go over the matter in full, and report to me thereon? Please do not file the suit until I hear from you."

It is the last sentence of this letter which has apparently been put forward by the Taft supporters as showing some improper attitude on the part of President Roosevelt. The implication seems to be that Mr. Roosevelt ordered the suit against the Harvester Company to be held up for improper reasons. In a statement issued the day after the papers had been sent to the Senate, Mr. Roosevelt declared that he took precisely the same action in the Harvester Trust case that he took in all similar cases; that while he, of course, was entirely responsible for the action taken, it was taken with the full approval of the entire Cabinet, including Mr. Taft; that there remained at the time less than one and a half years of his Administration, during which time, because of the vast amount of work imposed upon the Bureau of Corporations by Congress, it was impossible for the Bureau to finish the investigation of the affairs of the Harvester Company; that during the three years of Mr. Taft's Administration Mr. Taft could at any time have ordered the AttorneyGeneral to proceed against the Harvester Company or have requested the Commissioner of Corporations to hurry the completion of the report on the Company; and, finally, that at the time the action was taken it was certain that Mr. Roosevelt himself was not going to run for President, while Mr. Taft expected to run, so that "if the action taken in the Harvester Trust case did secure the good will of that trust, or any of the Morgan interests, for anybody, it secured their good will for Mr. Taft." But, Mr. Roosevelt concludes, as a matter of fact, in neither case did. I consider in any way whether any support would be gained for or alienated from either me or Mr. Taft. In both cases, and in all other cases of the kind, I considered nothing but what was demanded by right and justice." We do not believe that this attempt to use the Senate and the records of the Department of Justice to advance the political fortunes of the President will avail with any one who either reads the correspondence itself or knows Mr. Roosevelt's record in his relation to the trusts. attempt to hoodwink the people of the United States into considering Theodore

Mr. Roosevelt's Statement on the Harvester Trust

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nest, resolute, and concerted effort to make such a calamity impossible in the future. The investigation by a committee of the United States Senate is only one of the ways in which this question has been taken up. It will be followed by an investigation in Great Britain under the direction of the British Board of Trade, which has a high reputation for thoroughness and possesses large authority; meanwhile, discussion in the public press and suggestions made by men of special knowledge through letters have done much to throw light upon the problem. Certain things have become clear and positive through the testimony taken by the Senate Committee speed, it has been shown conclusively, especially by the evidence of Quartermaster Rowe, who read the ship's log just before leaving the vessel, that a speed of twenty-two and onehalf knots, or close to it, was being maintained by the Titanic while going through a region extremely dangerous despite the fact that it was a starlight night, and against repeated warnings that ice was in the vicinity. There is no defense for this rate of speed under the circumstances, and there is little doubt in the public mind that it was maintained in a blind confidence in the Titanic's immunity to serious disaster, and a desire to make a good showing for a first trip. Hereafter this kind of navigation should be, and probably will be, strictly forbidden by the steamship companies and by the law, and repetition of this way of endangering passengers' lives will in itself be considered evidence of reckless and unseamanlike conduct on the part of the commander of the ship. Equally certain is the conclusion that when ice is reported ships should take a more southerly course than has been the custom. This is accepted as sound by the companies themselves, and they have widely advertised their orders to their captains to act in accordance with that principle. The United States Hydrographic Office had previously issued warnings which were not heeded, but now, through consultation between the Hydrographic Office and the companies, safer routes have been definitely agreed upon and are now being used. As to the number of lifeboats, it will no longer be

argued by the companies that it is useless to take a full supply; in fact, the steamship owners have vied with one another in buying new boats, and have gone far beyond the inadequate laws of Great Britain and the United States in furnishing means for saving passengers even under such unusual and perhaps almost unheard-of circumstances as those of the loss of the Titanic. It has even been suggested that when a passenger buys a steamship ticket he should get with it a coupon entitling him to a numbered place on a safety boat or raft, and so good a judge of marine affairs as Admiral Chadwick, in a newspaper letter, indorses this idea as the only road to the comparative safety to all offered by boats." Another radical proposition (although we are told that it was demonstrated to be practicable by models as long, ago as the Paris Exposition) is also indorsed by Admiral Chadwick-that is, to make the tops of deck cabins into detachable life-saving rafts capable of holding many scores and perhaps hundreds of people.

