New York State Library Bulletin 76, Legislation 7: Digest of Governors' Messages, 1902. Edited by ROBERT H. WHITTEN. Albany, University of the State of New York, 1902, pp. (253-409) 156.

THE New York State Library has added to its valuable series of publications regarding legislation a digest of governors' messages, The constitutions of most of the states require the executive to give information of the condition of the state and to recommend such measures as he shall deem expedient. There is, however, no constitution which gives power to the governor to bring his recommendations before the legislature in the form of bills, or which requires the legislature to take his suggestions into consideration. It would be interesting to have data showing how much of the executive advice was acted upon, or how much of the annual legislation is foreshadowed in the messages. It cannot be said that these executive documents constitute legislative programs as a speech from the throne in England does. Still they are interesting as indices of the movement of legislative ideas, and, considering that these recommendations are made without definite responsibility, they cannot be described as otherwise than timely, moderate and practical. This being an even year, less than one-half of the legislatures met, most of them in Eastern and Southern states. The sessions following soon after President McKinley's assassination, it is interesting to note that only three messages suggest legislation to deal with anarchistic movements, two of them (New York and New Jersey) in extremely moderate form, while the presidential message is distinguished by a much more radical tone. It is noteworthy that the legislative bodies refused to act on these suggestions. The topic to which the largest amount of space is allotted in the digest is State Finance. It does not appear that any of the messages contained propositions of a novel or unusual character.

ERNST FREUND.

The Social Unrest: Studies in Labor and Socialist Movements. By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1903. THESE studies in labor and socialist movements appear to have been written directly out of the author's pocket notebook, his journal of social wit and wisdom gathered from the uttermost parts of the industrial world-dates and names have been erased - wherein those things which the "wise man does not say in public," over his own

signature are offered in evidence. They are indeed, evidence of the author's indefatigable industry in noting down the casual comment of the man on the street, in the office, on a strike, at the lathe, in the "ring" of trust organizer, wage earner, and socialist; evidence of wide acquaintance, extended travel, and omnivorous reading; evidence of deep interest in the welfare of his fellow-men, of sympathy with their aspirations, and of appreciation of their condition. One catches glimpses of affairs and social conditions the world over, fleeting and shifting as the scene one gets from a car window--a social philosophy of the train, written with the sound of the hammer still ringing in one's ears. If, explains the author in his opening chapter, this evidence seems like "a too irresponsible sort of gossip," the expression of opinions is nevertheless honest and authoritative.

The philosophy which the author himself imposes upon this mass of evidence is somewhat intangible. The evidence is given for what it is worth; the theme and thesis of thought change from page to page; the transitions are effected easily, and the author plays upon this evidence of social unrest much as the skilful pianist modulates from key to key, somewhat aimlessly, perhaps. The very fulness of experience and universality of interest somewhat choke and hinder the material progress and conclusion of thought. The sequence is kaleidoscopic rather than logical, but the thesis of the author's philosophy lies, perhaps, in the contention that the organization of industry is incomplete unless it include the organization of labor and a frank recognition of the equity rights of labor in determining the conditions and tenure of employment. Labor and capital must unite in some sort of partnership. The alternative is socialism. For that which labor fails to achieve through the trade union it is bound to gain through appeal to the state. With the labor union the community may fight off socialism, which, it is urged, gathers strength exactly in proportion as wage-earners conceive their chances of securing recognition of their just claims through the union to diminish, and recourse to some supreme power in the community to be necessary.

It would appear to be the "turgid and dangerous" sort of socialism that Mr. Brooks has in mind here, for he does not fail to point out elsewhere that organized labor is now proposing to achieve its purposes through political action. It would seem, therefore, that the choice. open to the community is not between organized labor and socialism, but between socialism of the "turgid and dangerous" sort, and socialism organized and powerful. Combinations of labor are certainly not

an alternative of socialism, but the very condition and sine qua non of socialism. And when these powerful organizations of labor enter into "partnership" with equally powerful combinations of capital, the public may well watch the development with some anxiety.

Certainly the fact that a well-organized, powerful union in any industry does not exhibit signs of unrest, discontent, and socialistic tendencies may not in the least be taken as a sure sign that the community's interests are being well served in that industry. It may be an indication that exactly the opposite is true. When labor and capital in any industry have met together and agreed, who shall say that the interests and welfare of the community-the silent member in all industrial partnerships-have been considered at all? Granted the power to force up the price of the necessities of life, who shall check the exercise of that power? Experience does not justify a reliance upon pure altruism. The state may have had difficulty in controlling capitalistic combinations, but in that combination which completes the union of labor and capital devoted to the performance of any given important economic service, the community is confronted with a veritable Goliath. Compared with this brawny industrial monster, the trust and other creatures of statute and incorporation appear anæmic and sinewless enough.

