well says, "Small groups of highly skilled artisans. carefully selected . . . may achieve success, . . . but where laborers of very various qualifications, of all ages and both sexes, are to be brought together in industries which involve a great many processes requiring differing degrees of strength and skill, and which produce goods for distant, and perhaps, at the time of production, unknown markets, we see as yet scarcely a sign of the services of the employer being dispensed with.

"What, then, is the reason for this comparative failure of industrial co-operation? I answer, the difficulty of effecting co-operation on a large scale is directly as its desirableness. It is solely because of the importance of the entrepreneur function that the employing class are able to realize those large profits which so naturally and properly excite the desires of the wages-class; and it is for precisely the same reason that it is found so difficult to get rid of the employing class.” 1

These are among the reasons why partial co-operation, which is generally understood by the term, cannot restore industrial peace.

Most capitalistic economists speak kindly of the movement and gladly record any instance where it has afforded wage-workers even a slight relief. As men humane and Christian, they wish it well and hope it may have something of a future, but as consistent economists of capitalism they know it is abnormal and can have no scientific basis.

Nothing short of the co-operation of Socialism can withstand the mighty power of competition. To this position taken by Mr. William Morris, Professor F. H. Gidding replies, "This is to overlook the vitally important truth, that there are monstrous evils associated with competition at present, which have grown up through the shameful neglect of the government to fulfil its primary functions of protecting equal rights and enforcing justice." 2 The italics are ours.

1 As quoted in the "Wages Question " (Walker), pp. 274, 275.

2 "Co-operation" in "The Labor Movement the Problem of To

day," p. 531.

Here is the marrow of the social question. A government that stands for "equal rights" and "justice" is all that Socialism demands. But the new ethics require a new and enlarged conception of the terms right and justice. Whatever may have been the primary functions of government in a primitive and rude condition of society, the higher and more complex organization to-day would seem to require a new application and extension of these functions. The evolution of industry and revolution in science, the increase and congestion of population and wealth, and the advance of civilization have wrought such a social transformation, and so changed all human relations and institutions that equal industrial as well as political rights, and social rather than merely commutative justice are imperatively demanded.

The great body of Socialists approve partial co-operation as a means, but not as an end. It is not the full corn in the ear, but it is the blade. If it be asked how the blade is to advance against the hostile forces of capitalism, we reply, God and the new ethics will take care of the truth. These are puissant forces which capitalism and political economists will be obliged to reckon with, notwithstanding the claim that they lie outside the economist's province. Every one of these eight obstacles to co-operation disappears under Socialism. The chief one is perhaps the insufficient intelligence of wage-workers. Would this not defeat universal as well as partial co-operation? By no means. Let co-operators have behind them the united, collective intelligence of society, crystallized in industrial laws, and the evil is remedied. If two heads are better than one, the heads of all the citizens are better than two or any number less than the whole. Here we see the moral and educational value of law. It is the expression of aggregate wisdom, and is therefore wiser than any single legislator or body of legislators.

Law alone makes extensive co-operation of any kind possible. The State is a co-operative establishment; the same is true of all political and social institutions. Why not apply the same principle to industry?

If laborers cannot voluntarily, for want of intelligence and moral discipline, co-operate, they might gladly do it by the aid and support of law. It requires a power beyond individual control to cause men to acquiesce in what is for the common good. In cheerful obedience to this power we build our highways, maintain public works and institutions, pay our taxes, and in a hundred ways do what, if left to ourselves, we would not and could not do. This power springs directly from that united and collective intelligence which would cause men to labor harmoniously in integral co-operation.

"It is not an end nor a solution of the problem. It is on the way to the end, and is much nearer it than a strike or a lock-out."

CARROLL D. WRIGHT.

