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dusting, cleaning, bringing up trays and hot water and coals and carrying down slops and ashes, and cleaning boots and brass and copper and silver, and mending the linen, making underclothes, and keeping the mistress's wardrobe in order. The other "ladies" do the cooking and gardening and are supposed to provide congenial company. Of the many advertisements I have noted this is really one which looks pretty good.

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COULD go on for pages with advertisements like these spelling tragedies in every line. They prove pretty certainly that there is desperation among the gentlewomen of England these days. Sometimes this shows in an unconscious S. O. S. grimly funny in its implications: "Domesticated young lady seeks post. Housekeeper to gentleman; London preferred. References." Sometimes the girls are so determined to get away from home that they are willing to work for their "keep: "

A young lady, cheerful and domesticated, seeks a post where she could make herself useful in any capacity; has some knowledge of shorthand and typing, fond of games. Salary not so much an object as happy home life. Willing to travel. Highest references.

The London "Times" carries daily a heading under "DOMESTIC SITUATIONS VACANT" of "Lady Housekeepers, Housekeepers, and Cooks." Here are two of its items:

Wanted Lady-chauffeuse companion to tour; experience.

Or again:

Situation wanted for chauffeusecompanion; experienced driver, running repairs; good needlewoman, domesticated and adaptable; bridge; gentlewoman, age 30; country preferred.

There is a calm, tight-lipped mask over many faces. It is a sort of blankness where interest and intelligence ought to shine. The casual observer perhaps passes by without noticing because of the low voices and slow, easy movements which almost make it seem as though which almost make it seem as though these middle-aging women are either dull and shallow or totally untouched by their daily experiences. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Everywhere the unmarried woman of twenty-five to forty is shy about talking of her heart affairs. In England she is doubly so, for shyness there almost amounts to a national disease. She is inclined to smile and keep on faintly smiling, and only indirectly the truth comes out. I have found that it was the engaged girl who most readily talked of her troubles. Of course, in this manOf course, in this mandearth these girls are few, but marriages do still happen and people do still become engaged in England. If they talk at all, they are exceedingly frank about what they see ahead. They will tell you that the competition is so keen that, though engaged to men whom they know to be deeply in love with them, they feel no abiding security. One, a young business woman, is engaged to a doctor. They are to be married as soon as his practice improves enough to make a home possible. But she is not serene and happy about the situation. "There's no honor among women," she says. "I suppose it is because my man is a doctor that the women run after him so." I told her that, on the contrary, she was the second engaged girl in a week to tell me that her fiancé was pursued after his engagement quite as much as before it was announced. Both of them made the same remark: "It's very hard on us, but it's so demoralizing for the man. It spoils him so." In each case I could see these girls wondering if this would go on after they were married. I know both feared it would grow much worse.

It appears that this jewel will make your party dress, motor you over for a bridge game (stopping by the way to In America when we see a young coumend a.tire or fix the carbureter), make ple much together and showing plain up a fourth at the table if any one drops signs of interest and growing affection— out, and is perhaps related to enough "keeping company" they used to call it "smart" society to help Mrs. Newly--the question we older ones are likely -the question we older ones are likely Rich in her campaign to marry daughter to ask each other is, "Will she have him, to ask each other is, "Will she have him, into the right social set. do you think?" But in London it is quite the other way; "Can she get him?" is how they phrase it.

Advertisements like these are windbent straws marking the sharp urge of economic necessity. But one wonders what the girls themselves are saying about it all. Do they realize how wrong things are for them? Do they talk

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This pursuit carries right down from the aristocracy to the "lower classes." I have before me the newspaper account of a recent wedding entitled "Laborer Weds a £100,000 Bride-Blushing Heiress Whispers I Will." It proves to be the wedding of "Miss Mary Dorothy Berchell-Herne, the wealthy sole survivor of one of the .oldest families in

Hertfordshire and owner of a mansion with 400 acres," with "William Henry Whitmill, ex-soldier and laborer." The minister who married them very kindly advised them not to mind the vast differences between them in wealth and social position because "what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" which, when you think it over, is rather a gloomy text for a parson to use at a wedding. A bit farther down in the column comes the probable reason for the clergyman's doubts: "The bride's age was given on the marriage register as forty-nine years and the bridegroom's age as thirty-three."

