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improved shop conditions. Turnbull Company grants a fifty-five hour week with sixty hours' pay; no strike reported. Wolverine Motor Company grants forty-eight-hour week; no strike.

August 21-Siemon Rubber Company workers strike. Connecticut Electric Company

workers strike. Coulter & McKenzie Machine Company workers strike; demands granted in one hour.

August 24-Holmes & Edwards Company men return to work at fifty-five hours' pay for forty-eight hours' work. Five hundred workers out at Crane Valve Company demand $3 for eight-hour day instead of $2.50 for nine hours. American Chain Company men out. Sixty men out at Spring-Perch Company. Canfield Rubber Company workers strike for forty-eighthour week, higher pay, and better shop conditions.

August 25-Bridgeport Metal Goods Company gives forty-eight-hour week with fifty-five hours' pay. Canfield Rubber Company grants eight-hour day. Connecticut Electric Company workers return; granted fifty-hour week with fifty-five hours' pay.

August 31-American Graphophone Company gives forty-eight-hour week and 20 per cent increase. Bryant Electric Company strike settled; workers get forty-eight-hour week with fifty-five hours' pay.

And so on, and so on, until in two and a half months fifty-five strikes were called, while in many shops strikes were prevented by prompt concessions. Net results would seem to run to an average of eight hours with the same pay as for nine or ten. Machinists and highly skilled men have done even better. Unions in all industries are the rule rather than the exception. Even the Jitney Drivers' Union grew out of Bridgeport's object-lesson in the value of organizations against individuals. In the daily papers appeared and still run advertisements reading: "WANTED

ALL-ROUND MACHINIST; FORTY-EIGHT-HOUR

SHOP ;" or, MEN WANTED-EIGHT-HOUR SHOP."

While the men were fighting for eight hours in the munition factories a curiously sympathetic movement developed among the women. Union leaders have always admitted the difficulty of organizing women. They are looked on as the sluggish and inert members of the labor body. Bridgeport women hardly merit that reproach. On August 10, just after the machinists had won in the Remington and Locomobile plants, three thousand women employed at the Warner Brothers' Corset factory marched out of the buildings, down the main street to Eagle

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Hall, and announced that they had come to seek union organizers to show them how to win. Nearly one hundred per cent of the Warner girls struck, joined the International Association of Ladies' Garment Workers, and within three days returned to work. They had gained their forty-eight-hour week, twelve per cent increase in pay, promises that no girls under sixteen years should be employed, and a reduction of fines and thread expenses and recognition of the Union.

Although they did not know it, they had also gained for their sisters in the smaller factories the same conditions. On August 25 the Batchellor, Crown, and La Resista Corset Companies conceded the same terms. Corset-making has long been a foremost industry in Bridgeport. From this time forth the corsetmakers mean to work but eight hours a day.

Following the corset workers came the strikes of the laundry women. These were brief and uniformly successful. Bridgeport now has a well-organized laundry workers' union with the highest pay and shortest hours of any city in New England.

Twenty-six thousand women returned to work during one week in Bridgeport after having won the eight-hour day. Not all of the twenty-six thousand were forced to strike. The revolt of a part made victory for all. The city's employers in every trade were obliged to meet the standard. "Have you the eighthour day?" a customer demanded of a saleswoman at one of the largest retail stores. "Sure, we have," she beamed; "got it last summer along with the rest of the town. No, we don't have a union, but we can always leave and get a job in the Arms Company if we like."

That "job in the Arms Company" lies at the bottom of all Bridgeport's industrial conflict. The employers are always conscious of it and the workers never forget it. "The worst thing that ever happened to Bridgeport. was the coming of the Remington Arms Company," declared a retired manufacturer, ex-mayor of the town. "They've completely upset the labor market, demoralized it. Why, now, when you want to hire a man, do you ask him for references and what he can do? I guess not. He makes his demands on you about time and wages and takes or leaves the job as he likes."

up our workmen to demand double wages and short hours. They've actually offered to take on any men laid off at other plants for making trouble. I don't see what we're coming to."

"I have a letter in my pocket," said another manufacturer, "written to one of my own machinists, asking him why he kept on working long hours for poor pay, when the Arms Company stood ready to give him for eight hours more than he now earned in ten. That letter is signed by one of the Remington officials. I had to raise the wages, of course."

