would certainly have alienated the commons at this most dangerous juncture. .. But the consuls and elder senators took care that this office, in its own nature uncontrollable, should be committed to a man of moderate temper. They chose Manius Valerius, son of Volesus, dictator."

Although there is no parallel between their official positions, Valerius and Samuel Gompers have much in common. There is something quite Valerian about the position Mr. Gompers has held as ardent spokesman of the masses, but at the same time a conservative leader whom capital and the public would, as Mr. Gompers has often suggested, do well to support unless more radical leadership is desired. Valerius did not succeed in his task of conciliation. When he did not get from the senate the consideration he wanted for the grievances of the people, he quit the senatehouse and abdicated his dictatorship with a speech that sounded very much like Mr. Gompers's parting statement as he withdrew from the industrial conference last October. Valerius said: "I am not acceptable as an adviser of concord. You will ere long wish, depend on it, that the commons of Rome had patrons similar to me. For my part, I will neither further disappoint my fellow-citizens, nor will I be dictator to no purpose. . . . Peace has been secured abroad, it is impeded at home. I will be a witness to disturbance as a private citizen rather than as dictator."

To skip past details, the way out of the tangle was found, and a moderate program secured from the discontented element by a son of the common people not by any dramatic master-stroke of statesmanship, but by the telling of a simple fable that stripped the problem of its thousand and one misleading passions and brought to the situation the healing ministry of common sense.

The discontented legions were encamped outside the city. The senators had a bad case of nerves. They did not know at what minute the people left in the city would become infected with this Bolshevist poison and join forces with the legions outside. Then, too, another war might come any day, and

they would need the loyalty of the soldiers and the people. Plainly the thing had to be patched up. Let Livy tell how the victory for sanity and order

was won.

It was resolved, therefore, that there should be sent as ambassador to the people, Menenius Agrippa, an eloquent man, and one who was a favorite with the people, because he derived his origin from them. He, being admitted into the camp, is said to have related to them merely the following story in that antiquated and uncouth style: "At a time when all the parts in the human body did not, as now, agree together, but the several members had each its own scheme, its own language, the other parts, indignant that everything was procured for the belly by their care, labor, and service; that the belly, remaining quiet in the center, did nothing but enjoy the pleasures afforded it. They conspired accordingly, that the hands should not convey food to the mouth, nor the mouth receive it when presented, nor the teeth chew it; whilst they wished under the influence of this feeling to subdue the belly by famine, the members themselves and the entire body were reduced to the last degree of emaciation. Thence it became apparent that the service of the belly was by no means a slothful one; that it did not so much receive nourishment as supply it, sending to all parts of the body this blood by which we live and possess vigor, distributed equally to the veins when perfected by the digestion of the food." By comparing in this way how similar the intestine sedition of the body was to the resentment of the people against the senators, he made an impression on the minds of the multitude.

The modern cartoonist has always characterized "capital" by a capacious and well-filled stomach. Certain perversions of "capital" inspired this trick of the cartoonists, but Menenius Agrippa's fable got at the heart of capital's fundamental service. May we not hope that some Agrippa will arise in the ranks of labor and by some such clear, clean, lightning flash of common sense challenge all the factors of production, human and material, to that harmonious partnership without which we are defeated before we begin the tasks of reconstruction ahead of us?