William S. Bennet, Member of Congress from New York City, has made a personal attack on the Commissioner of Immigration, Frederic C. Howe. This attack could not have been made anywhere except upon the floor of Congress without subjecting the one who made it to liability to substantiate his charges. A Member of Congress, however, is in a place of security, and can, if he will, use his position to the discredit of others. In this case, Mr. Bennet has made the attack on Mr. Howe as a part of his opposition to a policy which Mr. Howe has advocated.

Some time ago Commissioner Howe took steps to see if the Federal Government itself could not legally feed the immigrants detained at Ellis Island, instead of intrusting their feeding to a contractor. As the contract expired on June 30, and as the Department had had some difficulty with commissary contractors, he called for a legal opinion from the AttorneyGeneral and from the Comptroller of the Treasury. Both gave the opinion that it was legal for the Department to operate the restaurant.

Three years ago, when the contractors whose contract expired on June 30 had a hearing before the Department of Labor on account of some newspaper charges, Mr. William S. Bennet, then not a Congressman, was their counsel. As a consequence of those hearings the Department did not cancel the contract. In June of this year, as their contract was about to expire, Mr. Bennet, the former counsel of these contractors, but now a Member of Congress, secured an amendment to the Sundry Civil Bill providing that no part of the sum by that bill appropriated should be used for maintaining any of the privileges (including, of course, the restaurant) at any United States immigration station. The amendment was agreed

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The most serious of these charges concerned the admission of immoral women. Congressman Bennet connected these charges with the statement that Commissioner Howe had radical views-was, in fact, very half-baked radical who has free-love ideas." Those who know Mr. Howe, even those who may differ from him in his economic and political views, find it hard to exercise patience in reading such a statement. Commissioner Howe has with perfect good temper publicly replied to the charges. One instance will serve as an illustration. Mr. Bennet said that Mr. Howe had " recommended the admission of one of these prostitutes to himself, a woman named Juliette, and had her transferred to the family of a friend as a servant." Mr. Howe replied that he had never done so; that the woman in question had been at the station for a year; that he had investigated her case, had found that her husband had stolen her clothes and had forced her virtually to white slavery; that the husband had been sent to jail and the woman detained; that a prominent surgeon had requested her as an employee; that she was under bond, reporting regularly, and was making good.

At such a station as Ellis Island the question how far humane regard for the happiness and welfare of the individual is compatible with an efficient safeguarding of the interests of immigrants as a body and of the country at large is perplexing. One commissioner will emphasize efficiency, another will emphasize humane regard for the individual. It is a fairly debatable question whether Mr. Howe may not have overemphasized humanity at the expense of efficiency. To debate that question, however, in the manner Mr. Bennet has employed is not only wrong, but foolish, because it defeats its own end. Few fair-minded persons, comparing Mr. Bennet's attack with Mr. Howe's reply, would hesitate to reach a verdict in favor of Mr. Howe.

In fairness to Mr. Bennet, we should add that in reply to a query from us he has telegraphed, "Government operations would not

have interfered with Hudgins & Dumas, as their contract expired June 30 last." Hudgins & Dumas are Mr. Bennet's former clients.

THE PROHIBITION CONVENTION

In St. Paul, on July 21, the Prohibition National Convention nominated J. F. Hanly, former Governor of Indiana, for President, and Dr. Ira B. Landrith, of Nashville, Tennessee, for Vice-President. Ex-Governor Hanly was nominated on the first ballot, receiving 440 votes, to 181 for William Sulzer, once Governor of New York State, and the nearest contender.

The platform upon which the Prohibition nominees will run, besides the inevitable demand for National prohibition, expresses opposition to the wasteful military programme of the Democratic and Republican parties. Nevertheless, it pledges the candidates to maintain an effective army and navy and to provide coast defenses entirely adequate for National protection. It also favors reciprocal trade treaties to be negotiated with all nations, and legislation to encourage the establishment of an adequate fleet of American merchant ships. The platform opposes war with Mexico, pledges aid to the protection of American lives, and favors the use of force when necessary. Among other policies advocated are the enactment of uniform marriage and divorce laws and the complete suppression of white slavery. The Prohibition party demands the abolition of child labor,. the eight-hour day, a single Presidential term of six years, public ownership of public utilities, the equality of all persons, separation of Church and State, ownership and operation of grain elevators by the Federal Government, and the abolition of speculation on markets. It will thus be seen that the Prohibition party, aside from its fundamental tenet, offers a broad and diversified list of attractions.

Voting returns for the last forty years form a significant commentary upon the futile policy of attempting to establish a party upon the issue of National prohibition. Rarely has the vote for the Prohibition candidate gone above a quarter of a million. The largest vote polled was in 1892, when John Bidwell, of California, received 264,133 votes. Between 1908 and 1912 the Prohibition party lost some 50,000 votes. It will be interesting, but without any particular sig nificance so far as the progress of temper

ance, reform and National prohibition are concerned,, to observe what the party does this coming November.