Along with testimony like this should be put that of the shopkeeper, that never were his accounts so numerous and so short; of the savings banks, that deposits have mounted with each month of high wages, so that every bank has had to stay open one night in the week to handle workmen's accounts; and of the amusement makers, who are coining money. Morning performances have been given at some of the "movie houses to meet the demands of the shift which knocks off at eleven at night and goes to work at three in the afternoon. The one public library has doubled the seating capacity of its reading-room. In the morning this room is filled with husky young men who probably never were in a library at that time of the day before. For the first time in their lives a space for reading, for leisure, has occurred. It's not surprising if they are still a bit shamefaced about being seen with a book instead of a dinner-pail. "Gotta go somewhere," growled one burly workman to another, as they climbed the stairs to the reading-room. "A man can't sit in a room all day."

In support of argument in the Oregon "Ten-Hour-a-Day" case now pending before the Supreme Court there has been filed a remarkable brief which sets forth in novel language "the world's experience on which legislation limiting the hours of labor is based." In this brief it is contended that "the good effect of the shorter working day is conspicuous by the growth of temperance, which results automatically when working hours have been reduced."

The brief quotes the book of an English steel manufacturer, "The Shorter Working Day," describing the reduction of hours from twelve to eight in a manufacturing establishment in Northwich, England, as follows: "We have never had any reason to regret the

change. To the men it has had the material effect of improving their health and decreasing the amount of drunkenness, which was very great indeed," and "here is positive evidence that the bane of this country, drunkenness, can be traced to the inhuman hours of labor."

Again, in commenting upon the general Australasian standard of work, the forty-eighthour week: "It is a remarkable fact that, in spite of high wages and short hours, the consumption of spirits has greatly decreased in the colonies. Indeed, the active agitation of the publicans against the eight-hour day proves that they did not anticipate any increase in their profits through the increase in the comforts of a laboring man's life."

The brief sets forth American experience by quoting a report made to Congress by the United States Committee on Labor (1901-2) (House Report No. 1793), which confirms the argument that "the additional leisure given to labor in every instance of the shortening of the work day has resulted in a decrease of intemperance among laborers," and goes on to the flat statement that the "proposition that without variation the elimination of intemperance, poverty, pauperism, ignorance, crime, and the accompanying evils, moves parallel with and proportionate to the increase of the social opportunities of the laboring class, stands without impeachment of its historical accuracy."

Against this testimony Bridgeport's police force is inclined to point to the forty-one per cent increase during the first part of 1915 in arrests for crimes growing out of intemperance. Investigators place in rebuttal facts to prove that of the seven licensed dance halls in the city, in three liquor is openly sold; that none of the public school buildings is used as a community or social center; that the Young Women's Christian Association has just made an appeal for funds to increase their admittedly inadequate facilities; that the City Planning Commission has reported that with "the great increase in population there has been very little increase in park acreage ;" that many workmen are unable to bring their families to the city because of lack of housing accommodations; and, finally, that up to a very recent date no action seems to have been taken to develop, either privately or from a community view-point, public recreation or to attempt the public supervision of private

amusements.

A

T last I am forty! I awoke this morning with much the same sensations which assail a traveler whose ship has come to anchor in an unknown port overnight-all the tingling sense of adventure ahead; the eagerness to explore the unfamiliar land and verify or disprove what others have said of it; and, above all, the vivid sensation of having arrived. With the first moment of consciousness (like Mr. Browning's cryptic hero Childe Roland),

"Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place-"

the place in life's journey which in my grandmother's time was considered to be, for a spinster like myself, the end of all things; and which, with a radical swing of the pendulum of thought, is looked upon to-day as "dangerous."

Well, I feel neither done for nor dangerous. On the whole, I feel very much as I did yesterday or even last year, and the fact that I do not feel as I did at twenty is a matter for which to thank God.

To me youth was a most difficult business -a time of trying indigestions both mental and physical; of crushing disappointments and paralyzing panics; a time when the fact that my hair did not curl naturally seemed a real affliction, and when the mastery of French verbs filled me with a despair equal to that of Napoleon at Waterloo.

Now my

hair is showing gray here and there, which certainly relieves it of any obligation to fall in bewitching ringlets, and I have settled down into a comfortable surrender of the French language beyond the tourist's simple cry for hot water. This does not mean that personal vanity is dead within me nor ambition annihilated. Quite the contrary. But to have gained some sort of solid foundation under one's feet, some sense of proportion; to have achieved even partial tolerance and self-control-these things compensate for the flutterings and yearnings of sixteen.

