custom in American industry. Why should we change to a method that has not secured as satisfactory results where tried?

In the light of such experience with compulsory arbitration, organized labor is justified in objecting to having any such legislation foisted upon it under the pretense and euphonious name of peace. Labor seeks justice, and peace will naturally follow--peace is a result, not a casual element. Labor deprecates all such suggestions introduced in the name of social welfare, but really serv ing as an entering wedge whereby the people may be beguiled into adopting a regulation prejudicial to the best interests of a great proportion of the population-the workers. Labor will oppose compulsory arbitration under any guise. In the next issue we expect to discuss the Canadian compulsory investigation act.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You agree, then, as I understand you, with some of the other men who have testified here, that even where the railroad and its employees do submit a dispute to arbitration, it is much better that there should be no third party represented on the board of arbitrators, but that it should be composed of those who are or have been actually engaged in the operation of the trains and those who are or have been railroad managers?

Mr. GOMPERS. I would as lief, if the employers and employees can not come to an agreement on a disputed point, that they toss up a coin and let it go at that, as to leave it to a so-called disinterested third party. Or, if they can not agree, then let the break come and let them endeavor to reach an understanding and an agreement upon the new terms upon which the workmen will sell the only thing that they have, their labor power, and upon which the employers will buy it.

Senator CUMMINS. Mr. Gompers, I do not desire to change the course of your argument at all, but there is no proposal before us for arbitration or to change the law in any respect with regard to arbitration. Two things are proposed: First, a Government investigation in the event of a dispute; second, restraint-prohibition against striking during the period of that investigation; third, giving some Government tribunal, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the authority to fix wages and hours of labor and conditions of labor. Those are the things I would like to hear about.

Mr. GOMPERS. Senator Cummins, I will, if I will be permitted to, present my thoughts on that subject. It is true that there is no bill pending before this committee providing for compulsory arbitration, but the subject of compulsory investigation and the prohibition of a strike during that investigation is the entering wedge to compulsory arbitration. There is never any act of that character but what is followed by something else. Adopt a law for compulsory investigation and a prohibition of strikes during the investigation. and rely upon it in the effort to prevent strikes-that is, after all, the purpose, to prevent strikes-experience and the fact that strikes can not be prevented that way will lead to a further effort being made to strengthen the law-I use the word "strengthen in quotation marks" strengthen" the law to make strikes absolutely illegal. Senator BRANDEGEE. Suppose there was no attempt in this bill to exercise any power to stay the strike pending the investigation. Do you, or does your organization, object to a law which would provide for a Government commission whose duty it would be to make its own investigation of the conditions of the dispute and publish its findings?

Mr. GOMPERS. Senator, we want to make investigations of almost every conceivable subject, and one can not interpose objections to investigating anything that anybody desires to investigate. But success, in so far as the working people are concerned, may be predicated if the condition of the workers in that particular industry is one of absolute, abject poverty and misery, and then such a situation may appeal to the public mind, the public conscience, and the public judgment. But, take the workmen who are receiving what the world regards as rather fair compensation; whose lives are not lives of misery and degradation, but who, yet, as the result of their work, insist upon a larger reward and a better return, and, after all, it is they who form the vanguard for social progress and human understanding and better conditions for the great mass of the toilers of our country. They have to blaze the way, and they have to take the risks of loss of employment and of hunger during a strike. An investigation of the conditions, for instance, of the Bethlehem Steel Works brought a blush of shame to the people of our country that such conditions could prevail; but the investigation primarily disclosed misery and degradation among the men in the coal-mining industry. An investigation of the sweated industries of New York and Boston and Chicago and St. Louis would disclose the same. I may relate an incident that is apropos: About two years after the close of the anthracite coal strike I participated in a conference in New York where the subject matter of the enactment of the Canadian compulsory-investigation act was to be approved and submitted to Congress for enactment.

