sentatives come from the financial or commercial side of the business. They should be the men in charge of production, who have grown up in the industry and know the labor conditions. The amount of time required is not so great as to prevent attendance. The investigations are made by a staff continuously employed and are then laid before the representatives, and their familiarity with the business enables them immediately to pick out the weak spots. These are referred back for further investigation, so that the various brief meetings of the representative council are enough to accomplish the purpose. Such investigations are not hastily made, as they are in the case of legislatures in session. The conferences are not required to act within a limited time, and if they cannot cover the whole ground they cover a part of it and wait for future investigations to make the necessary amendments. The representatives do not need to be officials with governmental powers to enter factories, but they must have a staff in which they have confidence. This is the problem of civil service.

(3) Civil Service

We have already seen how the administration of labor laws has required the building up of a special police. This was an advance over the enforcement of law by general officers, but it brought many difficulties. It created salaried positions, which political parties seized upon for political purposes, and a mere ostensible enforcement of the law. Even more serious than party politics was the struggle of employers and employees to get control of these offices. The trade unions. claimed the right of appointment, because largely through their efforts the positions had been created, and because they considered that the laws would not be enforced except by friendly inspectors. The result has been that, in many states, the unions themselves have been split by internal politics over the personal candidacies of their members for the positions. The unions also have been compelled to make alliances or compromises with the political parties, and thus has resulted the "labor politician"-selected, not to enforce the law effectively, but to get the "labor vote." On the other

hand, the employers also make their political alliances, and then the selection of factory inspectors is often designedly made to prevent the enforcement of the laws. Thus both political and industrial partisanship have joined, either to defeat altogether the factory laws through hostile inspectors, or to make them ineffective through political trade union inspectors.

The next step is the effort, made in a few states and by the federal government, to adopt civil service examinations, tenure of office on good behavior and promotion in the service, as a substitute for political appointments. These civil service laws, beginning in the decade of the 'eighties, were designed primarily to prevent the use of public offices as a part of the political "machine." Indirectly they have secured greater efficiency, in so far as they have been able to prevent officials from being changed at each change in the elections. But it has required several years for the more experienced civil service commissions to reach the point where they could learn to conduct examinations directly for efficiency and for the peculiar fitness of the applicant for the particular position. This point has not even yet been reached in the case of applicants who may be called upon to enforce the labor laws. Here industrial antagonism must be recognized, just as political antagonism has been recognized and provided against. Factory inspectors, who do not have the confidence of both employers and employees, either as to their practical knowledge or their impartiality, are as inefficient for their positions as those who are avowed politicians. And this distrust of civil service appointees by both manufacturers and workmen is so general and deep that it is almost as difficult to get their approval of "civil service reform" as it is to get the approval of the politicians. Just as civil service reform is designed to secure officials who are non-partisan as respects political antagonism, so it should secure factory inspectors who are impartial as respects industrial antagonism. It is in the legislatures and Congress that organized labor and organized capital should fight out their legal battles. There it is proper that each side should have its lobbies and its recognized leaders, and should carry its fight "to a finish." It is there that public policy is determined and that opinions, partisanship, and prejudice have full play in working out that legislative

discretion which constitutes public policy. But when the law is once enacted the battle should cease, and the officials selected to enforce the law should enforce it efficiently, exactly as it stands, in harmony with its policy, and yet impartially as between the two interests. This is the present problem of civil service reform as respects labor legislation. Labor law cannot be enforced if either employers or trade unionists distrust the officials, on account of either their incompetency, their politics, or their partiality. Even in states having civil service commissions this distrust continues to exist. This is partly due to the bureaucratic exclusiveness of the commissions themselves. An essential thing in their method of administration is that they should admit the recognized leaders of employers and unions to a share in conducting the examinations. This is partly provided for in the industrial commission law of New York, which makes the representative council of employers and employees the assistants to the civil service commission for the examination of applicants. It is provided for in the free employment offices of Wisconsin and of Denmark, where the employment officials are selected by the joint committees of employers and employees.

