no real legal status or financial support, had become eighteen months later the great official labor supply agency of the country. The state employment services, even those which had attained some degree of stability and usefulness, had lost, temporarily at least, their influence.

What will be the future of this branch of federal service? It would seem that nothing short of an incredible reaction toward decentralization could push the Department of Labor back to its old position. It will be remembered that the American Association for Labor Legislation in the winter of 1917-18 was promoting a bill to bring about a partnership between the federal government and the states in the operation of employment changes. Another bill of similar nature is now proposed or pending. But the idea of exclusively federal activity in this field has in the meantime gained such momentum, that the new bill will have to meet the attacks both from the believers in unhampered state powers and from the reinforced adherents of exclusive federal control. Whatever the outcome, it will certainly bring with it the establishment of an important labor exchange function in the Department of Labor. And it would seem safe to predict that the federal government's work in this service will in the next decade become progressively of more importance.

The contrivances for labor control and adjustment discussed in this paper and the two preceding are the outstanding labor developments of the war. They grew in the main spontaneously, separately, without emanating from any central plan. Most of them were late in being created. The government contracts were never so administered as to make possible any real steadying of the labor situation. Had it not been for real faith among

the workmen in the President's sincere and wise concern for their welfare, and for the patriotism which checked class issues as the war progressed, the success of the several arrangements would have doubtless been far less than it was. What might have happened during another year of war is mere matter for speculation. We can at any rate say that the grave issue of compulsory arbitration was avoided; that employers and leaders of organized labor, through the agency of the federal government, in thousands of instances conferred together over wages and conditions, both in the shops and in higher joint tribunals; and that some of the principles which have been established seem to have in them too much of value to stand in danger of being lost.

LOUIS B. WEHLE.

WASHINGTON D. C.

FOUR LABOR PROGRAMS

SUMMARY

The four programs described, 344. — The balancing-up program, 346. - Necessity of a balance among factors of production, 346. — Laws of value sometimes independent of social institutions, 347. - Institutions affect value of consumers' goods mainly, they scarcely affect relative values of factors of production, 351. - A slightly unbalanced population makes a collective bargaining program certain, 360. - A badly unbalanced population makes a voting program certain, 362. — An extremely unbalanced population makes a fighting program certain, 366.

ALL programs for the improvement of the condition of the wage workers fall into four general classes, tho there are many combinations and mixtures of these four. For the sake of brevity these four classes may be arranged as follows:

Programs depending upon voluntary agreements among free citizens.

I. The balancing-up programs.

II. The collective bargaining programs.

Programs depending upon authority and compulsion. III. The voting programs.

IV. The fighting programs.

By the balancing-up programs are meant all programs which aim to create or restore a balance among occupations so as to give those in one occupation the ability to bargain to their advantage as effectively as those in any other occupation. Such a program would aim to enable the unskilled worker, as an independent bargainer, to prosper as well as the skilled worker, the technician, the business manager, or the capitalist. It would aim to equalize the prosperity of different classes

by first equalizing bargaining power, so that each occupational class could, by the simple process of voluntary agreement among free and equal citizens, gain as many advantages as any other occupational class. This would combine equality with individual liberty and initiative. It would leave the individual free to make his own arrangements with other individuals or groups of individuals, every one acting voluntarily and without any compulsion whatsoever. Compulsion would be exercised only to compel the fulfilment of agreements voluntarily entered into, never to compel individuals to enter into business arrangements against their will.

By the collective bargaining program is meant a program under which individuals voluntarily join associations and surrender to the association the power to make business arrangements and agreements for themselves. So long as no force or threats of force are used to compel the individual to join such an association, or to prevent his withdrawing from it, such a program is voluntary and not compulsory. Voluntary agreements among free citizens remain the basis of organization rather than the authority and compulsion of the state or any other organization. This is the type of business organization which has prevailed in free countries under liberal governments.

By the voting programs are meant all programs where the wage workers are to use their voting strength to get control of the government and then use the compulsory power of the government to give them what they want. Much of our social legislation and all programs of state socialism fall in this class.

By the fighting programs are meant all programs under which the wage workers are to use their fighting strength to get what they want, without waiting for the slow process of gaining control of the government by the

constitutional methods of voting. These fighting programs are sometimes called by the more euphonious name of "direct action." Sabotage, strikes accompanied by violence or threats of violence, syndicalism of the more extreme sort, much of the program of the I. W. W., as well as that of Bolshevism, falls in this class.

The purpose of this article is to point out the relation of each of these programs to the others and to the general economic background. It is the belief of the writer that each program is the logical and inevitable outcome of general economic conditions, that one who understands these conditions in any time and place can predict, with some approach to certainty which of the four will be the dominant program, and that the determining factor in each case will be the balance or lack of balance among the various factors of production, human and non-human.

I. THE BALANCING-UP PROGRAM.

The idea is too prevalent that bad economic conditions are always and necessarily the fault of some person or some institution, and that the remedy is therefore the punishment of the guilty person or the reform of the defective institution. The fact is that many bad economic conditions grow out of lack of balance among the various factors which have to be combined to get any large economic result. An unbalanced ration means poor nutrition, an unbalanced soil means poor crops, an unbalanced business organization, say a farm, where there is too much land or not enough labor or equipment to cultivate it, means inefficient production, and, finally, an unbalanced nation, which has too much labor and too little capital, too much population and not enough land, too much of one kind of labor and not enough of another