"The labor movement," writes Mr. Brooks, "rests on the assumption that the production and distribution of wealth, as now managed, ought to be and can be so changed as to give the laborer more power in deciding the terms under which he works." It is this widespread conviction among wage-earners that causes society to be "afflicted with an almost unbroken series of costly labor disputes," with "a plague of strikes." Through organization labor has certainly secured more power, and it is generally conceded that it has grown also in wisdom; certainly its own welfare depends upon a wise exercise of this new power. In the past labor has had power and has misspent it and suffered in consequence. It is the wise direction of its power that is of vital consequence to wage-earners and to the community. Every one knows that the idea of economic laws, acting with some degree of fatality, is sadly out of date. Even economists have been shamed into a Peter-like denial of the fundamental principles of their own science. Witness, for example, the following theory of distribution from a modern economist:

The social question will be solved, first by guaranteeing each man the minimum without which he is in danger either of not becoming or of not

remaining a "man," in the full sense of the word. The next step would be to give the working classes something more than that minimum, viz., a growing share in the benefits of that civilization of which they form a more and more important factor. Further, any wealth which remained over should be put into the hands of those who can make the best use of it.-CHARLES GIDE, Principles of Political Economy.

Is there, then, no relation whatever between the wage-earner's efficiency, his training and disposition to work honestly, and the amount of his wages? Is the amount of his wages a matter of government interference, or of simply determining to have more? When every line of industrial activity is embarrassed with a plague of strikes, limitations, and hindrances, which enhances the cost of production and diminishes output all around, who is benefited? There is a fund of economic significance in a recent cartoon in which a farmer, confronted with an elaborate bit of mechanism recommended to do the work of six hired men, exclaims that he "can do that himself." Is our disdain for economic law so great that we will refuse to trace any connection here between that rise in the cost of living which is so universally decried today and these lets and hindrances to economic service experienced throughout the industrial world? When, in any industrial group, the remuneration falls too low to maintain a humane standard of living, shall we not any longer seek to alter economic conditions and to work through economic laws in effecting some economic betterment of conditions; or is it merely a question of deciding that the conditions ought to be different, higher wages paid, and shorter hours worked? Mr. Brooks frequently refers to conditions in the anthracite coal fields; he mentions the "absurd surplus" of 30,000 laborers who hang about the mines, looking for employment where there is none to give. Other writers have dwelt upon the oversupply and immobility of labor here. But our attention is not centered upon these undesirable conditions, and the inevitableness of the misery resulting therefrom; it is directed to the wilfulness of the operators in their attempts to smash the unions. It is not pointed out that those operators who have been well-disposed toward their men have been largely helpless. Admit that the operators have been cantankerous and ill-tempered, even outrageously inhumane, in the treatment of their men, and that much trouble might have been avoided had they been more decent and diplomatic, and less disposed to accept their potency as a divine dispensation, one familiar with the economic development of the region finds, nevertheless, in the plain working of economic laws, an adequate

explanation of present miserable conditions. There is no remedy for the underlying evils in organization so long as that absurd surplus of 30,000 miners hangs about the shafts-unless the community submits to be held up by an advance in the price of coal, and so forced to support in idleness this industrial group of unoccupied labor. The organization of labor is today generally accepted as a condition of collective bargaining with employers, but wages and terms of employment depend upon conditions, and organization can do little more than adjust wages to those conditions. In this case the surplus labor is the condition which hampers labor in all its bargaining, the determining condition of every compact. No sort of diplomacy can avoid it, nor organization ignore it.

The remedy for social unrest throughout the community lies in a more intelligent recognition of economic laws, with the purpose of working through them, not in defiance of them.

JOHN CUMMINGS.

Report of Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of the International Cooperative Alliance, Held at Manchester, July, 1902. London: P. S. King & Son, 1902. 8vo., pp. xii+445.

THE meeting reported in this volume was the largest in attendance and the most promising of the series, and 261 organizations were represented by 546 delegates. The book enables one to study the aims and organization of the alliance, the documents and resolutions being printed.

The reports on co-operation of various types present the most recent statistics, but those from the United States are fragmentary.

The accounts of profit-sharing schemes do not look hopeful, and the paper of D. F. Schloss would leave one to believe there is little vitality in the movement.

A very instructive discussion is that of the "housing problem" and and its relation to co-operation. The illustrations of methods come from a wide and varied field of experience.

The resolutions passed included one upon the topic of international peace. In connection with the congress there was a display of goods manufactured and sold by co-operative associations.

C. R. HENDERSON.