come is derived from pensions or savings. Self-analysis should indicate one's place.

The domestic or internal interests of a particular profession or business may be served by the profession or business societies; but, so far as general political and economic questions are concerned, those who constitute these bodies, together with the vast mass of the middle classes who are not attached to or identified with any such specialized organization, are incapable, under present conditions, of any power of concerted action. The Middle Classes' Union exists to weld together these unorganized and unrepresented middle classes into a strong, practical, coördinated entity for the protection of common interests. The very existence of a representative and powerful organization such as this will produce a moderating and stimulating influence in the political and economic life of the nation.

Now, it is inevitable that as the "salariate" finds itself less adjusted to rapid rise of prices than either workmen or capitalists, there will be a tendency to do the obvious thing-to organize as labor has organized for concerted action. The general attitude toward this middle-class movement has been one of uncritical approval. It is worth while, therefore, to point out certain possibilities in this movement that have received little attention to date.

In the first place, the middle-class movement, broadly speaking, is an attempt to adopt, for the sole remaining unorganized part of humanity, the principles of concerted action and collective bargaining just when these two policies, necessary as they have been in the blind evolution of industrial relations, are proving that they are no final solutions to our difficulties. Competition between organized groups in the economic field is an exact parallel of the competition between nations that brought on the World War. The whole sickening round of competing armaments and periodic conflicts is transferred to the field of economics. Just when we are realizing the inadequacy of a fighting economy in industrial and international relations seems hardly the time to extend these practices to cover the whole of human society. We may succeed only in making a three-cornered

fight out of what has been a two-sided fight, without coming nearer to a solution. The necessity for putting industry upon the basis of a parliament rather than a tournament has been repeatedly urged in these columns. Cannot the middle classes do something more statesmanlike than the bringing of still other prize-ring tactics into the situation?

In the second place, there is always the possibility that as middle-class organization becomes a reality it will be captured by labor organization and simply intensify the class conflict. What we need now is not an intensification of the class conflict, but a statesmanlike substitute for the class conflict. The first hint of an attempted coalition between the proletariat and the "salariate" comes to hand as this editorial is being written. The English Labor party has invited to a conference representatives of such organizations as those of engineering draftsmen, supervising electricians, railway and shipping clerks, colliery managers, journalists, actors, commercial travelers, and industrial chemists, men of the salaried classes. This is an attempt to gain for the Labor party the support of those middle classes who have been hardest hit by the war, having neither participated directly in war profits nor to any marked degree in the increased wages and the bonuses of war time. Such a coalition would give the Labor party a new source of leadership upon which it could draw in the event of a Labor government's coming into power. Such a coalition would imply a certain amount of give and take between the wage-earning classes and the salaried classes in the matter of a program. Whether the result would be a conservatizing of the wage-earning class or a radicalizing of the salaried class is difficult to forecast. It is clear, at any rate, that there are more complicated possibilities in the middle-class movement than the first burst of uncritical commendation suggested.

OIL FEVER

PREOCCUPIED with our new intellectual interest in world politics, counting carefully our ducats as we decide about credit

to Europe, listening to the appeals of Viennese hunger, trying to make up our minds whether to fear Lenine or to trade with him, our ears assailed by congressional debates and the clamor of candidates, we are hardly aware of the biggest oil boom in the history of the United States. In less distracting times we would recognize this development as exceeding the famous gold rushes to California in 1849 and to Alaska in 1897. New oil companies are springing up as if by magic in Texas, Oklahoma, California, Louisiana, and many other States.

The Foreign Press Service in a recent release has presented an interesting summary of new capitalization and production in the oil industry. In 1916 the capitalization of oil companies of $100,000 or more amounted to $419,746,000. In 1917 the capitalization of new companies alone raised this total by $840,219,000. The summary does not mention the increase in capitalization among old companies. In 1918 the capitalization of new companies totaled $430,480,600. Then came the astounding increase. During the first ten months of 1919 new oil companies of $100,000 or more added a total capitalization of $2,717,037,000. In other words, the new capitalization in the oil companies in 1919 was nearly seven times that of the total capitalization in 1916. To-day the United States is producing four sevenths of the oil supply of the world.

