The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-02-04

the other, but the purposes and the
essentials of the two are identically the
same.
Let me reply to another objection
frequently urged to the scheme of COM
pulsory arbitra ton of labor disputes
1t is that the obligations of fair deal
ing between employer and laborer are
better and in the end more effectually
enforcible in the court of public opinion
than in the form of htigious strife.
"A great merit of compulsory arbitra-
tion is that it does what nothing else
can do-gets at the facts on which not
only the judgment of the arbitration
court but also the judgment of public
opinion must rest. 1t gets at those facts
from which the justice and the morality
of the decision to be rendered must be
reduced. OF the employer it demands
to know: What is the amount of your
invested capital? What interest, if any,
do you pay to others on it? How much
Watered stock and fictitious indebted
ness do you carry? What is the actual
cost of what you buy to use in your
trade? What rebates do you pay to
favored customers or receive from fav-
oring transportation lines2 What act
ual profits do you earn? And now
please show US your books covering all
these various items and others which
We need to know
"Of the working man it asks: What
wages do you receive How nearly
sufficient with frugality to comfortably
maintaining yourself and your depend
ents, educate the latter, give them
start III lie, ana leave something TO
lay up for yourself against old age?
What portion of your wage, if any, do
you spend in extravagant living and un-
healthful vices? Do the conditions of
labor tend to the undermining of health
and the shortening of life? These and
other like questions being truthfully an
swered the judgment and conscience of
the court become advised, public opin-
ion becomes informed, and justice can
be decreed.
Permit me in closing to say that the
world is drawing nearer to one of the
most momentouS questions of all the
ages. That question is shall prices con-
troll wages, or shall wages control
prices? Must wages be dependent on
prices necessary to market commodities,
or must prices be dependent on the
wages necessary to maintain the work.
er in comfort? We who dream have
fancies of a time when the latter rule
shall be the economic law and we be-
Heve that means to materialize the
vision will be the enforced obligation
to abandon industrial strife and as in
all other things whereof the world has
found Its better peace to submit to the
umpirage of a disinterested, impartial
tribunal of men,"
F. DUMONT SMITHS PAPER
Senator F. Dumont Smith was to have
read a paper on Labor Legislation"
but was sick and unable to attend. His
paper reached the officers of the society
in time to be read. but the hall was so
frigid by the time Chief Justice Doster
had finished that it was decided to ad-
journ the evening session. Senator
Smiths address will be printed in the
report of the organization. In it he
gives review of the enactments favor
able to laboring classes, chiefly in Eng
land and America In his prospective
glance regarding the relations of capital
and labor, he said among other things:
For my own part 1 hope for the day
when there will be freedom of contract.
When the laborer will be as free to give
or withhold his labor from the market
as the employer is to give or withhold
employment When employer and en-
pIoyed can deal on even terms and on
an equal footing, when the Amalgama-
ted iron workers shall be as strong as
the steel trust and the United Mine
workers as strong as the coal combine