comes nearer to being altogether good than some reforming coteries. In Pennsylvania the machine has had a tainted history. But the new Governor will undoubtedly find great sections of it which are sound at heart and wish to do right. Those sections of the machine, we think, he should cultivate and strengthen as the Governor of a great State has opportunity to do, and at the same time inspire them with a measure of his own idealism and vision. If a large section of the regular organization looks to the Governor as leader, even though it may be a minority section, it will be a controlling power. The majority will gradually come to follow on, and the minority will eventually become the majority.

We hope, and expect to see, Gifford Pinchot governing Pennsylvania with practical idealism, subduing the machine slowly by practical wisdom. The regular party organization has a function in American affairs, else it would not be so tenacious of life and influence. We are living in a period when more is to be gained by attempting to mold it than by attempting to wreck it. The great Roosevelt revolt in 1912 was like an earthquake, shattering the thickened crust of reaction in party affairs. It was a very necessary earthquake. Now we think the time for construction has come.

THE THREATENED RAILWAY STRIKE

A

S they left the city for four days of vacation over the Fourth of July, many people on Friday, June 30, undoubtedly wondered how they might have to manage in order to find their way back. When they left, trains were running as usual; but they had some reason to fear that four days later passenger train service might be at the best irregular. They had read about the strike of four hundred thousand railway shop workers which according to the votes of the men involved was to begin at ten o'clock on the morning of the first of July. They had read of the proposal that men engaged in the work of maintaining railway tracks in good order should also strike. They had read also of the threatened strike of other groups of railway workers. Other people not planning to leave the city had read of the preparation made by the authorities of the city and the State, and even of the Nation, to substitute for the possible suspended railway transportation other means of getting food into the city. If there was little evidence of alarm at the prospects of the strike, it

DYNAMITE

fish traps, seines, lime jugs, these were the conventional tools of the Alabama miner or farmer who wanted to get fish a few years ago. The result was to be found in fishless lakes and sterile streams. The dynamiter and the seiner have not been wholly eliminated from Alabama; they are to be found there just as they are to be found in other States. But the people of Alabama have waked up to the abuse of their waters. The fight to educate Alabama started with the election of John H. Wallace to the Legislature some twelve years ago. It received a powerful impetus when an editor of the Birmingham "News" went fishing in a fishless stream in 1921. The story of what the sportsmen of Alabama have accomplished since that time is graphically told

By

GARRARD HARRIS

in a forthcoming article entitled

Alabama

Goes Fishing

was probably due to the strong hope, if not expectation, that the strike would be averted, or at least that the walk-out of men not actually engaged in the operation of trains would have little, if any, effect upon the train schedules. Nevertheless the fact that the people of the Nation have been thinking of the discomfort, the injury, the possible disaster of a Nation-wide strike of railway workers has made all sorts of people wonder again whether it will always be necessary for industry, especially the business of maintaining and operating the steel highways of the Nation, to be carried on as if it were a species of war.

Those who had believed that as long as train crews kept on their job the railways would remain running were perhaps forgetful of the fact that the men in roundhouses and on the rights of way and in the signal towers are really quite as essential in the operation of a railway as those who drive or fire the engines or those who collect the tickets or those who care for the train. It is true that the brotherhoods of engineers, firemen, and trainmen had made no plans to strike; but they had received orders that their members were not to do any of the work that was to be abandoned

by the shopmen. That meant that they were not to move or even clean engines or couple or uncouple cars that had been left by train crews after the day's run. The public which uses trains but knows little about them had not perhaps sufficiently realized how complicated the operation of a railway is and how the different parts of the process of railroading depend on one another. It takes its railways, as it does the tides or the winds of heaven, very much for granted.

Indeed, the public has to take the railways for granted. Under modern conditions of life it can hardly do otherwise. Not even at the height of the war in Europe was life more thoroughly disarranged than when the normal train service of France was suspended in order that the railways might be used exclusively for mobilizing troops. In this respect a really complete strike on the railways of this country would be as upsetting and demoralizing as the beginning of a war.

Concerning the merits of the dispute which led to the strike vote of the railway men during June the public has no adequate means for forming a judgment from first-hand acquaintance with the facts. Concerning these facts it has not been and cannot be fully and authoritatively informed by the press. Fortunately, it does not need to be. The American people, through their National legislative body, have constituted a tribunal for the determination of just such issues. The Railroad Labor Board has been fully informed by hearings of the need of the railways for a reduction in their costs, and specifically a reduction in the cost of labor, and, on the other hand, the demand of employees for a wage that will enable their families to live according to American standards. The Railroad Labor Board has approved a reduction of wages for certain classes of employees. Those who protest against this reduction declare that it means that in some cases a man will be forced to try to support his family on eleven dollars a week, and that, contrary to public policy, to the interest of the wageearners, and even to Governmental authority, some railways have let contracts to private concerns for the repair of their rolling stock instead of making repairs in their own shops. Into such questions we are not called upon to go. The Railroad Labor Board, constituted for the very purpose of settling such questions, has made its decisions. It is the prime interest of the public to insist that the railway employees and the railway managers alike conform to the decisions made by the Railroad Labor Board within its lawful jurisdiction. It is only by constituting some such au

thority over both the managers and the employees and then by supporting that authority with all its might that the public can prevent its highways from becoming the "no-man's land" of an industrial war.