Behind these statistics lies a wealth of dramatic interests. In the oil communities we shall doubtless see some measure of a renaissance of the frontier. We shall get at least a glimpse of the gun-toting days of the Klondike, mitigated of course by altered conditions, but enough of the fever and freedom of the old days will be in evidence to cause not a little reversion among certain social types. But perhaps we are forgetting what the magic wand of prohibition will effect. We wonder-will the oil rush produce its Robert W. Service?

A VANISHING RACE COMES BACK

WILL the day of surprises never end? From the time we first recited the ora

tion on the Indian from McGuffey's Reader we have thought of the North American Indian as a vanishing race, and of late as a sort of Banquo's ghost at our discussions of the new religion of self-determination. Now, Mr. Cato Sells, United States Indian Commissioner, submits a report that, by facts and figures, explodes the myth of the vanishing race. Here are some of the deductions that may be drawn from his report.

The Indian is not dying. Since 1890 the number of Indians in the United States has increased from 230,000 to 350,000. These figures do not include the Indian population of Alaska.

The Indian is not crowded. True, the Indian has lost the continent, but he used very little of it when he had it all to himself. The Indian reservations in the United States cover 60,000,000 acres. Indians cultivate 700,000 acres of land. 176,000 Indians have individual land-holdings. In these 60,000,000 acres of out-of-doors the Indian plys his trade as lumberman, farmer, cattleman, sheep-raiser, trapper, and fisherman.

The Indian is not left in poverty. The annual rentals received by Indian landlords from white tenants total $5,000,000. The Indian realizes from land sales about $4,000,000 and from live-stock sales about $4,000,000 every year. His crops have an annual valuation of about $11,000,000. He receives yearly $1,700,000 in interest on trust funds. During the last fiscal year he has received $700,000 in indemnifications and $20,000,000 from Indian money, mineral royalties, and other sources. The Indian owns about 250,000 horses and mules, 250,000 cattle, and 1,230,000 sheep and goats. The total value of Indian-owned live stock is estimated at $48,000,000. It is gratifying to note that this represents a six-fold increase in a period of twenty years. The Indian's live-stock sales seem to be wisely managed, so that the flocks and herds are not depleted. timber on the Indian reservations is valued at $363,000,000, the annual income from timber netting the Indian about $2,000,000. The total wealth of the Indian is estimated at $700,000,000. In 1890 the net annual income of

The

the Indian was $3,000,000; to-day it is $54,000,000. Not exactly a record of penury! The record would be more gratifying were this prosperity more evenly distributed among the tribes. Last year the Osage tribe received more than $10,000,000 in bonuses on oil and natural gas leases and a handsome royalty on the oil and gas production, while a tribe of 1500 California Indians realized only $48,000 for the entire year. But, then, inequality in wealth is not an exclusively Indian problem. Fewer than 5000 able-bodied adult Indians actually fed by the Government.

are

The Indian is not a soured soul sulking over wrongs at the hands of a robbergovernment. He is no Ishmael, with his hand against every man. He shares with the white man the sacrament of loyalty to the nation. The Indian invested $25,000,000 in the several Liberty Bond issues. That meant about $75 per capita. There were many white States that did not match this per-capita record of the reservations. Over 10,000 Indians served in the army; 2000 Indians enlisted in the navy. And to-day decorations for distinguished heroism can be seen, worn with the Indian's austere pride, on the reservations.

The

The Indian does not display a sullen immunity to the better things of white civilization. The legend of inadaptability is slowly breaking down. Out of 84,000 Indian children eligible for school, 61,000 actually attend. Out of 54,000 Indian families, 43,000 families live in houses, having deserted the tepee. Indian is to-day predominantly monogamous, only 236 polygamous marriages being recorded; 113,000 Indians are listed as church-goers; 191,000 Indians have forsaken the blanket for modern clothing; 120,000 Indians speak the English language, and 26,000 are voters. The one phase of inadaptability to which the Indian clings is his reluctance to intermarry with the white. At least the statistics show that fewer than one tenth of the Indian marriages are with whites. For this all biologically minded folk will be thankful.