That is one side of it—the unusual side. The more common thing is for the girls in their twenties to marry men of fifty or sixty, or even seventy. The papers are full of such marriages until people no longer remark them. If you ask about it, they say: "Can you blame them? They know that the men in their thirties are gone."

ON the men themselves this state of

affairs is dangerous. The attitude toward women of the average hard-working young man in England to-day is that of retiring behind barbed-wire entanglements for safety. I know one exceedingly attractive fellow who always takes his sister to dances and spends most of his time dancing with her. It's the safest way of amusing himself. For nowadays most men are too busy to seek heartsmashing as a steady occupation; even more feel that they cannot now afford to marry. So, it's the dugouts for them. Occasionally they are appallingly frank about their difficulties. I am thinking of one honest and charming boy who sought my advice. He knew that a certain young woman loved him deeply. He liked her, but that was all. He could not marry-perhaps for years he could not afford to. Was he justified in yielding to her suggestion that they should go off together for a brief holiday?

And that is the way the exceptional woman, either the very courageous or the very weak, is meeting her problem. It is not the solution for the ordinary girl. She recognizes that it involves too stiff a struggle with society, which still retains its pre-war mold. But the unusual woman, the rebel, is trying it again and again.

During the Middle Ages, when constant wars swept over Europe, carrying off the fighting men of mating age, the Church saw this same problem of the surplus woman and met it by establishing convents and semi-religious houses. In these days of feminine emancipation

they cannot serve the average woman, who wants, not less, but greater freedom in her own life. For one woman who seeks the religious life to-day thousands prefer the factory or the office or the mill.

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N Britain emigration is the first remedy which comes to every one's tongue. In a country with years of unemployment behind it-where it is becoming normal to have more than a million people drawing unemployment relief-what more natural than that a large proportion of these 2,000,000 "superfluous women" should be told to look overseas for a way out. They know that in the colonies and America where men are in the majority, no one ever speaks of "superfluous men." A question in the House of Commons revealed that in 1913 98,593 "females of twelve years of age and upwards" emigrated from Britain "to the British Empire." Added to these were 42,513 who sailed "for foreign countries to take up permanent residence therein." In 1920 only 84,530 women

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emigrated to the Empire dominions and
40,869 to foreign countries. These fig-
ures include girls and women from the
Irish Free State. The figures for 1924
omit Ireland and are: To the Empire,
50,022; to other countries, 10,341. In
other words, in 1913 141,000 women
left Great Britain and Ireland for a new
life in unknown lands; in 1920 only
125,000; and from Britain alone in 1924
less than half as many emigrated.

These are surprising figures. Do they
mean that just as the best jobs went to
men after the war, so the best chance to
get away has gone again to the man of
the family? Where some one had to
stay at home and look after the old folks
it would always be the woman; but that
would have held good also before the
war. Was it because in these hard times
the price of a ticket to a foreign land is
more readily found by a man than a
woman? To a great degree it is true
that the United States' new immigration
laws have taken away, particularly from
Englishwomen, the most attractive op-
portunities in a foreign country.

At its best emigration is only a temporary solution and for a limited number. Those who most need new scenes and occupations often cannot make the break to go and seek them. They are the ones who must sit at home and ache, sometimes ending in the psychopathic ward, sometimes in the river. To them the difficulties ahead seem insuperable and they go down before them. No broad and satisfactory method of escape presents itself in these so-called solutions. Actually they seem to throw into higher relief the enormous problem which they are meant to solve.

England's unhappy women are the real, though unsung, war victims. They are the mutilati, as the Italians say. In an ironic way their fate is the grimmest of all the many hideous jokes the war and the peace have left behind. They are the unknown casualties to which no monuments are ever built. Collectively they have no ex-veterans' associations, no glory, and to themselves and to their country they seem to have no excuse for being.

