from screws to steel rails, from spool silk to anthracite coal, are controlled by associations that limit the supply and fix the prices seemingly at their own pleasure. These monopolies are more apparent than real; a certain residual competition controls the dealings of both manufacturing and transporting pools; but the fact of union and of nearly uniform prices is of untold importance. In particular it places the market in a wholly new attitude towards moral agencies. Single producers do not, under the new régime, have the market under their control. The soulless man of whom Professor Adams speaks can no longer degrade a hundred better men to his own level. In the tempering of competition by union, and in fixed schedule prices, the business man finds a partial escape from the inexorable law that developed in him a dual morality, and made it harder than for a camel to pass through the needle's eye, for a man of the market to obey therein the laws of Christ's kingdom.

This partial escape from the pressure that creates a special and moral code for business relations is an immense gain from recent developments. How far-reaching it may prove in the end can only be appreciated by those who realize the blight that personal morality has suffered, and who perceive of how vital consequence it is that the Christian man should be enabled to serve God while doing business, instead of feeling constrained to devote himself to God and to mammon alternately. inasmuch as these effects are mainly inward and spiritual, they come with less observation, and may to many seem less important than another effect of the same tendency to consolidation to which I have referred.

Yet

The union of capital necessitates the union of labor. These two consolidations radically change the method of adjusting

wages.

I am not guilty of supposing that I need here to offer an argument for the rightfulness of the principle of labor union. That is now regarded as nearly axiomatic. Few indeed are the minds that cannot see that, as capital consolidates itself, labor must do the same. Even if the impersonal thing called capital were of exactly the same importance as the personal thing called labor, there would be no equity in the division of products between them by a contest in which massed forces on the

If

one side should contend with scattered forces on the other. a consolidated labor union were to dictate terms to a thousand employers, isolated like the master workmen of medieval times, the conditions would be unfair to capital. If a corporation dictates terms to a thousand independent workmen, the conditions are equally unfair. All argument, however, on this point is made to be antiquated by the progress of events, which affords object lessons everywhere, and which has, in fact, converted the capitalist world itself to a belief in the rightfulness of the principle of labor union.

What forms a union may take, how it may be led, what it may do, are questions wholly apart from that of the principle of union itself. On these points there is much to be said. Unions must be crude before they can be perfect; they must act unwisely before they can act wisely. No more than any

other product of evolution can a trades union attain its second stage before passing through the first. It happens to be in the first stage in which at present we are studying them; are we blind enough to look no farther?

The permanence of the fact of labor organization is nearly as obvious as the justice of the principle on which it is based. The unions have come to remain, and are certain to strengthen and consolidate. They will learn by experience that their true end is not belligerent, and will endeavor to perfect the new system of distribution. Individual competition of the old type is definitely abrogated. "Where two bosses are after one man," said Richard Cobden, wages rise; where two men are after one boss, wages fall." This rule was adapted to a business system, in which little detached shops made goods each for its local market. Consolidate the shops in the great corporations, and you destroy the conditions in which the rule can operate; you suppress the competition on one side. Organize the workman, and you balance the forces; but you complete the abrogation of the old rule. Thenceforward the adjustment of wages will not be a question of man dealing with man, but of masses of men dealing with other masses. Competition, then, as a regulator, is in its old form abolished. In a greatly modified shape, which it would be interesting to study, it is reappearing; but now it is the agent and assistant of another regulator of a directly ethical character.

A free contract is one that is made between parties who are not under any compulsion to deal with each other. If A makes a bargain with B, knowing that C and D are equally ready to treat with him, A, at least, is free; and if B has a similar alternative open to him, the contract is clear from all compulsion. The wage contract was once made under conditions like these, but it is so no longer. When a corporation deals with a multitude of independent workmen, the corporation is free, but the workmen are, practically, not so. The open alternative is the test of economic liberty. In making a bargain with a particular workman the employer has an alternative course open to him; he can at any time find one workman in the open market. Not without hardship and risk can the man find another employer. The conditions of such a wage contract are inequitable.

Reverse the position and you perpetuate the wrong, though changing its direction. If a consolidated labor union could so perfect its discipline as to deal collectively with a hundred separate employers, the open alternative, the door of essential freedom, would exist only in the case of the workmen.