The record of our relations with the Indian may be stained with many wrongs. Even when the larger logic of history may seem to justify conquest

that vast lands may better serve the entire human race, the relations between conqueror and conquered inevitably give rise to injustices. Although these facts may present only the brighter side of the picture, we are glad there is a bright side.

THE GHOST OF BISMARCK

It was one of the interesting and astute features of the Bismarckian technic to defeat reform by annexing its salient and safe elements. He postponed the day of social reckoning in Germany by such tactics. He would calmly face a rising tide of social discontent, analyze the program of the discontented, and put into prompt effect as many of its reform proposals as he could consistently adopt without striking at the root of the existing social and political order. This meant that from time to time he stole from the agitator those proposals that dealt with the more immediate and dramatic necessities that interested the German masses, leaving the agitator with only his theoretical appeal from one sort of social order to another. This meant that Bismarck could say, in effect, to the German people, "See how much more quickly and effectively the Hohenzollern government can get for you the desires of your hearts than can your irresponsible agitators."

The ghost of Bismarck still walks in Germany, in the matter of technic at least. Ebert, the Socialistic saddlemaker, has not forgotten the tactics of Bismarck, the cynical statesman. The spirit of paternalism still informs the movements of the Government. One bit of recent news from Germany illustrates this contention.

While the statesmen and business men of England and the United States are discussing the wisdom of democratizing industry through the installation of shop stewards and joint councils of employers and employees as a means of allaying and preventing the discontent that is today hamstringing production, Germany calmly announces a compulsory establishment by law of the system in every shop and business in Germany employing more than twenty men.

Raymond Swing, in a special despatch to "The Sun" of New York, reports an interesting interview with Special Chancellor Otto Bauer on the matter. Chancellor Bauer asserts that compulsory establishment of the shopsteward system by law was passed because "it enables reasonable workers for the first time to become masters of shop politics." He contends that the great majority of laborers are reasonable rather than revolutionary, but that they have been unable to make their views effective because there have been no legal safeguards thrown around shop politics, shop elections being held in open meetings where "intimidation could be practised, and the loudest voices rather than the coolest heads carried the day."

By the new law, elections by secret ballot, under the protection of law, are to be introduced into every German shop and business, with a labor staff of more than twenty laborers. "The new statute," says Chancellor Bauer, "means the defeat of the radicals who for a year have been struggling to transform the shops into Socialistic affairs and want to appeal all unsettled labor disputes to a board composed solely of labor members. That of course would be simply a dictatorship of the proletariate."

The chancellor contends that he is simply taking a leaf from the book of England's labor experience and thought, and doing what England and other countries are merely discussing and leaving to the slower process of private and group initiative. "Such measures as our shop-steward law," says Chancellor Bauer to Mr. Swing, "are bound to come in all industrial countries; you must prepare for them in America, too,

where it is apparent that economic forces are shaping a conflict."

The chancellor contends that the Government is proceeding in this matter upon the basis of experience, not theory. He says:

Some of our manufacturers complain that this law means the end of discipline; I say that this is not true and these manufacturers will have to admit it within six months.

Only the other day the director of a large factory told me of his experience with shop stewards whom he had installed of his own accord with essentially the same powers as those bestowed by this law. He took them into his confidence, showed his books and contracts, and explained his plans. Although the majority of his workers are Independent Socialists, he has not had a strike. As this is the epoch of strikes, the question is: Why not?

It is because the workers, besides understanding their own troubles, had also a view of the entire situation and became convinced that the manager was working in their interest and doing the best he could. . . . The law is the foundation of a new economic structure whose outlines will be completed when the provincial and national economic councils have been added. . . . These further laws are being drafted and will be carried during the winter. . . . The adoption of this program is proof that we are regaining our poise, and if the Entente Powers and America do not withhold their aid we shall be the masters of our task.

The significant feature of this development in Germany is that it will give us a genuine laboratory demonstration of the feasibility or failure of the joint-council scheme in industry, when adopted on a nation-wide scale and operated in the midst of difficult conditions.