An East Side American
The Autobiography of a Son of the City
By CHARLES STELZLE

IKE a baseball umpire, unlike a juror, an arbitrator is supposed to know something-the more, the better-about the subject of the controversy he is to decide. Charles Stelzle's whole training prepared him for intelligently deciding labor disputes. His life as a boy on the lower East Side of

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New York gave him a knowledge of life, his experience in a machine shop gave him a knowledge of labor, that he could not otherwise have acquired. But all his experience would have availed him little if he had not had the open mind and the sense of humor that this chapter of his life discloses. XVIII

Arbitrating Labor Troubles

NE day a committee of labor leaders representing an international union whose local in New York City had had a dispute with an employers' association called at my office with the request that I serve as arbitrator in the case in question.

"I am surprised that you should come to me again," I remarked to the committee, "when in practically every case that I have thus far arbitrated in your industry I have decided against the union. The fact that I am a member of the Machinists' Union has never meant that I would grant special favors to workingmen."

"That's all right," the chairman of the committee said. "We know when we are right and when we are wrong, but we la

bor officials can't tell the boys that they
are wrong, because they will think that
we have been bought up by the bosses
and that we are double-crossing the
union. They know that you don't give
a damn, when you arbitrate one of our
cases what the bosses or what the union
thinks. You always give everybody a
square deal and the men trust you. In
this particular case they say they won't
accept anybody but you as arbitrator."

After hearing the arguments on both
sides in this case, I again decided against
the union.

In experiences of this nature covering a dozen years or more my decisions have gone against the labor unions about twothirds of the time, although it should be said that in every case the arbitrators

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eight years, and the major part of these cases were in connection with the mechanical departments of the New York newspapers.

After my first experience in this particular field, in which, by the way, the decision went against the labor union, Hermann Ridder, publisher of the New York "StaatsZeitung," remarked to me that he was mighty glad to have found an "impartial" arbitrator who actually knew the printing business, because, he said, "on a number of occasions we have had decisions rendered by perfectly honest men whose rulings we, as employers, could not accept because they did not give workingmen a fair deal." He quoted a famous bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who went out of his way ordinarily to express his sympathy for workingmen, and actually did much in New York City to further their cause, but who in an arbitration case gave them a decidedly raw deal simply because he did not understand the technical aspects of the newspaper printing business.

As a result of the confidence gained through the decisions made in a number of cases, I understand that my name appeared at the top of the lists of suggested arbitrators submitted by both the publishers and the unions in a number of important arbitration cases, so that for some time I served-in this capacity, not as the representative of any organization that was trying to reform somebody, but merely as an individual who was interested in bringing about better relationships between employers and employees.

SOME

OME of these cases had been held up for several years because both the publishers and the union were afraid to submit them to arbitration on account of the great uncertainty as to how an outsider might regard what was to them a most important question, for arbitration decisions come to have much the same standing that decisions in courts of law possess they are constantly being quoted by succeeding arbitrators, or in the presentation of cases both by employers and employees. Sometimes the questions considered involved merely the carrying out of definite agreements made several years before, but in cases in which certain conditions had changed very decidedly since the agreement was entered into, giving one side or the other undue advantage.

For example, it had been agreed by the union and the publishers that five men should constitute a crew on a "shaving machine," an appliance which shaved the inside of stereotype plates used on the cylinders of newspaper presses. In the agreement it was specified just what place each particular man of the

five was to occupy in his relationship to the running of the machine. The place of one of these men was to be at the "tail" of the machine, to which the stereotype plate was finally delivered after the machine had automatically done its work; but in one of the newspaper offices a very ingenious arrangement had been perfected whereby the tail end of this shaving machine was run through a hole cut in the partition which separated the stereotype-room from the pressroom, where the plate was used. Obviously there was no room for the