Naturally, the men who have been subjected to the disagreeable experience of having their wages reduced are going to voice their objections. Nobody can blame them for objecting. But they should not be allowed to make their objection in the form of a strike that will paralyze any part of the essential transportation system of the country. A strike of that sort is not a strike against the managers primarily. It is a strike against the authority of the Railroad Labor Board, and therefore against those whom that Board represents-the people of the country. The men have a right to appeal to the courts and to public opinion; but they ought not to be. given the privilege of conspiring to undermine the authority of the tribunal which the people have established for their own protection.

Men of the railway unions, moreover, should come to realize that hardship is not of itself a justification for a strike. They must realize that the whole country is passing through a period of deflation, and that it can pass through that period successfully only as people generally accept their share of it. If the railways, in "farming out" contracts for repair work, have violated an agreement or have adopted a policy disapproved by competent authority, they should be made to observe their obligations in good faith. In farming out these contracts, it is argued, the railways have simply taken measures to prevent waste and needless expense, and to this extent are contributing to the process of deflation. To a large extent, however, it is reported, the railways have shown a willingness to abandon the practice and to do all possible repair work in their own shops. If, nevertheless, the railway shopmen must find jobs elsewhere or must accept reduced wages in their present places, they may have to accept the hardship as part of the process of deflation which the country at large has had to experience and which has been a greater hardship to farmers perhaps than to men of any other calling.

Perhaps the prevention of industrial war has to await the creation of some instrument of governmental authority so powerful that no element in the community will dare defy it. We hope that, if it is necessary, the people of the country will not hesitate to create such an instrument of authority. We hope, however, still more strongly that it will

not be necessary for the Government to have recourse to any such capital operation. A better solution is an appeal not to authority but to co-operation and understanding. Such a solution is not a mere dream. It is in existence at least as an experiment in one great railway system of this country. The Pennsylvania Railroad is largely free from the menace of this strike because it has wisely adopted a system of shop representation which provides means by which managers and men can establish and maintain mutual understanding. If that system weathers this storm, it will be one more proof of the truth that has been expressed in homely language, that molasses catches more flies than vinegar. Such mutual, understanding is, after all, at the base! of that spirit of democracy which is the life of our political system, and should be the life of all our industry.

THE VICTORY OF THE IRISH FREE STATE

T

HE plan for establishing in Southern Ireland a Free State the people of which should have that kind of self-government Canadians have long possessed, had already, before the outbreak just quelled, stood the test of approval by a majority of the Dail Eireann and that of approval at a popular election. Now it has stood the test of revolution. The insurgents who under Rory O'Connor as their genera! seized and held as a fortress the historic Four Courts building in Dublin fought with courage and desperation against the forces of the Provisional Free State and surrendered only after they had suffered severe losses in dead and wounded. But the Free State victory was complete.

Two utterances just after the surrender have a hopeful significance for the future. One was that of Michael Collins, head of the present temporary Free State administration. He said that he was determined to make every inch of Ireland under control of his Government safe for persons and property. The other was an agreement between commandants of Free State and Republican forces after a fight at Listowel to the effect that, as Ireland's interests were not served by civil war, they as patriotic Irishmen would unite for the common welfare. If these two principles gain general acceptance in Ireland, the future of the country may be brighter than it has been since the Home Rule Bill passed before the war.

There may be a healthful clearing of the air now that the minority have resorted to open war in place of assassina

ness.

tion, kidnapping, and brutal destructive If the Dublin revolution fails to stir up a civil war throughout Southern Ireland, the outbreak and its collapse will go far to convince the irreconcilables that the country is not with them, and that they cannot rally an armed force that would have any chance whatever against the organized and authorized army of the Free State.

The political fanatics whose hearts and brains are fired with hatred of England and who think more of revenge than they do of peace or prosperity can never be convinced-and, unfortunately, they form a very large class in Ireland. They never were in the majority; they never were fit to carry on government; they have now been shown that the people of Southern Ireland are not willing to sustain indefinitely the horrors of guerrilla warfare in the vain pursuit of the chimera of an Ireland totally separated from Great Britain. General Jan Smuts, more than any other man, convinced the Irish people at large that, whatever their aspirations for independence in the far future, they may well be willing for the present to have the liberty of action and self-government that satisfies the Canadian, the Australian, and the citizen of the South African Republic.

The case was quietly and forcefully put by the Provisional Government just before it proceeded to put down the armed insurgents, who attempted to overthrow the Government that the people had indorsed at the polls. Their proclamation said:

For some months past all classes of business in Ireland have suffered severely through a feeling of insecurity engendered by reckless and wicked acts which have tarnished Ireland's reputation abroad.

As one disastrous consequence unemployment and distress are prevalent in the country at a time when but for such acts Ireland would have prosperity. The Government is determined that the country shall no longer be held up from the pursuit of its normal life and the re-establishment of its free national institutions.

The patience exercised by the Free State in trying to placate the irreconcilables was futile because they were not dealing with reasonable men. Now the explosion has come, and has been dealt with firmly. It would be rash to predict anything of unhappy and turbulent Ireland, but there is at least better ground than before to trust that order will be established, the liberal Constitution offered the Free State by Great Britain be formally accepted, and representative government put on a sound and permanent basis,