop, (8) contests for supremacy between rival unions, (9) acts of violence against nonunion workers and the properties of employers, and (10) apprenticeship rules.

STATISTICS OF WAGES OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES IN THE UNITED STATES.

The annual reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission on statistics of railways have each year for some time past called attention to the inadequacy of the statements in its annual reports pertaining to average daily compensation of railway employees. It is noted, for instance, that the extent to which overtime work, paid for at rates higher than the customary rates, affects the daily average compensation as reported is not clearly brought out by the returns submitted by carriers. The problem has been to find some practicable method of converting compensation paid into terms of a daily wage. Furthermore, the general belief has been that the classes of occupational groups of railway employees as shown in the statistical reports of the commission were not sufficiently detailed to be of value for those purposes for which wage statistics are generally employed. Thus the reports of the carriers do not show wages separately for the large body of employees in passenger and freight service. To remedy these and other defects to which attention was called in its existing schedules the commission recently revised the form of report which carriers are required to make concerning the number and compensation of their employees. A new form of report and rules governing the classification of steam railway employees was drafted early in 1914, and was made effective by order of the commission on July 1, 1915. Its next report on the statistics of railways in the United States for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1915, will contain the first report of the carriers under this new schedule.

The classification of employees as adopted was drafted in a preliminary way by a committee of the carriers after a conference of railway accountants, the railroad brotherhoods, and other labor organizations, the statisticians of the commission, and of the Department of Labor, and was then revised and slightly changed to meet the requirements of the commission.

The new schedule makes some important changes over the former one in use in four principal respects: (1) The number of occupations or occupational groups is increased from 18 to 68; (2) the number of hours instead of the number of days worked by each class of employees during the year is to be reported; (3) the number of employees is to be determined quarterly instead of annually as of June 30 as formerly; (4) certain more important groups of employees are classified according to the branch of traffic (passenger or freight) in which they are engaged.

1 Interstate Commerce Commission. Rules governing the classification of steam railway employees and their compensation. Effective on July 1, 1915. Washington, 1915. 13 pp.

The number of employees is to be reported as of the middle of each of the months of July, October, January, and April. The 16th day of the month is considered the middle of the month, but should this date fall on Sunday, the last preceding business day is adopted. An employee is defined to include every person subject to the continuing authority of the carrier to supervise and direct the manner of rendition of his service. Every employee in service on the day specified, even though for only a part of a day, is to be included in the count. Employees temporarily absent from duty but not suspended for service are to be included in the count if receiving any pay, while if absent with leave but receiving no pay, they are to be excluded from the count. Employees suspended from service and pensioners rendering no service are to be excluded. Employees are to be classified in accordance with their most important duty. The average number of employees is to be derived from the numbers determined by the quarterly counts.

The actual number of hours on duty during the year is to be ascertained and recorded for every class of employees required to be on duty at regular times and not released from duty; time allowed for meals, half holidays, or absence of other kind is to be excluded, while time actually spent in work or while subject to orders and not released from duty must be included, and the requirement applies to enginemen and trainmen paid on the basis of trips, miles run, etc., and shop employees paid piece rates, as well as to employees paid on the basis of hourly, daily, weekly, or other time rates. Special rules are drafted for the proper inclusion and reporting of joint employees, i. e., employees of two or more carriers.

Among the new subdivisions of the classification of employees is that making distinction between "general officers" and "division officers" on the basis of the amount of annual compensation. A similar distinction is made for clerks, the first subclass including all paid at the rate of $900 per annum or upward and the second subclass those below that limit. Those whose time of employment continues to be reported by the day instead of by the hour are general and division officers, messengers, and attendants, assistant engineers and draftsmen, general foremen in the maintenance and equipment departments, traveling agents and solicitors, station agents who do not perform telegraphic service, yardmasters, station masters and assistants, and policemen and watchmen.

Those employees whose services are classified according as they are rendered for the freight or passenger department are engineers and motor-men, firemen and helpers, conductors, brakemen and flagmen, and baggagemen.