Courtesy Joseph E. Ridder, Staats-Herold Corporation
Hermann Ridder

man assigned to the tail end of the machine to stand. In order to function at all, it would have been necessary for him to go into the pressroom and there take the plate from the machine, but the rules of the pressmen's union prohibited the member of any other union from working within the pressroom, although a member of the pressmen's union was permitted to handle the plate as it came through the partition. The stereotypers' union, however, insisted that five men must be employed on the machine, and so the fifth man continued to remain as a member of the crew, taking his place in the pressroom, but doing absolutely nothing, although he had drawn his weekly wages for two years when the case came to me for arbitration. After looking over the situation, and after looking over the situation, and after hearing both sides of the case, I gave my decision against the union, although technically they were right in their insistence that the agreement of the pub

lishers to employ five members of the stereotypers' union on the shaving machine had been violated. My point was that there were still five men at work on the machine, even though the fifth man was a member of the pressmen's union, and that it was absurd to insist upon the enforcement of a technicality which severely penalized an employer who was trying to maintain great efficiency without reducing either the number of workers or the amount paid for running his plant-and the union finally agreed with me. Apparently, they were afraid of establishing a precedent which might some time in the future injure them in the making of a contract concerning the number of men who should be employed in operating this kind of a machine.

Taken as a whole, it has been my experience that the representatives of the labor unions presented more carefully prepared briefs than did the employers.

I recall one instance in which the question of an increase of one dollar per day was asked in the wages of the men in a union which represented approximately twenty-five hundred members. When the question of the cost of living was considered, the employers, besides some mere generalities, presented simply several sheets of brown paper upon which was penciled the prices of food which had been got in Washington Market on the morning of the hearing. The union, on the other hand, had very carefully prepared an elaborate statement based upon a study made of the rise and fall of prices covering a number of years and giving their authorities for the statistics employed. The case for the employers had been so poorly presented that I insisted upon another hearing in order to give them an opportunity to secure more complete figures for their side, although the labor representatives of the board protested most vehemently against such a proceeding. I insisted, however, that as an arbitrator I had the right to ask for all the facts available, and I felt that I was not in a position to make a decision on so important a case with the material which had thus far been given me. The employers rushed a couple of men to Washington, who spent a week in getting the best figures available, which were then submitted at the next hearing of the Arbitration Committee. However, in this case the decision went in favor of the union, although the full amount asked for was not granted.

In another instance a contract between the employers and the union had been so loosely drawn that it was capable of several different interpretations, and when it came to the defense of the employers' side there was such indifference manifested as to the importance of these

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points that I indirectly intimated in the early part of the day that if no better evidence could be produced on the side of the employers the case would go to the union. During the luncheon recess the employers saw to it that the afternoon session was attended by several of the leading lawyers of the city, who had been retained by their organization to argue the case for them. This arbitration resulted in a compromise decision.

It should be said that in both the cases just described all of the material had been gathered together by the workingmen themselves or by their elected officials, who had had no legal training but were graduates from the shop, although several were still working in the shop. In one instance the three men who represented the union had worked. almost continuously for three days and three nights, getting very little sleep, in the preparation of their material.

One of the most encouraging features in this connection is the fact that in recent years the experts employed by one union and those engaged by the employers work jointly to produce material upon which there may be based a common agreement, thus narrowing down the possibilities for controversy.

OMETIMES, of course, there are hot

headed men on both sides. On the other hand, occasionally some strong personality will stand out, having such fine qualities that the mere matter of explosiveness on occasion is forgiven, especially if the guilty man himself has a sense of humor.

I recall a prominent newspaper publisher in New York City who in a certain arbitration hearing shook his fist in the faces of the three representatives of the union and called them the vilest names that he could think of, but the three unionists simply continued to puff away at their cigars and smiled at the excited representative of the bosses.

Finally, I quietly remarked: "Mr. Blank, these men do not deny that they are what you are calling them-so this is not a question for arbitration. Let us go. ahead and talk about things which will really stir them up and to which you can get a comeback." The excited publisher joined heartily in the laugh of the crowd.

"Well," he said, "they are damned good fellows, anyway," and the tradeunionists came back at him with the same compliment. The committee then. proceeded to its business.

There was probably no man representing the publishers who was more generally admired by the workers than Don C. Seitz, then of the New York "World." Characteristically, he gave his opinions

bluntly, and never minced matters, but he was always so eminently fair-sometimes opposing his fellow-members of the employers' group-that he won the respect of every man of the opposition.