The recent meeting of the New York State Committee of the National Progressive party was important chiefly for the comment it affords upon the rapid disintegration of the Progressives as a political organization. The Prohibition party has hung together for forty years without even the faint shadow of a prospect of success. The Progressive party, which less than four years ago carried more than four million voters to the polls and won second place in the Presidential contest, has already approached dissolution. Perhaps the difference between the record of the two parties may be summed up by the statement that the Progressives are so mentally constituted that they can learn from political experience, while most party Prohibitionists apparently find any form of compromise impossible.

The New York State Committee, it was hoped, might be brought to indorse the nomination of Mr. Hughes for President. The Committee may have had a decided majority in favor of Mr. Hughes, but a vociferous faction there present made a vote both impossible and undesirable. Whatever the result would have been in the committee if the matter of indorsement had come to a vote, it is, we believe, undoubtedly true that a great majority of those who voted the Progressive ticket in 1912 are in favor of the election of Mr. Hughes to the Presidency.

Perhaps those who are clinging to the remains of the machine of the Progressive party may be divided into three groups. Perhaps the smallest of these groups is composed of those social idealists who saw in the founding of the Progressive party the first practical step towards the realization of their public-spirited ambitions for reform, and who cannot yet bring themselves to work for the same ideal in another organization. To these men the Progressive party represented the one articulate method of voicing their desires unhampered by the political opportunity of the older parties. It is hard for them even now to abandon their hope-a hope the realization of which, however, they need never forget, has been measurably forwarded by the birth and existence of the Progressive party.

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second group is composed of those Democrats who have left their old party and now find it impossible either to join the Republican party or to return to the Democratic party, from whose policies they still widely differ. The third, and least interesting and attractive, group is composed of those men, powerless to make themselves felt in either of the two older parties, who find in quarreling over the remains of the Progressive party an outlet for their restless ambitions for political leadership and excitement.

Meantime, the Progressive movement, far from dissolving, is making headway with unforeseen rapidity. The present Administration has openly proclaimed itself as progressive as the Progressives, and the Republican leaders admit, in the words of that arch-conservative, ex-Speaker Cannon, "We are all Progressives now.' The real leaders of the Progressives have already set themselves to the task of translating this lip service into action, and have gone back, some of them into the Democratic, but most of them into the Republican party, and there command a respect which the formidable character of the Progressive split of 1912 engendered in the minds of all party politicians.

THE NEW YORK CLOAK STRIKE

A tentative settlement was reached last week between the manufacturers of cloaks and suits in New York City and their employees. But the shop chairmen of the employees refused to accept the terms made in the conference of union leaders with the employers. This great industrial struggle. has been going on for three months and has thrown out of work, it is said, nearly fifty thousand working people. Strictly speaking, as our readers will remember, this was a lockout rather than a strike, although the manufacturers' action in discharging employees was promptly met by the counteroffensive of a general strike.

The agreement was a compromise. In nearly all differences as to business contracts compromise is the most common way out; and a difference between employer and employees as to wages, hours, and treatment is as truly a business question as the purchase of a house. The one great difference in the two cases is that in a trade which has been organized the only chance which the employees have of insisting on a due hearing and influence in fixing terms is through com

bination or collective bargaining, to employ the common phrase. With proper facilities for conciliation and arbitration, and with the right spirit and open minds on both sides, it should not be difficult to make such a business contract, even though many employers and thousands of employees are involved. Yet New York City has for three months seen the spectacle of many thousands of working people enduring deprivation and almost starvation because compulsory arbitration does not exist and an agreement for voluntary arbitration could not be reached. It is stated that no less a sum than $83,000 weekly was paid out by the unions from their funds and from special contributions in order to keep the workers alive during this deplorable struggle.

The compromise reached by the leaders involved important concessions on both sides. On the one hand, the strikers gained substantial increases in wages, some improvement in hours (the week is now to be one of forty-nine hours), the fixing of a standard price rate for garments, and the establishing of the principle of what are called preferential union shops. This last means that non-union employees already at work may continue to hold their places, but that in employing new workers union men shall receive the preference. This does not fulfill the demand of the unions for complete recognition or, as the employers claim, for complete union control. It is, however, a considerable concession by the employers, and the employees' leader, Mr. Schlesinger, and their attorney, Mr. Hilquitt, declared the total result a distinct victory for the workers. An unusual and rather experimental agreement was the specific recognition by the employers of the employees' right to strike.

On the other hand, the employers point out that the agreement ignores the Protocol and the methods provided under it for arbitration and conciliation. This is indeed a great loss for the employees. Under the Protocol plan, local and individual matters in dispute were settled easily and satisfactorily by shop committees. More important questions came before boards of conciliation and arbitration. The establishing of this plan, now abandoned finally, was largely due to the invention and skill of Mr. Brandeis, now Justice Brandeis, of the Supreme Court. For a long time, however, there had been increasing friction in carrying out the provisions, and, as the employ