Yet it cannot be denied that there is a pang when we are forced to vacate our youthful castles in Spain and take to the dusty highway of maturity; and the most beneficial growing pain is none the less a pain.

My little friend Sarah was suffering from one yesterday. She came to me with break

ing voice and tearful eyes, and, sinking on my couch, announced that she had no illusions left.

"Good work!" I cried.

Why, you horrid old thing!" she retorted. "You old cynic!"

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No," I replied, "no, my dear, whatever else I am, I am not a cynic. I was once. You can find underlined with tragic blackness in my well-thumbed copy of Owen Meredith's poems the line,

"My life is a torn and tattered romance,' and the date of my twenty-third birthday is on the margin. When I was a child I cynic-ed as a child, but now I am old I have put away cynical things. cynical things. My remark about your lost illusions was perhaps tactless and a bit vehement, but it came from the heart. Illusions do not get us far, and reality, like a cold bath, is stimulating and refreshing after the first heroic plunge."

"I don't like it," Sarah remonstrated. "Besides, I am growing old," she wailed, the tears returning.

"Old?" and I smiled.

'Well, near middle age," she answered, "which is worse."

"I should know," I said. "I reach it officially to-morrow."

"Does it hurt?" asked Sarah.

"A little," I confessed. But I don't think it will be so bad to-morrow. Like a dentist appointment, it is the contemplation of its irresistible advance which unnerves one."

"What are you going to do about it ?" was Sarah's next question.

"Do?" said I. I intend to enjoy it."

6

Why not?" I asked. "Life never seemed to me so worth while. We talk of the happy medium' about other things, why should not the middle of life be happy? Personally I find compensations as numerous as the stars. For one thing, I am not afraid any more. That is not much," I qualified. "The dark, for instance; as a child I was mortally afraid of it. Nothing definite, just the dark. And when I outgrew that I was afraid of the future, which, after all, is much the same thing-a vague terror of the un

known. I was afraid of myself, too; of making mistakes, and being misunderstood, and of this same thing which is frightening you-old age. But somehow most of those fears have evaporated. As for age, industry and optimism go far toward preventing hardening of the arteries."

"I'm not like you," said Sarah.

"A matter for congratulation," I answered, kissing her. "You never would have bored a guest by preaching. But console yourself with the knowledge that you have been a good Samaritan, for there is nothing so bracing to one's faltering convictions as orating about them, and mine need to be in good trim for to-morrow, you know."

"I hope you will have a happy birthday," Sarah said, warmly, as she drew on her gloves. I was about to sit down to my solitary dinner when Bob Reynolds turned up. He said he had come to dinner if I " didn't mind," and I didn't mind. We had to do a loaves and fishes miracle with my two chops, since "man does not live by bread alone."

After dinner Bob told me, between puffs of his cigar, what he had really come for. It was not my dinner. He was troubled-one of the vital crises of life. We talked as only old friends can, freely and without reserves.

It seems strange to me now to remember how intolerant I used to be of Emerson because his essay on "Friendship" is so much more eloquent than the one on "Love," but, with all his New England chill, he knew a thing or two. "A friend is a person before whom I may think aloud." Many lovers cannot claim as much. Be

tween Bob and me there has been that sort

of friendship for many years. He stayed late, and when he rose to go he looked less worn than when he came.

"Thanks awfully," he said, squaring his shoulders." I've got my second wind now. I came to you because I knew you would understand."

To understand! After all, isn't that one of the things we are here for? We learn slowly and often painfully, and there are times when we fail altogether. When we do not, it is a matter for humble rejoicing.

I took Bob's words to bed with me as I used to take some treasure of my childhood. It is always cheering to feel a nice gift under one's pillow!

While I slept the "gobelins" didn't "git" me, but my fortieth birthday did. The milkman, pursuing his temperate vocation, woke me. Jumping up, I ran to my mirror. Yes, there I was the same ME. True, the reflection was different from that of twenty or even ten years back-whether more or less attractive gives me little concern. What does concern me is the fact that on no other birthday of my life has the sun seemed to shine with so great a radiance or the sky to be so deep a blue. Never before has all nature appeared so fair and so significant, nor humanity, with all its stumbling, so full of brave endeavor. The whole world, notwithstanding its complexity and its suffering, is an infinitely greater and more beautiful place to me than it was in my dreamy girlhood, and I think the reason is that my vision has been made clear by many tears.

