tives and the general officers of the company will be held once a year to consider questions of general importance.

The Industrial Constitution provides that the territory in which the company operates shall be divided into a number of districts based on the geographical distribution of the mines. To facilitate full and frequent consultation between representatives of the men and the management in regard to all matters of mutual interest and concern, the representatives from each district are to meet at least three times a year oftener if need be - with the president of the company, or his representative, and such other officers as the president may designate.

The district conferences will each арpoint from their number certain joint committees on industrial relations, and it is expected that these committees will give prompt and continuous attention to the many questions which affect the daily life and happiness of the men as well as the prosperity of the company. Each of these committees will be composed of six members, three designated by the employees' representatives and three by the president of the company. A joint committee on industrial coöperation and conciliation will consider matters pertaining to the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes, terms and conditions of employment, maintenance of order and discipline in the several camps, policy of the company stores, and so forth. Joint committees on safety and accidents, on sanitation, health and housing, on recreation and education, will likewise deal with the great variety of topics included within these general designations.

Prevention of friction is an underlying purpose of the plan. The aim is to anticipate and remove in advance all sources of possible irritation. With this in view a special officer, known as

the President's Industrial Representative, is added to the personnel of the staff as a further link between the President of the corporation and every workman in his employ. This officer's duty is to respond promptly to requests from employees' representatives for his presence at any of the camps, to visit all of them as often as possible, to familiarize himself with conditions, and generally to look after the well-being of the workers.

It is a fundamental feature of the plan, as stated in the document itself, that 'every employee shall have the right of ultimate appeal to the president of the company concerning any condition or treatment to which he may be subjected and which he may deem unfair.' For the adjustment of all disputes, therefore, the plan provides carefully balanced machinery. If any miner has a grievance, he may himself, or preferably through one of the elected representatives in his camp, seek satisfaction from the foreman or mine superintendent. If those officials do not adjust the matter, appeal may be had to the president's industrial representative. Failing there, the employee may appeal to the division superintendent, assistant manager, manager, or general manager, or the president of the company, in consecutive order. Yet another alternative is that, after having made the initial complaint to the foreman or mine superintendent, the workman may appeal directly to the joint committee on industrial coöperation and conciliation in his district, which, itself failing to agree, may select one or three umpires whose decision shall be binding upon both parties to the dispute. If all these methods of mediation fail the employee may appeal to the Colorado State Industrial Commission, which is empowered by law to investigate industrial disputes and publish its findings.

So as adequately to protect the independence and freedom of the men's representatives, the Constitution provides that in case any one of them should be discharged or disciplined, or should allege discrimination, he may resort to the various methods of appeal open to the other employees, or he may appeal directly to the Colorado State Industrial Commission, with whose findings in any such case the company agrees to comply.

The company is to pay all expenses incident to the administration of the plan, and to reimburse the miners' representatives for loss of time from their work in the mines.

VII

Such in outline is this Industrial Constitution. Some have spoken of it as establishing a Republic of Labor. Certain it is that the plan gives every employee opportunity to voice his complaints and aspirations, and it neglects no occasion to bring the men and the managers together to talk over their common interests.

Much unrest among employees is due to the nursing of real or fancied grievances arising out of the daily relations between the workmen and the petty boss. Such grievances should receive attention at once, and this plan provides that they shall. Just as in the case of bodily wounds, so with industrial wounds, it is of prime importance to establish a method of prompt disinfection, lest the germs of distrust and hatred have opportunity to multiply.

This plan is not hostile to labor organizations; there is nothing in it, either expressed or implied, which can rightly be so construed; neither membership in a union nor independence of a union will bring a man either preference or reproach, so far as the attitude of the company is con

cerned. The fact is that the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company constitution does not restrict in any way the right of the employees to regulate their own lives, nor does it abridge their right to join any organization they please. At the same time it does insure the men fair treatment and an opportunity to make their voice heard in determining the conditions under which they shall work and live.