It is generally assumed that when one side in a controversy is willing to arbitrate and the other is not that the former is manifesting the finest spirit and is to be commended for its fairness; but it doesn't necessarily follow that he who is willing to arbitrate is surest of his grounds. The fact is that frequently when one side has nothing to lose and

Don C. Seitz

everything to gain-that is, when it is least sure of its ground-it makes a show of fairness by saying that it is willing to submit its case to arbitration, with the belief, as is often true, that the arbitrator will compromise the claims of the two contending parties, and thus give the side which really had no case more than it is entitled to.

There are very few cases which cannot fairly be settled by arbitration, assuming that both sides will be fairly presented and the arbitrator is unprejudiced and has a sufficient knowledge of the technicalities which may be introduced to permit him to give a fair judgment. Often, however, the arbitrator may have a clear and definite opinion regarding the technical and legal points involved and still bring in a decision which, while not absolutely unjust, nevertheless results in bitterness or hard feeling. In such cases the failure to consider the human element in a controversy is responsible for

the creation of very unhappy situations.

It is often assumed that lawyers or judges make the best arbitrators because they possess "the judicial mind," but the trouble is that their tendency is so strongly in favor of the absolute observation of the letter of the law that they often forget the human side of the question. This, added to their lack of knowledge of the business itself, sometimes results in decisions from lawyers which are anything but satisfactory to the workingmen, who in such cases are usually the greatest sufferers.

The major portion of the international unions throughout the country and the American Federation of Labor itself are opposed to compulsory arbitration. More and more, however, the tendency is toward the compulsory presentation of the facts before an arbitration board, and thence to the public. After the arbitration board has made its decision it remains for public opinion to enforce it. If public opinion does not coincide with the view of the arbitration board, the side which has been discriminated against stands guiltless; but if, on the other hand, the offending party refuses to accept the just decision of the board, it stands condemned by the public, receiving no sympathy from it, with the result that it is soon whipped into line.

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HETHER or not an industry can afford to pay increased wages does not always depend upon the profits which are being made at the time of the demand for the increase. In one of the decisions which I rendered in connection with a newspaper arbitration I stated: "Whether or not the newspaper is making money cannot be the determining factor in deciding how much wages should be paid to its employees. In the first place, workingmen should not be penalized because of the publisher's errors of judgment, lack of business enterprise, mistaken editorial policy, or any other reason which may cause a newspaper to fail to produce fair profits. Furthermore, publishers of newspapers may see fit to conduct their affairs so that a larger future reward will come to them rather than a comparatively small immediate return. If a newspaper is conducted at a loss in spite of no assurance of future prosperity, then the personal desire for continuing such enterprise should not be a sufficient reason to request employees to work for less than a living wage."

It is a question whether any industry which cannot pay a living wage has a right to live.

It is an extremely difficult matter for

an arbitrator to base his findings upon figures presented regarding what it costs. the average worker to live, because often there is a variation in figures of this kind of from fifty per cent to one hundred per cent-depending upon who presents

them.

If the principle of the living wage as submitted by social workers and socalled experts were to be applied to industry as a whole, it is probable that the total annual income at present produced in the United States would not be large

enough to provide such a wage for every worker, and it is a serious question whether a particular industry should be compelled to pay its workers the "living wage" which may have been submitted in a particular controversy, while there are many other industries with which it would come into more or less competition that pay very much less than this living wage. There is endless controversy regarding the living-wage question because the value of money changes so frequently. The purchasing power of

the dollar varies very greatly from time to time. Also standards of living are constantly changing. Before the war the average American workingman was satisfied if he had enough to eat, clothes enough to wear, and a home to live in. But to-day, on account of the marked elevation of standards of living, he is no longer content with merely making a living he is keenly interested in making a life. Thus it will be seen that the livingwage question will always be subject to arbitration.