T

HIRTEEN years ago, at Washington, a new French Ambassador presented his credentials. He describes the

event thus:

This day, thirteen years ago, a new French Ambassador presented his credentials. The Ambassador was not very old for an Ambassador. The President was very young for a President, the youngest, in fact, the United States ever had. Both, according to custom, read set speeches, and there. followed a first conversation, which had a great many suc

I With Americans of Past and Present Days. By J. J. Jusserand. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.50.

cessors, touching on a variety of subjects not connected, all of them, with diplomacy, in which talk took part the genial, learned, and warmhearted author of the "Pike County Ballads " and of the "Life of Lincoln," present at the meeting as Secretary of State of the United States. This was the first direct impression the newcomer had of broad-minded, strenuous America, his earliest ones as a child having been derived from the illustrated weekly paper received by his family, and which offered to view fancy pictures of the battles between the bearded soldiers of Grant and Lee, the "poilus" of those days; another impression was from Cooper's tales, "Deerslayer" sharing with

1916

"Ivanhoe" the enthusiasm of the young people at the family hearth. Another American impression was received by them a little later, when, the Republic having been proclaimed, the street where the family had their winter home ceased to be called "Rue de la Reine " and became "Rue Franklin."

So writes M. Jean Jules Jusserand, who has lived among us for thirteen years. In memory of former times, he dedicates his latest book to the thirteen original States.

It is a book about past rather than about present times and persons; hence we may not expect to find (what every one who knows him would want to find) much of its author's rare personality. Moreover, it is largely made up of more or less formal addresses. Its impact lies in its emphasis on the peculiar tics of the past between France and America. As we review them, we must instinctively say to ourselves, as does M. Jusserand to us, that, with similar hard problems to solve, a similar goal lies ahead of both Republics. With such a present and such a past, why should not these countries always be of help to one another when circumstances allow? For instance, during France's present trials, as the Ambassador notes, "the active generosity of American men and women has exerted itself in a way that can never be forgotten."

The title of the book reads: "With Americans of Past and Present Days." Now when any one more interested in present than past days reads this title he may turn to the very end of the book so as to see what M. Jusserand has to say about this very present strenuous time. Then, as nearest of any other subject to our own day, he may turn to the penultimate chapter on Dr. Furness, and then to those preceding, and, going back thus, he comes to the chapters on Washington and his French contemporaries.

The reader may thus have begun by a greater interest in the present than in the past. But he may end by a greater interest in the past than in the present. For, no matter how valuable it may be for us to read the opinion of such an accomplished and acute observer of affairs as is the French Ambassador at Washington, we must remember that his literary reputation rests chiefly on his services in interpreting the Shakespearean age in a succession of volumes which constitute a standard work on that subject. In his present book M. Jusserand interprets for us a later age-that of the American Revolution-with

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a sharpness of outline and yet with an atmosphere such as one may not find elsewhere.

The first name of that period to stand high in Franco-American reminiscences is assuredly that of Benjamin Franklin. We are glad that M. Jusserand includes in his volume the text of the speech of Elihu Root, then Secretary of State, in presenting the Franklin Medal, in the course of which he said:

We feel a little closer to you of France because of what you were to Franklin. Before the resplendence and charm of your country's history-when all the world does homage to your literature, your art, your exact science, your philosophic thought-we smile with pleasure, for we feel, if we do not say: "Yes, these are old friends of ours; they were very fond of our Ben Franklin and he of them."

Made more appreciative, perhaps, by what France did for us when this old philosopher came to you, a stranger, bearing the burdens of our early poverty and distress, we feel that the enormous value of France to civilization should lead every lover of mankind, in whatever land, earnestly to desire the peace, the prosperity, the permanence, and the unchecked development of your national life.

Of all the chapters in this volume, that on Washington and the French will doubtless have a particularly strong appeal. We read of Washington's early prejudices:

He resisted longer than old Franklin, and with a stiffer pen than that of the Philadelphia sage he would note down his persisting suspicions and his reluctance to admit the possibility of generous motives inspiring the French nation's policy. "I have from the first," he wrote in 1777, to his brother John, "been among those few who never built much upon a French war. I never did, and still do think they never meant more than to give us a kind of underhand assistance; that is, to supply us with arms, etc., for our money and trade." . . .

Even after France alone had recognized the new nation and she had actually begun war ɔn England, Washington remained unbending; his heart would not melt. "Hatred of England," he wrote, "may carry some into an excess of confidence in France. . . . I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favorable sentiments of our new ally and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree. But it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest, and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it."

Up to the time when Rochambeau arrived, so M. Jusserand informs us, Washing