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some means to prevent war between civilized nations, and within the last twenty years, great progress has been made.

The Hague peace convention (the greatest event of the nineteenth century) has so far established the principle of arbitration, with its ultimate judicial arbitration, that it is believed that as a means of settling controversies between nations, war has to a large extent been averted; that is, between great nations, or nations of nearly equal strength. It will be a long time before nations of greatly unequal strength will arbitrate their differences, or before a first-class power will agree to arbitrate with a fifth or tenth-class power. In such cases national greed and arrogance will dictate the same reply that the greed and arrogance of millions of dollars of concentrated capital insists on making to the laboring man,-"That there is nothing to arbitrate." It is weakness which invites war, whether it be war between nations or between capital and labor.

In the absence of principles of right, justice and morality governing the strong, the only remedy appears to be that the weak should, by combination and the husbanding of its resources, become strong enough to challenge, by its strength, the respect of the strong.

It is only within the last two decades that any progress has been made in preventing industrial wars, although industrial wars annually result in more poverty, misery, greater evils, greater losses and demoralization and with greater ulterior injurious consequences than wars between nations.

War has always existed since organized society has existed, and industrial war has existed since industries of any kind came into being.

In the earliest times the captives in war were made slaves, and furnished the labor of the country. When civilization caused the enslavement of the vanquished to cease, the supply of labor came from the common people, but the "regulation" of labor came to be by laws enacted by the ruling class,

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with which the law of supply and demand, of labor, had but little to do.

During the reign of feudalism the laborer became attached to the soil, and was transferred with it. His process of emancipation was slow, and it is now scarcely one hundred years since labor became recognized as having rights which should be respected, either by the employer or by the gov erning power.

That emancipation has not advanced in the same ratio that education and civilization have advanced. As the laborer began to realize that he was something better than the ox, or the horse, alongside of which he was often harnessed, although his life-price was less, he began to reason why laws should be made to regulate his hours of toil, his wages, his dress, and why, having the shape of a man, he had not the rights of a man.

He began to realize that his labor was a commodity, a thing of value, and the only thing which he had to sell; and as others were allowed some voice in fixing the sale value of their merchandise, he began to reason that he should have the right to be heard in fixing the sale value of his own merchandise, to wit, his labor. The struggle to obtain the recognition of this right from his employer and from the lawmaking power, was a long and costly one to the laborer, also to the employer and to the public at large. It was to obtain this recognition that the laborer established craft guilds, and other organizations which have existed from the very earliest time. In the old testament, Nehemiah 3-8, there is found allusion to a guild of goldsmiths, and also to apprentices.

Law-makers, statesmen, philosophers and economists have given their best efforts and thought to the solution of the labor problem, to the question as to how, in what manner and to what extent shall the laborer's right to a voice in the sale of his own merchandise be recognized.

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The laborer was quick to recognize the fact that he largely outnumbered his employers, and before the days of gigantic corporations and combinations of capital, and not longer ago than 1868, it was estimated the world over-that there were between four and five laborers to every employer. The number of employers by the combinations of capital has decreased, while the number of laborers has all the time been increasing.

Like the savage chief, who, when asked that his people be treated with, "Indian by Indian," by the government agent -to exemplify the absurdity of the proposition-took a single twig and broke it, and then taking a bundle of twigs, twenty or more, handed them to the agent who had made the proposition, saying: "Now, you break them," the laborer has fully realized that in union there is strength; that as his employer must have labor; that he, in treating with him alone, was but as a single twig, but when a dozen or a hundred combined together in the demand to be heard as to the price demanded for their labor, there was strength, and that such united demand would be listened to and respected.

Laws fixing the price of labor, and laws making combinations to raise the price of labor a criminal conspiracy, have one by one disappeared from the statute books of nearly all civilized nations, because found to be utterly ineffectual to stop labor from uniting in its own interest.

At first the laborer asserted his rights by the strike. In the strike an evolution has been going on, caused by the increasing spread of education among those who labor, and by an advancing civilization, which more and more recognized the rights of man.

The strike at first was accompanied with violence, with attacks upon the property of the capitalist, "their logic was the bludgeon and the torch; in their attack on the employers they attacked all society, and they were met and convinced of the erroneous major proposition of their syllogism by the

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bayonet and the ball cartridge."

It took nearly fifty years to even partially clear the strike of open violence and brutality, but now the great mass of workers no longer believe in violence and discountenance its use. The strike has been recognized as the workers' only weapon, and when unaccompanied with violence it has the recognition of the law, as a perfectly legal weapon. Year by year much less violence has accompanied the strike. It has become more peaceful, more humane, and less barbarous. It has become a more reasonable, a more civilized method of contention. Labor has discovered that by a combined cessation of work, it can inflict more injury to the employer than by destroying his property. The laborer has also learned that public opinion is always against violence, and that if right is on the side of the peaceful striker, he has this powerful ally, before whose majesty both labor and capital must yield.

The strike and lockout, however, still continue to be the battlefield of this industrial war.

All other disputes between citizens, excepting those between laborer and employer, are recognized by the law, and adjusted by the law. The opposing forces in the industrial wars-being outside of the law, not regulated by the law, a "strike" or "lockout" is the natural result-being one stage in the evolution of the unregulated relations of labor and capital.

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Formerly the business was the employer's; the right to fix wages was the employer's; the employer made all the laws, rules and regulations, and the laborer had more voice in the matter than the machine which he operated. The, power of the employer was absolute, and absolute power whenever and wherever it has existed has always been abused. That the worker when he has the power will abuse it, as much, if not more than the employer, was strikingly exemplified in the absolute tyranny exercised by the building trades council in this city during the two or three years prior to 1901.

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As the laborer became better organized, he also commenced to make rules, or "laws" as he called them, to govern his relations with his employer. All these rules or laws gov erning the relations between the laborer and the employer were made by each of them without consultation, and were naturally directly antagonistic; with the worker his "laws" were made upon the theory, "It is my labor, and I sell it and shall sell it upon my own terms." With the employer, "It is my business, and I shall run it as I see proper;" and each made his rules or laws (whether through a laborer's union or an employer's union) upon the idea that he was the governing power. I remember one "law" of the bricklayers' union in a strike, in which I acted as umpire in 1887, which illustrates this; it was that if any difficulty arose in the progress of the work it should be settled by the walking delegate, and he should settle it in the interest of the union.

By the sad experience derived from the oft repeated strikes and lockouts, each side, the employer and employed, have gradually come to perceive that there is a community of interest between them in carrying on of an industry, although they have by no means wholly realized the extent of such community of interest, nor have they fully conceded its existence, so far as they have realized it.

That arbitration as a means of settling labor difficulties has greatly grown in favor within the last few years, must be admitted; but great disturbances continue to exist in the industrial world, and a large majority of the strikes and lockouts have been settled by the exhaustion, and practically the complete surrender, of one side or the other, in spite of the continued demands of the public, that the trouble be arbitrated.

Although of late years the leaders of the labor organizations have endeavored to have the "strike" carried on, upon what may be termed peaceful lines, but few strikes of any magnitude have been unaccompanied with disturbances of the public peace and violence, resulting often in loss of life.