One point of much importance brought out by the investigation is the slackness of boat drills on board ships; in many cases these drills seem to be mere perfunctory attempts to comply with the technical requirements of the law; increased vigilance in inspection and more drastic laws should make this impossible. Still another point of criticism in the Titanic was that the lookouts in the crow's nest were not supplied with marine glasses. The difference of a half-minute in reporting ice ahead might have saved the ship. A num ber of matters requiring reform were shown to exist in connection with the use of wireless telegraphy; a few years ago there was no such thing, now it is not only an aid to safe navigation, but absolutely indispensable; it follows that every vessel should be adequately equipped-and it is not adequate equipment to have one operator, paid, perhaps, the meager sum of twenty-five dollars a month, on a ship carrying hundreds of passengers. The Titanic had two wireless operators, but the Carpathia had only one. An operator must be on duty at any given moment or there is serious danger that a call for help may be unanswered--the Carpathia operator had started to go to bed, and was just about to take the receiver from his

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ears when he got the Titanic's call, and ten minutes later the call would have failed to reach him. Moreover, the rivalry between companies and their hostile attitude to one another form a source of danger; so does the interference of amateurs; so does the desire of some wireless operators to sell to newspapers the stories of wrecks-this is quite possibly the cause of the world's being held in suspense so long while waiting for anything like a definite account of what had happened. Again, the Titanic's compartment bulkheads above the water line closed by hand. A naval officer of practical experience writes to The Outlook: The insufficiency of water-tight bulkheads as usually fitted to merchant vessels has almost amounted to a scandal among naval architects for many years. That these bulkheads have proved insufficient in a great many cases is a matter of record, the failures in most cases being due to lack of stiffening members. The loss of the Republic was due directly to the giving way of one or more of her bulkheads." Finally, the Senate investigation shows that not only must there be new laws and better inspection in each maritime country, but there must be an international agreement, and steps are being taken to bring about such an agreement either through the Hague Conferences or otherwise.

board the Titanic after the collision with the iceberg, the stress of danger, the confusion in men's minds, the love of life, and the desire to save life, all influence conduct so that char acter is put to a supreme test. It is easy here to recognize in many cases heroism, unselfishness, and sacrifice. It is easy also to see in other cases that this level was not reached, and probably in some cases that the lowest, most selfish motives prevailed. But it is wellto refrain from denunciation or condemnation, remembering human frailty, and remembering also that the accounts of what actually did i happen are contradictory, and that it is unsafe to dissect motive and impulse too closely. Nothing in the Senate Committee's testimony has excited public reprobation more than the statement of officers and passengers that in one case the quartermaster in command of a boat rejected brutally the pleas of his women passengers that he should go to the rescue of those who were struggling in the water. On

the other hand, the third officer of the Titanic, Mr. Pittman, declares that he wished to return to the spot where hundreds of passengers were struggling and crying out, but that the people in his boat absolutely refused to allow him to do so. In both cases it is urged in behalf of those who apparently so heartlessly saw men and women dying without help that to have entered among the hundreds of struggling people would have been sure destruction to the boat. So with the personal conduct of passengers and officers on the ship; there are some names which will stand out as those of men and women of calm and heroic character; others certainly do not reach this standard, and in some cases there will always be a difference of opinion as to the degree of blameworthiness to be attached to individual acts. Naturally, the head of the company, Mr. Ismay, has been most severely attacked because it was felt that he carried a special and cogent responsibility; Mr. Ismay's own testimony and that of several other officers or passengers was to the effect that he did everything in his power to aid passengers to get into boats, and that he entered the last boat to be launched on the side of the deck where he was at work only when calls had been made for women and children to go into the boat, and none had appeared. He intimated, in his testimony, that he considered his own relation to the ship that of an ordinary passenger, and declared that he had not directed or suggested to the Captain anything with regard to the navigation of the ship—a statement which a large part of the public seem inclined to take with reservations. Mr. W. E. Carter, who entered the same boat with Mr. Ismay, told practically the same story, but added the significant statement as regards himself and Mr. Ismay that after the officer in charge had called for women he "said that if we wanted we could get into the boat if we took the place of seamen. He gave us the privilege because we were first-class passengers.' Mr. Ismay was the representative of a company responsible for the lives and property which the ship was carrying. It is a misfortune that his conception of his duty was neither so clear nor so high as that of the men who did not leave the ship until they were cast into the sea. "Noblesse oblige" had one meaning for Major Butt, Colonel Astor, Colonel Gracie, Mr. Millet, and other men, and another meaning for Mr. Ismay. Difference of opinion may also exist as regards

the conduct of one or two ships which were comparatively close to the scene of the Titanic disaster. Officers from the Titanic declare that they saw the lights of a vessel after the collision, but that no response was made to their repeated signals of distress. At least one ship admits being reasonably close to the scene, but declares that it was impossible to reach the spot of disaster because of intervening ice and the serious danger to its own two thousand passengers. Here again it is well to suggest reflection and the fullest knowledge as it may come from the complete testimony before condemnation is pronounced.