The plan does not deny to the representatives the right to act in concert; it does not deny to the men the right to employ counselors or advisers to assist them in formulating their views as to any situation. Indeed, the door is left wide open for the natural exercise of any right or privilege to which the men are entitled.

There is nothing in the plan to prevent the men holding open or secret meetings as often as they like, either in the separate camps, the districts, or as representing the whole industry. Such meetings are not specifically provided for because all those who are connected with the corporations are considered to be partners in the enterprise, and their interests common interests.

The plan provides a channel through which not only may the men confer with the management, but through which also the officers may lay their purposes, problems, and difficulties before the employees. It provides a medium of adjustment, as between employer and employees, of the problems which constantly arise in the conduct of business, while in regard to the relations of both it recognizes that the voice of public opinion is entitled to be heard. The acts of bodies of men in their relations with other men should always be illuminated by publicity, for when the people see clearly what the facts are, they will, in the long run, encourage what is good and condemn what is selfish.

Some may think that the form which

the organization of labor takes must necessarily be originated and developed by labor. If, however, a workable cooperation between managers and men is actually developed, which is satisfactory to both, is its authorship of consequence, provided only its provisions are adequate and just and it proves to be an effective instrument through which real democracy may have free play?

The Colorado plan has been devised for the employees of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, and without reference to the employees, or organizations of employees, in other companies. Some people will maintain that the men's interests cannot be adequately protected or their rights at all times enforced without the support of their fellows in similar industries. This may be true where Labor and Capital do not generally recognize that their interests are one. But when men and managers grasp that vital point, as I believe this plan will help them to do, and are really awake to the fact that when either takes an unfair advantage of the other the ultimate interests of both are bound to suffer, they will have an incentive to fair dealing, of the most compelling kind.

It is clear that a plan of this kind must not overlook the interests of the stockholders, for no plan which disregards their rights can be permanently successful. The interests of Capital can no more be neglected than those of Labor. At the same time I feel that a prime consideration in the carrying on of industry should be the well-being of the men and women engaged in it, and that the soundest industrial policy is that which has constantly in mind the welfare of the employees as well as the making of profits, and which, when the necessity arises, subordinates profits to welfare. In order to live, the wage-earn

er must sell his labor from day to day. Unless he can do this, the earnings of that day's labor are gone forever. Capital can defer its returns temporarily in the expectation of future profits, but Labor cannot. If, therefore, fair wages and reasonable living conditions cannot otherwise be provided, dividends must be deferred or the industry abandoned. On the other hand, a business, to be successful, must not only provide to Labor remunerativeemployment under proper working conditions, but it must also render useful service to the community and earn a fair return on the money invested. The adoption of any policy toward Labor, however favorable it may seem, which results in the bankruptcy of the corporation and the discontinuance of its work, is as injurious to Labor which is thrown out of employment, as it is to the public, which loses the services of the enterprise, and to the stockholders whose capital is impaired.

This plan is not a panacea; it is necessarily far from perfect, and yet I believe it to be a step in the right direction. Carefully as it has been worked out, experience will undoubtedly develop ways of improving it. While the plan provides elaborate machinery which of itself ought to make impossible many abuses and introduce much that is constructively helpful, too strong emphasis cannot be put upon the fact that its success or failure will be largely determined by the spirit in which it is carried out.

The problem of the equitable division of the fruits of industry will always be with us. The nature of the problem changes and will continue to change with the development of transportation, of invention, and the organization of commerce. The ultimate test of the rightness of any particular method of division must be the extent

RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, 'I'm just going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while.'

'Oh! are you?' said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and though her wish, also, very evidently, was to appear disengaged and indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if irrepressibly, 'You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell me that.'

Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at her, standing there turned from him, her

blue apron girt about her, her black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden consciousness of her spiritual deficiency.

When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with Aimée Pollard, the pretty, untalented young actress who had so shamefully misused him, torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind to tracing out for him the path of honorable retreat. He had found her so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his ardor, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were, their opposition based, it appeared, on the fact, almost unimag