I made to a man who was a coal miner a statement which I shall repeat. He seemed to think that it was not a bad thing, or rather he thought that it might be a good thing. I called his attention to this: I said, "My friend, you have won this strike in the ccal fields for two reasons one, because the condition of the people appealed to the conscience of the American citizenship, and it appealed to the cooperation and sympathy and support of the working people of our That condition of misery and degradation has been removed in so far as its worst aspects are concerned, and you can't burn gunpowder the second time. You can't again get that sentiment." The result of investigations of the character suggested, if my inference is right, is to show to the masses of the people of the country that the conditions under which the specified people or groups of people work are so un-American in so far as standards are concerned that they ought to be changed; they must be changed; and the judgment of the commission is that they should be changed. But when it comes to the question of the $2.50-a-day workman or the $3-a-day workman or the $4-a-day workman who aspires to better conditions for himself and his wife and his little ones, that same sympathy is not going to be aroused for him, in spite of the fact that his demand is just as justified. It is not going to have that effect. As a matter of fact, its influence would be a practical estoppel to the demands for improved conditions of the average or the better-paid workmen.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Suppose the commission, which we are discussing the wisdom of appointing, did not make any recommendation at all. What I am trying to ask you-and I do not quite clearly understand what your position would be about it yet-is this: Suppose,

when there was a dispute and the threat of a strike in interstate commerce on a railroad, that there was a standing commission always in existence whose duty it should be to inquire into the subject and publish the facts, publish what each side claimed, publish what the difference was, and the facts and conditions surrounding it, and stop there. The reason I ask you that is this: Mr. McNamara this morning expatiated at some length upon the way the railroads, through their command of financial resources, had exploited their claims and their side of the case last September when a strike was supposed to be impending. He showed at what a disadvantage the brotherhoods were in being unable to get their side before the country. It occurred to me that if there was a commission-a high-class commission-appointed by the President, composed of men who were familiar with the ordinary conditions of railroad operation, who in such a case would go upon the ground and find out the facts and make a report, and that should be published, it would not be possible to fool the country then; and I wondered whether your organization would oppose that kind of a commission.

Mr. GOMPERS. As I said, one would find himself in a difficult position to oppose a proposition of that kind; but I think, sir, that you are overestimating the beneficial results.

Senator BRANDEGEE. I am not estimating it at all. You are an expert witness here in this business, and I am just asking you how it strikes you and how it would strike the brotherhoods, and to give us your opinion about it.

Mr. GOMPERS. You will find, of course, that Congress could not undertake to supply every citizen in his home with a copy of that report. You would find that you would, after all, be required to depend upon publication elsewhere.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Certainly; but that would be in the lawthat it should be published broadcast in the newspapers.

Mr. GOMPERS. În which papers?

Senator BRANDEGEE. As many newspapers as we should decide; newspapers all over the country, so as to give it general circulation and publicity.

Mr. GOMPERS. As an advertisement?

Senator BRANDEGEE. Paid for by the Government, and published in the leading papers all over the country, made a public document in both branches of Congress, etc.

Mr. GOMPERS. Of course, you know that the leading papers are all of them against us.

Senator BRANDEGEE. They could be hired to print the report of that commission, I think.

Mr. GOMPERS. Well, probably. I heard yesterday a statement made that the newspapers are even cutting down their advertisements, and requesting the advertisers to cut their advertisements down into smaller compass.

Senator BRANDEGEE. The Government would have enough money to get it in.

Mr. GOMPERS. The Government has enough money for everything except to pay the Government employees a little increase in their salaries. [Laughter.]

Senator BRANDEGEE. I am in favor of paying those increases. Well, I will not ask you anything more, Mr. Gompers. I did not

want to divert you from your argument. I did not know but that you had an opinion about that.

Mr. GOMPERS. I have an opinion about that. I anticipate no good from it at all. I can interpose no objection to it.

Senator CUMMINS. I have a question or two to ask you there. This investigation that is proposed, the publication of its report, relates, of course, to a particular dispute that has arisen between the men and their employers, and if it does any good at all it will be to either force the men to yield their demand or force the employers to comply with the demand. It is intended to bring the force of public opinion to compel either the men to give way or the employers to give way; is not that the purpose?

Mr. GOMPERS. That is the purpose; otherwise there is no purpose. Senator CUMMINS. If that is the purpose, why should unorganized public opinion be relied upon to execute the finding of any such commission rather than organized public opinion through some instrument of government? That is what I can not understand.

