lems. In the first place the great natural law of supply and demand cannot permanently be overridden. As population and labor increase wages will go down. Then there is the Malthusian law that population tends to increase faster than food, and that means competition in wages to get what food there is at higher prices. Then there is the fact that as living becomes easier the plain people increase faster and the immigrants breed like rabbits. The poor you have with you always; if not nature produces them. "Early marriages and the number of births are indissolubly connected with abundance of food." Professor Pigou of Cambridge University says, "As regards marriage, there is the well-known relation of the English marriage rate to wheat prices in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, and to exports, clearing-house returns, and so on in the latter part." In fact, the sex instinct has been so overloaded by nature to preserve the species it disregards poverty and hunger. "There is no exception," Darwin says, "to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair." 2 The potato when brought into Ireland increased the population by millions in a comparatively short time and when the crop failed there was famine and emigration to America. Java under the Dutch increased nearly sixfold in less than a century. Asia and Africa teem with population where food is plentiful. Egypt under recent improved agricultural conditions grew in fifteen years from seven to nearly ten millions population. America most of all shows how abundant food increases the people. Given good living, population increases until the living is poor for the mass of mankind. And then there is greater competition to get work, and wages go down. Herein lies a fact which labor cannot surmount. Birth control, unfortunately, is chiefly confined to the more intelligent classes, the increase of which is badly needed. True it is that men are constantly emerging from the working class into the middle class, and have less children with a better

chance in the world, but the mass of city workmen are not affected. Population grows, poverty increases, and the large families of the foreigners prevent even an approach to equality of condition. Professor Buell of Harvard is right when he says: "The real solution is the restriction of numbers - the adjustment of the birth to the death rate a solution which comes about automatically, so it appears, with the progress of education and the increased standard of living." We hope so, but history is against that theory, judging from the fact "that during the industrial revolution in Europe the population of the white race increased five hundred and fifty per cent." 2

3

1

Turning again to labor unions the "strike" will gradually be displaced by more peaceable and reasonable methods. The vast population of this country will not tolerate that coal and transpor tation may be cut off by strikes. Laws will be passed that such strikes shall be criminal, and arbitration compulsory. Hammond and Jenks state that compulsory arbitration with penalties has not succeeded in Australia and New Zealand, but apparently that pertained to ordinary industrial strikes and a criminal statute which may be enforced against the leaders of a railroad strike would be a very different thing. The Railroad Act of 1920 contained such a provision making railroad strikes a misdemeanor, as the bill passed the Senate, but that provision was stricken out in Conference, the labor power being stronger than a sluggish public opinion. Eliminating the railroad and coal unions there is not much left to worry about. The other unions can be left to work out their controversies, and every one is in favor of elevating the character of the wage earning class. The natural laws referred to above will ultimately work their way. To be sure, the public is getting very tired of the noise, disturbance, and class selfishness of the very small but vociferous minority found in the unions, but the public will be tolerant of every fair effort of the wage earner to better his condition. Illegal methods and force will meet with force backed by law. So also the public has

its eye on the employers, and while welcoming good goods at low prices, even though trusts are formed to produce that end, yet any attempt to control the government by invisible means will lead to public regulation in ways unpleasant to employers and capital generally.

The present tendency is clear. Railroad wages are not reduced and so railroad rates are raised. The public pays. Coal wages at extravagant figures are continued and the mine owners raise the price of coal. The public pays. In other branches of industry there is the same recourse to raising prices sufficiently to pay the wages demanded and still leave a profit. The public pays. The consumer cuts down consumption but still he must live. The result is that the middle classes are being ground down and incomes are worth less. As usual, the farmer holds the bag, and it is to be remembered that nearly half our people live on the farms and in towns of less than 2500 population, the figures being 51,406,017 as against 54,304,603 in cities of 2500 and more. This solution of the labor question, namely, raising the price to the consumer, is aided by the practical monopolies in production which the vast consolidations have produced, and is aided also by the protective tariff which shuts out foreign goods at cheaper prices, but it cannot last. The public is resisting. The favorable balance of trade with foreign nations is coming to an end. Prices will tumble, wages will fall, profits will disappear, and a lower basis will have to be accepted.

So much for union labor. The labor upon which depend the present and future institutions of America, namely, the farmers, has no union. And the farmers with the small towns control this country. They are slow to move; slow even to make up their minds; but when once they reach a conclusion, neither labor unions nor any other industrial, financial, or political organization can withstand that conclusion. The lawlessness of the unions strengthens the need of preserving those institutions.

CHAPTER XXIII

RAILROAD MEN

THEY are a remarkable class of men, with qualities good and bad. Their good qualities are characteristic. Governing immense numbers of men and handling almost incredible masses of freight and traffic, they are hearty, genial, and overflowing with spirits, health, and force plus. Generally they come up through the ranks and know all parts of their business. They know their men and are more competent to deal with them and handle them than any outsider, or board, or government. They sympathize with their men, but when free to act will not be overridden or terrorized by threats or fears. They have produced the lowest freight rates in the world, and compete savagely to get traffic. They are indomitable, persistent, and untiring in their work and devotion, each to his own railroad. They spanned the continent with a network of railroads in an incredibly short time and produced men who revolutionized the railroad industry, such as Vanderbilt, Huntington, Hill, and Harriman. These are the kind of men who have turned an uninhabited continent into a nation. They have amassed fortunes for themselves, to be sure, but used those fortunes, not for themselves, but to build and build and build again, and meantime the national wealth was increased by their work a thousandfold.

But there are shadows in the picture. They have not always been fair to the public or their competitors or their own good name. They considered their railroads as private property, free from public control of rates and service. They charged all that the traffic would bear, although they claimed that that was their maximum and not their usual charge. They could not under

stand on what theory the government claimed the right to control them. With their competitors they were ruthless. Border warfare with the Indians was no worse. A competitor existed only to be cut down. Consolidations, mergers, and amalgamations constituted their diet and they were not squeamish in the preparations. Where combination is possible, competition is impossible, said George Stevenson, the inventor of the locomotive, and American railroad men demonstrated that that was so, with cannibal-like voracity and rapacity. And there were other abuses. Secret rebates and discriminations were formerly the rule and not the exception, in favor of large shippers. Contracts were made to be broken, if the profit in breaking was greater than in keeping. Contracts fair on their face were distorted into impositions. Railroad men got the reputation of being hard, unfair, ruthless, and unprincipled.

And their financial ethics left much to be desired. The public was looked upon as legitimate prey. Their own railroads were sometimes looted. Like many men of sudden rise from poverty to opulence they were at times unscrupulous as to how they got rich. It is unnecessary to go into sordid details. A public prejudice was created that continues to this day, and has done the railroads themselves infinite harm. Often too the great fortunes thus created descended to worthless or incompetent heirs, to whom the wealth was a curse. Lecky says, "But, of all forms that great wealth can take, I know of none that gives greater opportunities or temptations of abuse than that of the railway king, who controls for his own selfish purposes the chief lines of communication in the country. In no other country has this class of men been so prominent as in America, and in no other has their power been more hideously abused. Nowhere else have there been such scandalous examples of colossal, ostentatious fortunes built up by reckless gambling, by the acquisition of gigantic monopolies, by a deadly and unscrupulous competition bringing ruin into countless homes by a systematic subordination