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The reorganized body purposes the bringing about of a continuous nationwide collaboration of the physicists, chemists, biologists, geographers, meteorologists, of all our scientists; a fitting together of the work of university scientists, research institutions, and the scientific bureaus of the Government.

The organization chart of the council shows two groups of divisions. The first group deals with general relations and includes six divisions dealing with government, foreign relations, states relations, educational relations, industrial relations, and research information. The second group deals with special fields of science and technology and includes seven divisions dealing with physical sciences, engineering, chemistry and chemical technology, geology and geography, medical sciences, biology and agriculture, anthropology and psychology.

The division of research information, to quote Mr. Kellogg, will be "a veritable national center of information concerning American research work and research workers, with all of its information promptly available to institutions and individuals interested in knowing at any time what problems are under investigation in America and their status."

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True to the American devotion to private initiative, this council was not initiated or organized and is not supported by the Government. It is under the democratic control of the scientists coöperating in its work. It is, however, officially recognized by the Government. It is financed from private sources. is probably true that American genius works best when not too much officialized, but in the event of need this council deserves generous government subsidy. It will help us to achieve government by knowledge as well as government by discussion. It will concentrate the brains of the nation upon the central problem of increased production and a wise development of our resources.

CAPITAL WALKS OUT

SOME weeks ago a despatch from Barcelona brought the news of a general lockout of workmen throughout Spain by order of the Congress of Spanish Employers. This was a climactic act in

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Barcelona's long labor war. employers asserted that the Government had failed to protect the employers' interests, and they purposed to take the situation into their own hands and meet the Syndicalists with their own weapons. For every strike they deem unjustified and for every boycott they purpose a general lockout, to be supervised by a permanent organization of Spanish employers.

Up to the moment of this writing, at any rate, the Government has played a conciliatory rôle, saving the pride of the Syndicalists from an abject surrender by granting them certain things that appear as concessions, but which may in fact turn out to be handicaps to their radicalism later. For instance, the Government granted juridical recognition of the Syndicate. That sounds as though some prestige were accorded the Syndicalists, but in reality it brings them under an official surveillance that they have been able to avoid in the past. Now the Syndicate must keep open to inspection its lists of members and must keep a set of books subject to legal requisition.

This Barcelona episode is suggestive of two developments noticeable throughout the world. In the first place, extremists have strained public patience to a point where capital feels that public opinion will justify national collective action on its part. That is something new under the sun. As stated elsewhere in these editorials, the major part of public opinion in the past has held capital and capitalists under suspicion. In the past great strikes have been suffered to continue by a public that would not for a moment have suffered similar collective action by employers. The solid body of public opinion has not changed on the elementary matters of social justice in matters of wages and hours and living conditions, but mass opinion is, after all, susceptible to stampede, and there is everywhere evidence that reckless radicalism may result in a wide-spread reversal of the traditional sympathy for labor. The fact that a coup like this of the Spanish employers' could be conceived as possible is an indication of this tendency.

In the second place, the incident is suggestive of what may become a gen

eral movement in the direction of legal enactments that will insure responsibility upon the part of labor organizations. We have long had under discussion the proposal of demanding incorporation of labor-unions. Labor has consistently fought this, and there has not been sufficient conviction on the part of the public to force the measure through. It is inevitable that as power accumulates in any quarter, demands will arise that responsibility in that quarter be provided. Collective bargaining and collective responsibility are, of course, two sides of the same shield.

All such developments as the general lockout and the general strike show afresh that we have not yet got past the "balance-of-power" stage in industrial relations any more than we have got past the "balance-of-power" stage in international relations. Until we are able to find better instruments of class defense, we may expect such developments to proceed. Society has always shown a strange reluctance to bring reason to bear upon its problems until every other means has been exhausted. So it may be that we shall have to go on piling up armaments on both sides of the industrial field until the employers on the one side and the employees on the other have gravitated into two huge aggregations of power-aggregations so huge that industrial war between them will mean a virtual suspension of the nation's life. When such a time comes, when society has to choose between suicide or statesmanship, maybe we shall pull ourselves together and find a new basis for industrial coöperation.

BECAUSE GERMANY WORKS

A FEW months back it was worth one's head to suggest that we should some day be obliged to deal with Germany as part of the economic world. Prominent citizens, in solicitous concern for the full vindication of international morality, busied themselves with elaborate schemes for a post-war boycott. Then, in October last, the international labor conference, created under the peace treaty, convened in Washington and by a vote of seventy-one to one admitted to membership in the conference Ger

man and Austrian delegates. The one vote against their admission was cast by M. Louis Guerin, head of the French linen industry, who shouted with Gallic fervor as the vote was announced, "It is splendid to stand alone."

Our late enemies were admitted to this conference not because the world has forgotten Germany's insane aloofness to the commonest standards of political decency during the war and the long years of insidious preparation, but because the modern world is an economic unit and cannot be administered other than as a unit. Belgium's memory certainly has not failed her, and yet economic considerations would not allow her delegates to vote against the motion, although sentiment would not permit their voting for it. M. Jules Carlier, president of the central industrial committee of Belgium, explaining refusal to vote, said, "They [the Belgian employers] don't want to vote against it for economic reasons, but they don't want to vote for it, because Germany has cynically violated all engagements towards Belgium and diabolically destroyed our industries." M. Ernest Mahaim, of Liège University, likewise said, "We think economic conditions force us to adopt the motion."