Equalize the conditions by completely organizing both labor and capital, perfect both the pools and the affiliated labor unions, and you close the alternative on both sides, and make adjustment of the wage contract apparently a process of crude force.

The conditions that I have supposed are somewhat ideal; consolidation has nowhere gone to such actual lengths; but the adjustment of wages is effected under conditions which tend toward this ideal, and, in some quarters, already approximate it. Here the division of the product of industry is effected by a contest between massed labor and massed capital. It is not crude force only; it is a crude appeal to equity. Every great strike or lockout is, in modern times, an appeal to public opinion. The old rule for strikes was that those made on a rising market sometimes succeed; while those against a falling market always fail. It is now necessary to add that great strikes, sustained by the public sense of right, often succeed; while those condemned by that sentiment usually fail.

Unconsciously and without our own volition, we have come under a crude system of quasi-arbitration. It remains to de

velope the system, and to avoid the loss and embitterment involved in the present mode of obtaining a verdict. In a sense, arbitration is an accomplished fact, and it remains to accept the results and perfect the tribunals. The moral forces of society are at work in the industrial field;-the exigency has forced them into it ;-it remains to direct the manner of their working.

What shall we do with the rising tide of labor organization? Shall we command the sea to stand still, like Knut; or scourge it, like Xerxes? Shall we seem to resist the irresistible? Let us rather refrain from this movement, and let it alone; for if it be of the wrath of men, it will come to naught; but if it be a part of the Divine order, we cannot stay it, though haply we may be found fighting against eternal Providence.

While this movement cannot be stayed, it may be directed. A labor union may, like blind Ajax, have more strength than light, and may be easily decoyed into fatal directions, or guided into safe ones. Seldom indeed in history have crises occurred in which the clear thought of an earnest man could be made to count for as much as it may now do in influencing human destiny.

The Secretary of the Connecticut Valley Economic Association lately made a tour in the Hocking Valley, where a desperate effort was recently made to crush labor unions altogether. He found that events had led employers to reverse this policy; they are now at work extending and perfecting the organization of their men. All are rejoicing in the results thus far gained. In this desolated region there is now peace and a fair measure of prosperity. It is said that this outcome has been hastened by the wise efforts of Dr. Washington Gladden, and it is certain to be hastened, wherever similar troubles prevail, by the "Applied Christianity" which he has taught. The crisis is general, and the opportunity that is opening for the school and the church, for men of study and men of business, is correspondingly great. A ship freighted with human destiny is driving before the wind, impelled resistlessly and steered blindly. If there are principles governing the navigation of it, how carefully should they be studied! How earnestly should they be applied!

JOHN B. CLARK.

UNIVERSITY TOPICS.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE MATHEMATICAL CLUB.

THE Mathematical Club was formed November 27, 1877, and has now had eighty-three meetings. The following is the record for the past year:

November 16, 1886.--Professor Gibbs explained a method of computing elliptic orbits, based on a certain vector equation. This equation had previously been the subject of discussion in the Mathematical Club, and had been used by Professors Phillips and Beebe in 1881 in the determination of the orbits of Swift's comet. On this occasion a new method of solving the equation was proposed.

November 30.--Professor Newton discussed some observations which he had collected on the path of the meteor of September 6, 1886. This meteor, which fell at about 8:15 P. M., was visible over all New England and a large part of New York State. Loud detonations were heard in the southern part of New Hampshire. The height at disappearance was about 20 miles, very nearly vertically over Epsom, N. H. The course was about S. 25° E. and the angle of the path with the horizon about 37°.

January 25, 1887.--Professor Gibbs showed how the vector equation, considered in the meeting before the last, might be applied to the computation of parabolic orbits, and in particular, how far Olbers' method would be modified by its use.

March 15.--Professor Hastings gave an account of some experiments which he had recently made to determine the degree of accuracy of Huyghens' law of double refraction in Iceland spar. The principle indices of refraction for the spectral line D, were observed as well as the extraordinary index for an inclination of about 37° to the crystalline axis. The value of this last index, computed from the accepted law, differed from the observed value by 2.5 units in the sixth place of decimals, the probable error of observation being about three of these units.