Those who look to industrial Conciliation and Arbitration as a means of permanently reconciling the opposing forces of labor and capital, have made a very superficial diagnosis of the disease which afflicts society; and they will find little encouragement from any school of social philosophers. Conciliation is related to arbitration as moral suasion is to legal suasion. Conciliation effects a settlement by the parties themselves through the friendly offices of a conciliator. Arbitration effects a settlement by a third party, an arbitrator, who, after the hearing, pronounces judgment. He may be appointed by the parties themselves, or by some superior authority. The proceeding should be under statutory provisions and the result binding.

This manner of settling differences between capitalist and laborer was first adopted in France at the beginning of the century, and has proved of great benefit to French industry. In 1847, 19,721 cases, and in 1850, 28,000 cases were settled by these councils of prud'hommes. The number annually settled in France varies from 35,000 to 45,000. This is a remarkable record, and is doubtless due in part to the legal character of the proceedings. Courts of conciliation and arbitration are established by law. These are

called councils and are composed of an equal number of employers and workmen, elected by their respective classes, and a president and vice-president appointed by the gov ernment. On the application of either party, the other is bound to appear, and the cause at issue is heard and the decision enforced by law. How this council differs from a regular court of law may be inferred from the fact that generally an agreement is reached in the course of the proceedings by conciliation, rendering a formal judgment by arbitration unnecessary.

The ratio of cases thus settled was as seven to one in 1847.

A recent report gives the number of councils as 136. Of the 42,000 cases brought before them, about 16,000 were amicably settled, about 12,000 were voluntarily withdrawn before the termination of the proceedings, and about 13,000 were referred for judgment.

In England and the United States conciliation and arbitration have played a far less important part than in France. The legal and compulsory features are more objectionable, and the industrial conditions somewhat different. An English statute providing for compulsory arbitration has been inoperative for more than half a century.

Mr. Rupert Kettle says, "It is agreed that according to the spirit of our laws and the freedom of our people, any procedure, to be popular, must be accepted voluntarily by both contending parties." 1

During the last twenty years Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration in England, organized on a purely voluntary basis, have accomplished excellent results. Several States in this country have established Boards of Arbitration with good results. Mr. Wright says, "Of the great value of arbitration and conciliation as means of settling trades disputes, there can be no question. That it is infinitely to be preferred to the barbarous method of strikes and lockouts is scarcely a subject of argument. In the terse language of Mr. George Howell, formerly secretary of the

1 As quoted by Carroll D. Wright in "Industrial Conciliation and Ar bitration in England," p. 9.

Trades Union Congress, 'the whole question lies in a nutshell. Is brute force better than reason? If it be, then a costermonger may be a greater personage than a philosopher, and Tom Sayers might have been considered superior to John Stuart Mill.'" 1

Strikes and lock-outs are not, however, the same as "brute force," and they are daily less attended with violence. Neither is the award, even when accepted, generally regarded as right "reason."

There is important truth, however, in what Mr. Howell says. In conciliation and arbitration each party recognizes the other as possessing rights which are to be respected. Each party deprecates the injury which both must suffer by standing out. Each sees clearly that "discretion is the better part of valor." In these respects reason resorts to a referee and bids the parties submit to the award, although each considers it unjust. Under the circumstances it is the best thing to do. The daily increase of friction between labor and capital renders conciliation and arbitration a necessity as industry is now organized. It is the safety-valve which will of itself blow off and prevent explosion till the old boiler of capitalism is worn out and condemned, and as such we heartily commend it and hope to see it more generally adopted.

That it offers no permanent basis of peace to the hostile forces of capital and labor is evident from the following considerations:

1. Conciliation and arbitration settle nothing. They touch no principle, remove no injustice. The real casus belli remains. They may, and often do, show that the relation between wages and profits is, for the time being, not exactly what was supposed.

2. They are entirely outside the pale of the economics of capitalism, unless it be in the matter of the saving of waste, which the economists of capitalism naturally let pretty much alone. Conciliation and arbitration can get little help therefore from this source.

As quoted by Carroll D. Wright in "Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration in England," p. 54.