The whole affair was a striking testimony to the primacy of economics in international relations. The German and Austrian delegates walked past the sentinels of hate and took their seats in the conference, despite the old political Germany, because of the new economic Germany.

M. Léon Jouhaux, general secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail and head of the French delegation, stated the situation clearly and raised an interesting question when he said: "One question we are going to discuss is the eight-hour day. It would be entirely impossible to impose the application of the principles that might here be adopted on Germany and Austria if they are not allowed to participate. And we read daily that in Germany workmen are busy nine and ten hours a day." The last sentence of the French labor leader's statement puts the interesting query, What will happen if, while the rest of the world is wrangling, Ger

many says nothing and goes quietly to work?

It is interesting to note what has been happening in Germany at a time when labor and capital in other countries have been immersed in conflicts that have meant a serious handicap on production. Some weeks ago Herr Bauer, Cabinet President, said to the German Parliament, "There are unmistakable signs of a reawakening of the characteristic strenuousness of German workmen, justifying our hopes that economic conditions will soon become quite tolerable." Then we find Georges Gotheiu, formerly of the Scheideman Cabinet, writing in the "Neue Freie Presse" that the industries which contribute to Germany's export trade have adequate coal arrangements and are little disturbed by strikes; that Germany's porcelain works are employing more workers than before the war; that the toy, optical, and chemical industries, the manufacture of musical instruments, and the publication of music are all on a high production basis and have many foreign orders at good prices.

The facts available at the time this is written indicate that these statements are more than political gestures. At the beginning of November last, the figures of the Federal Labor Ministry indicated that there were about five hundred thousand unemployed in all Germany. That meant that in six months Germany had reduced the number of her unemployed from a million and a half to the above noted halfmillion. It is significant that the largest number of unemployed, at the time these figures were compiled, were registered in branches of industry, such as textiles, which are dependent upon foreign countries for raw materials; that is, in situations over which German purpose and organization cannot yet exert control.

Every effort is being made in Germany to compose labor difficulties and to get industry going full steam ahead. There has been a marked gain in wages and in other privileges for German labor. Manufacturers are, in some instances, buying up large stocks of foodstuffs and reselling them to their workmen at a price the workmen can

afford. The fact that German tradeunions have consented to the reintroduction of piece-work in many branches of the metal industry is indicative of the increasing concern of German labor as well as of German capital to every incentive to maximum production. The German workman has begun to show signs that he is tired of seeing his savings vanish in strike periods and is settling down to the grinding tasks and responsibilities of the economic restoration of the fatherland. Many factories in the chemical industry are working three shifts every twenty-four hours.

A recent Berlin despatch quotes General von Francois, who commanded an army corps in Poland during the war, as suggesting that Germany adopt a system of compulsory labor during the transition period to take the place of the compulsory military training that the German youths formerly received. Somewhat reminiscent of our own William James's idea of a social conscription as a moral equivalent of war, General von Francois suggests that, since work is the sole salvation of Germany, all physically and mentally fit youths should be drafted for one year when they become twenty years of age, that they be housed in barracks, clothed, fed, and given certain expense money by the state, and that the products of their labor go to the state. This may be only a private suggestion, but it must be remembered that, despite its sins against civilization, the old régime burned into the German people over a long period of years the lesson of organization. The war meant four years of graduate training in intensive production. A people does not soon forget such training. So the question is, What will happen if the curve of production rises in Germany and falls in the lands of the victor? That is a good question to print on the desk calendars of all employers and labor leaders.

THE PHILATELIST IN HIGH GLEE

BACK in 1865, in the columns of "Le Collectionneur," M. Herpin, a stampcollector, carelessly coined the word philatélie from two Greek words that in combination literally mean a love of

things free of tax. While M. Herpin may have worried the meticulous wordbuilder, he gave local habitation and name to the whimsical passion of the stamp-collecting fraternity, which must be in high glee to-day over the medley of new stamps which the magic wand of "self-determination" has called into

being.

A London "Times" despatch records the issuance of nearly two thousand new kinds of postage stamps since December, 1918. The new states created by the peace conference have issued nearly fifteen hundred of this number. Poland now has over four hundred distinct postage-stamps as against the single design used before the war. The Ukraine has displayed similar versatility in the creation of one hundred and seventy-five varieties of stamps. CzechoSlovakia and Jugo-slavia, not to be outdone, have each turned out a fresh assortment of about one hundred and fifty. And not to alienate the interest of the philatelic brotherhood, little Fiume boasts seventy-five distinct issues.