Fraudulent

News

The man who knowingly sells a brass ring for a gold one everybody brands as a fraud, and if he can be convicted he is sent to jail. Some newspapers have been engaged in the same kind of nefarious business. It is the business of the newspaper, first of all, to provide information for those who buy it. If it puts under the guise of information what is really fiction, it is engaged in just as bad a business as if it were selling, under the guise of leather, strips of cardboard. Of course there is no way of making error impossible. Indeed, when the ordinary man who knows nothing of newspaper business reads the news in his paper, he has little idea of the multitude of chances for error that creep in, in the collection, preparation, and printing of that news. One of the greatest triumphs of modern times is the great newspaper organization which secures, prints, and distributes the news with an incredible promptness and often with astonishing accuracy. What we

refer to here are not those slips of the pen or of the tongue or of the type which result often in the misreporting of current events. Infallibility of the human mind is no more to be found in newspaper offices than elsewhere in this world. What we refer to is the deliberate offering of the product of the imagination as news. This is not an occasional offense. It is a frequent, we may say habitual, practice. A particularly glaring and impudent instance of this was furnished by one of New York's newspapers, the "Evening Telegram.' gram." The Cunard steamship Carpathia arrived in New York Harbor on Thursday evening, April 18. Just about as this vessel was docking newsmen twenty blocks away were crying through the streets "The Titanic Extra" of that paper. Naturally, those who

had been waiting anxiously for the news of the survivors of the Titanic which the Carpathia was bringing to port, and were particularly anxious to learn how the men and women on board the Titanic had conducted themselves at the time of the great crisis in their lives, were expecting news—that is, information. We all know now that the shock of the collision was but slightly felt, that there was no sign of damage above the water line, that there was no panic, that throughout the whole experience there was a remarkable exhibition of poise, of self-restraint, and of good sense.

" Yet the Evening Telegram," which, by the way, is practically, though perhaps not technically, the evening edition of the New York "Herald," told a story from which we quote these sentences:

...

. . In a

Stunned by the terrific. impact, the dazed passengers, many of them half clad, rushed from their staterooms into the main saloon amid the crash of splintering steel, rending of plates, and shattering of girders, while the boom of falling pinnacles of ice upon the broken deck of the great vessel added to the horror. In wild confusion men, women, and children rushed about the saloons and cabins of the great steamship as though driven out of their senses. wild, apparently ungovernable mob, they poured out of the saloons to witness one of the most appalling scenes possible to conceive. For a hundred feet the bow was in a shapeless mass of bent, broken, and splintered steel and iron. Not all of the first-cabin passengers were among those who aided the crew to fight off the mob, and some were among those who added to the horror and the panic by struggling to be the first aboard the lifeboats. Then came the shudder of the riven hulk of the once magnificent steamship as she slid back from the shelving ice upon which she had driven, and her bow settled deeply into the water. "We're lost! We're lost!" was the cry that rose from a hundred throats. "The ship is sinking! We must drown!"... Husbands were separated from their wives in the battle to reach the boats. ... There was no time to pick or choose. . . . One by one the little fleet drew away from the towering sides of the giant steamship whose decks were already reeling as she sank lower in the water. "The Titanic is doomed," was the verdict that passed from lip to lip. "We will sink before help can come !"

Those who read the story at that time had a right to believe that they were reading, not the product of a wild and foolish imagination, but the report of actual fact as near as it was possible to give it. Now we know that there was not the slightest basis for any such tale as this. The only possible explanation for the appearance of this wild story at the very moment that the Carpathia was docking is that it was written beforehand and held for

publication at the time. What is this, if it is not obtaining money under false pretense?