In the next installment, the last but one of his Autobiography, Mr. Stelzle will tell some of his experiences in England, Germany, and Mexico

The Book Table

Edited by EDMUND PEARSON

A

Thomas Jefferson One Hundred Years After

By HELEN and DAVID LILIENTHAL

son's ideas, his influence, his place in the tortuous and often disheartening struggle of man to govern himself under a democracy.

LTHOUGH one hundred years interpretation, an evaluation of Jefferhave passed since his death, the figure of Thomas Jefferson is as significant to-day as that of any leader in our history. Many of our democratic institutions are a legacy to us of his mind or influence. Never have his pleas for religious tolerance, for liberty of speech and press, for honor to the scholar, for local self-government, for economic justice to the agrarian producers, for frugal economy in Washington, seemed more timely. The observance of the centennial of his death and simultaneously the sesquicentennial of his handiwork, the Declaration of Independence, will be the occasion for widespread interest in the man and his works. It is fortunate that to meet this interest there have been published recently a number of excellent books upon Jefferson and his times.

Of these books, but one is a biography of Jefferson-that written by a distinguished English Liberal, Mr. Francis W. Hirst.' Within the compass of a single substantial volume Mr. Hirst has made a contribution to Jeffersonian literature which will unquestionably become the standard "Life" in Great Britain, replacing the absurd and vindictive picture drawn by Mr. F. S. Oliver in 1907. Two things Mr. Hirst has done: he has, first of all, drawn from some original sources (largely Jefferson's own writings) the outstanding facts concerning his activities during a long and crowded life. He has, furthermore, presented us with an

1 Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson. By Francis W. Hirst. The Macmillan Company, New York. $6.

These facts of a life of achievement Mr. Hirst relates with a facility and, for Mr. Hirst relates with a facility and, for the most part, a compactness, which makes reading a delight. Jefferson's boyhood in Virginia, his days as college and law student, the story of his début in public affairs leading to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, his service as Virginia's Governor, America's diplomat to France, and Washington's Secretary of State, the terrific battle with Hamilton and the foes of republicanism, the eight fruitful years as Chief Magistrate, and then the closing years of public retirement but continued intellectual fecundity-all these chapters of Jefferson's life Mr. Hirst describes with distinction and judgment. If he has given too much space and too much passion to the task of refuting some of the notions about Jefferson, perhaps their wide currency is justification enough. The value of the work, it must be said, however, would have been enhanced if Mr. Hirst had not leaned so heavily upon Jefferson's own letters. He uses too little "local color" by way of contemporary source material, to make a really finished (which is to say, accurate) picture of the America in which the man moved and worked.

Mr. Hirst places the highest value upon Jefferson's ideas and influence. His view is well summarized in the following from his notable introduction:

Jefferson combined with a marvelous insight into the springs of human nature, and into the motives that sway individuals and masses, an extensive knowledge of political science and history. He was a theorist, a doctrinaire, an idealist, but always at school with experience.

Mr. Nock's book," he tells us, "is not meant to be a biography of Mr. Jefferson or to take the place of one. It is a mere study-a study in conduct and character." The book is that—and it is more. It is a study of the world of Jefferson's day as Jefferson viewed it, an effort to treat him subjectively. And then, too, it is an account of the activities into which Jefferson flung himself and the ideas he entertained and fought, expressed in terms of "an economic interpretation of history."

When Mr. Nock set out to treat Jefferson subjectively, he assumed a task which has been too much for every writer who heretofore has undertaken it. In the first place, Jefferson was a man of great restraint, emotionally quite selfcontained and disciplined. His voluminous writings serve to shield rather than disclose the man. And then, few writers have the background to comprehend a man of the broad culture, the insatiable intellectual thirst, the capacity for action, and the almost incredible versatility of Thomas Jefferson. For here was a politician who was also a classical student, an architect, inventor, naturalist, scholar in languages (including the Cherokee and Anglo-Saxon!), an astronomer, mechanic, mathematician, meteorologist, and agriculturist! Mr. Nock's picture of this unique composite is, we believe, the most convincing and sympathetic yet written, perhaps in large part

2 Thomas Jefferson. By Albert J. Nock. Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York.

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