It has been implied above that the inspectors under an industrial commission become investigators as well as police. They cooperate with the employers and workmen in drafting the rules. Their work consists more of instructing employers and workmen in the devices and processes of safety, sanitation, and welfare than in mere prosecutions. But they can occupy this enviable position only to the extent that they are skilful, efficient, and impartial. "Politics" is fatal. As soon as organized employers and employees have become accustomed to cooperate in the administration they tend to exclude the politician, because he drives capital and labor apart instead of bringing them together.

(4) Bill Drafting.

The history of labor legislation is the history of an art as highly technical and expert as that of engineering science or that of an inventor in electricity or chemistry. Like other

arts, it is a history of trial, experiment, failure, until something workable is produced. In early days an inventor might be merely an ingenious mechanic. Now he is frequently a scientist, with a staff of assistants, supported and financed by large expenditures of money. Great private corporations keep ahead of competition by means of their laboratories, scientists, investigators, inventors. When the government takes up invention, as it has done in agriculture, it supports costly experiment stations and sets scientists and inventors to work.

Yet in the equally technical field of legislation the drafting of bills remains largely in the stage of the mechanic. There are two very distinct divisions in the process of legislation. One is the discussion of policy, the other the framing of bills. that give effect to policy. The former is the division belonging to the legislature, drawn from the ranks of the people. The latter is the technical work of experts. In a private corporation the line of demarcation corresponds to that between the board of directors and the engineers, architects, or lawyers. In lawmaking it corresponds to that between the legislature and an administrative commission. The latter is conducting experiments in a great laboratory. The enforcement of law is, in fact, a series of experiments and tests upon the actual workings of the law. The commission's investigations reveal the gaps and defects. When the legislature meets, these tests and investigations furnish the technical information for amendments. The commission, indeed, when it drafts its own rules and orders, is doing the same kind of technical work as when it assists the legislature in drafting its bills.

But administrative commissions are like the courts in that they follow precedents, and are conservative in that they do not willingly take up new things. Their administrative problems are sufficiently great, so that they will not of their own volition initiate and push new lines of public policy. Their work is the perfection and elaboration of policies already adopted.

The business of pioneering new lines of labor policy belongs to the legislature and to private associations, or to a legislative reference bureau or a political department of labor. when there is sufficient public opinion, and a legislative de

mand for these new lines of legislation, then administrative investigation is superior to any that has been devised for ascertaining the facts and preparing machinery for administration. It follows that private societies, such as labor unions, associations for labor legislation, child labor committees and consumers' leagues, are needed not only to watch the existing administrative machinery, but to pioneer on new lines of legislation. The functions of such private associations are even greater than they have been before. They criticize where needed and assist where practicable.

(5) Penalties and Prosecutions

Behind all laws and administrative rules having the force of law lies the penalty for violation. No matter how efficient the administration or how actively employers and employees may assist, the administration would remain but a voluntary cooperative society if not supported by penalties imposed on those who refuse or neglect to assist.

Yet too much reliance is generally placed on penalties and punishment. Officials sometimes point to their record of numerous prosecutions as evidence of their efficiency in office. Such a record may prove exactly the opposite. Penalties should be looked upon as only a potential power, whose strongest evidence of actual power is sometimes found in the least necessity of resorting to them. A record of a small number of prompt and impressive convictions may mean more for the enforcement of law than several pages of statistics of prosecutions. At the other extreme, many factory inspectors who in American states furnish little or no evidence of any prosecutions are probably not enforcing the laws.1 No subject of labor legislation is more uncertain and unsatisfactory than this of penalties and prosecutions.

The difficulty in securing convictions is shown by a statement of the commissioner of labor in New York in 1908.2

1 The Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, Vol. XIX, 1912, pp. 23-88 (61st Congress, 2d Session, Senate Doc. No. 645), gives results of the most extensive effort yet made to investigate the subject of prosecutions. 2 Ibid., p. 44.