Mediation in Labor Disputes

The tense situation between the locomotive engineers and the railway companies last week brought one fact sharply into public attention. This is that no one set of men, nor any two sets of men, should be permitted to endanger with impunity public comfort and public safety. If the locomotive engineers had gone on strike-and for a moment the strike seemed inevitable-in a large section of the country railway travel would have been stopped, business would have been prostrated, the transportation of merchandise and even necessities like food would have suffered. Happily, while we have not yet reached the point of forbidding under penalties the precipitation of such a condition, we have provided a tentative method of averting what should be a criminal offense. Under the Erdman Act, the United States Commissioner of Labor and the presiding Judge of the United States Commerce Court are intrusted with the duty, when such a condition arises with respect to the railways, of acting as mediators on the request of either party to the dispute, and are allowed, although not directed, even when such request is not made by either of the disputants, to volunteer their friendly offices. This last is what took place last week in the railway quarrel. Each side, so to speak, issued its ultimatum; and without humiliating concessions further negotiations seemed impossible. Judge Knapp, of the Commerce Court, and Commissioner Neill thereupon urged the opposing generals in what threatened to be a devastating war to allow a truce and to confer with Judge Knapp and Mr. Neill in an effort to adjust the dispute without the calamity of a general strike." The result may be, and we have confidence will be (although doubtless after much bargaining), mutual concessions and a fair public discussion of the issues involved. The truth is that we have reached a point in our industrial history where neither strikers nor capitalists really dare affront the people of the country by entering arbitrarily upon a war in which the supposed non-combatants, namely, the public itself, would be the chief sufferers. Something of the same condition has existed as regards the anthracite dispute, although here, of course, the Erdman Law does not apply. As we write, a

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settlement by mutual concession is expected, although at one time both parties declared that any concession was impossible. In both these great industrial disputes there is at the bottom a very large question which sooner or later must be faced. In the engineers' strike, for instance, the argument runs roughly something like this: the engineers declare that for public safety only men of high skill and experience should be employed; that living cost has so increased that former wages are insufficient; that if skill and care among those who constantly have our lives in charge is to be maintained, living wages must be paid, and that the time has come for a movement in this direction. On the other hand, the companies reply that if they increase the pay of engineers they must ultimately increase the pay of all employees; that this means a charge on the railways which can be met only in one of two ways-by raising rates (to which the Inter-State Commerce Commission objects) or by decreasing dividends. The railway managers seem to take it for granted that the first course is really the only available one, and argue that railway stock is so widely held in small amounts that to decrease dividends would be not only to lower the market value of stocks, and thereby injure business, but to decrease also the incomes of such an enormous number of people that it would really be a blow at the consumer— that is, the user of railways. This is a question which requires calm consideration, for it affects industrial conditions fundamentally; it may, however, be said that no large industrial concern dealing with public safety and public comfort should be allowed to make the payment of large dividends its first consideration; before dividends should come fair treatment and reasonable pay to its employees, safety and reasonable treatment for both employees and public, and finally the maintenance in proper condition of the industry itself. So long as the alleged necessity of maintaining the stock market value of securities and of keeping up whatever dividend rate has been established are considered paramount, the industrial question in its largest aspects will remain unsettled.

has been placed in charge of a woman. Surely if there is any branch of government for which a woman would be naturally fitted, it would be that which is concerned with the children of the Nation. There is no material

There is no function molding this human That is why the

so plastic as a child. more noble than that of material into character. ordinary ambitions that move some men and women in this world seem small compared with the ambition that can and ought to be the motive power of the mother in the household. The care, protection, and training of children is woman's work because it is, after all, the greatest of human duties. So long as society is simple in its organism most of this work can be done within the home. To-day, however, industry has so invaded the household and human relations have become so complex that some duties which once could be performed fairly well, at least, by parents now fall upon society. The factory, which is of modern invention. has seized upon children and carried them out of the home; the school, which was once the creature as well as the servant of the neighborhood, has now become a great institution far beyond the control of any group of parents; even the courts are finding new duties in their relation to delinquent children, whose delinquency is often chiefly that of their parents. The Nation can no longer afford to leave to each neighborhood the questions that concern the children of that neighborhood. The whole Nation has become itself a neighborhood. This Children's Bureau is the first expression of the Nation's care as a Nation for all the interests of all its children. Of Miss Lathrop much is expected. So far as we know she has had little or nothing to do with the movement which has created the Bureau. The appointment comes to her not because of any reward for efficiency on her part, but as the expression of belief on the part of the President that of all who were available for the position she was the most able, the most fit for the place. For years

she has been a resident of one of Chicago's great social settlements, one of the greatest in the country-Hull House. Miss Jane Addams, the head of Hull House, has told in her autobiographical volume, "Twenty Years at Hull House," "that when Miss Lathrop was appointed as a county visitor to investigate cases for outdoor relief within the region of which Hull House was the cen"the commissioners were at first dubious

ter,