THE PUBLIC IS KING

It is always reassuring when we retain our sense of humor on dark days. In the mass of solemn and apprehensive editorials on the labor situation it is refreshing to come upon the lightness of touch that marks a Chicago "Tribune" comment on the tangle. The writer asserts that the coal-miners said they were willing to negotiate to prevent a strike, the operators said they were willing to negotiate to prevent a strike, the Government asked both to negotiate to prevent a strike; so it was decided to have a strike. Then the writer proceeds to twit the always imperious, but always complaisant, public. He writes that we emphatically assert that the public must not have its vital processes interrupted, and straightway they are interrupted; that the public must be protected, and the public is not. "The public is the ward of mandates and the victim of facts. The public is always king, but there is always a regency."

Things have been moving, however, in the days since this was written. The injunction obtained by the Government

in the coal strike and the overwhelming approval which the Massachusetts electorate gave to the manner in which Governor Coolidge defended the public interest in the policemen's strike are only two of many dramatizations of the new determination to make the public interest primary in every situation.

No one who has had a new political or economic idea since the landing of the Mayflower desires "government by injunction," with the meanings that have attached to that phrase in the past. But the use of the injunction in the November coal strike was actuated by no narrow class motive. It was not designed as a blow at the workman's right to strike. It was the Government's most available means of serving notice upon all groups and all classes that methods must be found for settling the issues of industry that do not threaten to freeze or starve the American public and paralyze American industry. The Government was not indulging in a temporary manoeuver for the settlement of this strike alone; it was establishing a principle of public right which the present posture of affairs requires, if the public is not to become a foot-ball to be kicked here and there by any group that happens to accumulate power. Should an association of owners and operators act in concert to bring about a nationwide shutting down of all coal-mines, labor leadership would be first to condemn it as inhuman and illegal. And labor leadership would be right. question at stake is not the justice or injustice of specific claims in particular strikes; it is a question of the suicidal character of the present method of attempting to adjust industrial relations.

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No sane man wishes to see the situation issue in a test of brute force. A fight would bring only a temporary settlement at best, and its aftermath would poison social relations in this country for a generation to come. There never has been a time in our history when employers were as widely and as deeply concerned in making a sincere approach to the human problem of industry. The war has mellowed the mind of many an autocrat. We could begin to see the emerging qualities of

genuine industrial statesmanship in many quarters. It will be little short of tragic if all this must be stifled in an industrial death-grapple. Even before the war the preponderant part of our public sympathy was with labor in the average contest, and labor further solidified its hold upon American opinion during the war. But since the war an increasing radicalism in labor has shaken that sympathy.

It is becoming clearer every day, however, that if it comes to a test of strength, the public interest will prevail. The complaisant public has been jarred awake. If a show-down of force must come, there is less ground than ever to fear the outcome. Wherever there has been a clear test on a clean-cut issue, whether in Seattle or in Boston, it has been made plain that the reserve forces of the public stand ready to leap to mobilization against the autocracy or violence of any minority that disdains the accepted methods of a democracy for achieving progress or effecting change. This should give us a sense of security that will make for calm consideration untouched by hysteria.

2413 YEARS AGO

SEVERAL editors were talking shop the other evening in the quiet of a club corner. One of them, not a classicist, remarked that whenever he felt his brain going flat and dry, whenever he found himself angling in vain for an idea that would cut under the surface of the day's news, he spent an evening browsing in the classics or re-reading the very old essayists. He contended that for acute observation, incisive comment, and downright timeliness, ancient literature is more modern than current literature.

Certainly it would be difficult to write an editorial on our own domestic unrest and strike epidemic that would get to the heart of the matter with greater directness than does this page from Livy's "History of Rome."

It seems that after the rapid and successful conclusion of a series of wars "the state, being disturbed within itself, glowed with intestine animosity between the senate and the people. . . . They

[the persons with grievances] complained loudly, that whilst fighting abroad for liberty and dominion, they were captured and oppressed at home by their fellow-citizens." This sounds strangely modern. Describing the spread of the tumult through the city, Livy writes, like one of our own vigilantes, "In no place is there wanting a voluntary associate of sedition." Strikingly suggestive of the way American labor, pointing to its admirable war record, asserts its demands in no uncertain tones, Livy describes the manner in which the "multitude" approached the "consuls" for redress. "The multitude turning towards them [the consuls] said that they deserved all this [disturbance], taunting them each with the military services performed by himself, one in one place, and another in another. They require them with menaces, rather than as suppliants, to assemble the senate, and stand round the senate-house in a body, determined themselves to be witnesses and directors of the public counsels.' Here was labor influence on Congress with a vengeance.

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Fashions in human nature seem not to change much through the centuries. This Roman Bolshevism revealed about the same diversity in the ideals of leadership that we have to-day. "Appius, a man of violent temper, thought the matter was to be done by the authority of the consuls, and that if one or two were seized, the rest would be quiet. Servilius, more inclined to moderate measures, thought that while their minds were in this ferment, it would be both more safe and more easy to bend than to break them."

Here were the two fundamental types of leadership bidding for control. of Roman policy in a time of threatening unrest Appius, apostle of force; Servilius, apostle of moral suasion. The outcome may be suggestive for us. To quote Livy again: "To many the opinion of Appius appeared, as it really was, severe and violent. . . . But through the spirit of faction and a regard of private interest, which always have and always will obstruct the public councils, Appius prevailed, and was himself near being created dictator; which step

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