Mr. GOMPERS. That which we call public opinion is made by the newspapers and the magazines; and all or nearly all of these newspapers and magazines are published by employers of labor.

Senator CUMMINS. But I was not speaking of the merit of it. I was speaking of the plan that is proposed-that in the one case public opinion is expected in some fashion or the other to compel either the employer or the employee to abandon his position. Now, if we rely upon public opinion to accomplish a purpose of that sort, in that unorganized, vague, and indefinite way, why should not we exert public opinion through the organized forms of government, and say to the employer or employee, "You must do so and so?"

Mr. GOMPERS. The unorganized public opinion, after all, may be evanescent, and it may change in 24 hours; or, if it does not, and the workers are defeated in any projected movement by reason of this expression of the unorganized public opinion, they may at some time in the future make a new movement in order to secure their demands and aspirations. On the other hand, the organized expression of public opinion, as I understand it, through a law or a governmental agency, as you stated it, Senator Cummins if such a governmental agency shall authoritatively determine that the demands of the working people are unjustified, it puts the seal of disapproval upon the whole movement, and makes it practically impossible for a decade or more for the men and women of labor to give expression to their discontent in some form that shall make for the achievement of their demand and their ideal in that particular movement.

I doubt that there is any more loyal American citizen than I; that there is any man who is a greater lover of the institutions of our Republic than I, or who holds more steadfastly in his mind and spirit the hope and the thought for our Republic. But, with all the exalted opinion that I have of our system of government, I am afraid to intrust government with additional powers, and particularly with the power to determine the relations between employer and employee— the personal relations, usually good, usually making for the good, with an interruption sometimes occurring. And it is best that that interruption shall occur, for the establishment of new relations between the workers and their employers, so that there shall be again

the opportunity for development and improvement. I understand, of course, that inconveniences result, and that sometimes evils may come. I think that I am in entire accord with that great writer. Macaulay, when he said, "The remedy for the evils which come from newly acquired freedom is more freedom "--not less. It is something not yet fully understood, how perfectly safe freedom is.

Senator CUMMINS. I do not believe. Mr. Gompers, you caught the comparison that I was trying to institute. The proposal of a great many people is that when a dispute of this sort arises the Government should undertake to settle it, and to settle it through an investigation which will disclose the facts, possibly with the opinion of those who are appointed as commissioners or on the tribunal, and that then it is expected that public opinion having been brought to bear on the two sides of the dispute, the parties in controversy will yield to the public opinion, whatever it may be. Now, I, for one, think that public opinion is just as likely to be wrong as right, and that it is not a force that can be relied upon to settle disputes of this kind any more than could the voice of organized society through government be relied upon to settle disputes of this character. I was trying to put that comparison before you and to ask you what value an investigation of the immediate dispute would have in settling the controversy.

Mr. GOMPERS. In my judgment it would have little, and what little it would have would be against the workers.

I have jotted down the evidences of the formation of public opinion. I take it not only from my everyday observation but from two periods in the dispute between railroads and their employees upon two questions-one, the full-crew laws. Then the legislatures of several States passed laws creating what is known as "the full crew for trains." There was a campaign inaugurated by the railroads for the repeal of these laws, and during the agitation created by the demand of the railroad brotherhoods for the establishment of the eight-hour workday in principle the same methods were employed. The avenues of information and transmission of information, as our telegraphs, are in the hands of the elements or group in society against the demands of the railroad men; against labor: they themselves, not only in view of the great financial interests involved, but as employers of labor.

The newspapers and the magazines are in the hands of financial interests, and the owners and the directors are employers of labor. An official publication of the report of a commission by an advertisement in the newspapers would necessarily be long and be read by few. What is regarded as the most important pronouncement coming from any Government officer is a message of the President of the United States, either his annual message or address or any special message or address; and yet I venture the assertion that I am within the limits of truth when I say that scarcely 20 per cent of the people will read it entirely, and particularly the messages which contain a varied number of subjects on the state and the good of the Union, with recommendations of the President. There are not 20 per cent of the people who read them. And now, if there should be a great. voluminous report published in the newspapers, how many people would read it? But, on the other hand, those who have opposite interests to the demands of the workers would immediately, in their