Pierre weekly free press. (Pierre, S.D.) 1889-19??, 1915-01-14

merce, merchants associations and agri.
cultural unions. From bottom to top the
~rate--naking of the German railways pro.
ceeds under the eye and with the co.
operation of the men who use the rail-.
ways.
In the United States the rallway manag-
ers and the shippers are mutually hostile.
iissy appear before the Interstate Com
nerce commission as litigants-as COM
plalnants or culprits. Then the member
OF The commission, seven non-shippers and
~on-manager appointed by one man, the
president. say yes" or mo and the liti-
giants go on to their next litigation.
Success Proves System Risht.
DO not say that we are all wrong
ana mat the Germans are all right. Far
from that! 7 say only: Watch them.
otop calling them mere automata of au-
tocfacy, and watch Them German in
dustry and German transportation, weld
ed tremendously together in daily coop
Grafton. can be seen today reaching out
into the export trade Of the world and
dragging back into Germany a great deal
more or 1t, a very great deal more of 1t,
tha German industry, by itself, on It's
own merits. would deserve. Again. the
phllosoph1c, system-making German. true
pupil of philosophic, system-making pro-
fessors.
III IS he that has organized also a system
CT education and government and bust
ness, in-ter-connected, in which labora-
tories are stationed at every vantage point
where squads and regiments of scientific
investigators, pure and applied, can
charge at the problems of the future. He
Is why there are SO many researchers in
Germany. The scientific German Is merely
one aspect, one weapon, of the organizing
German.
And he hasn't lone the easy task of or
sanizing a centralized system. He has
organized a diffused system. He has pro-
duced n systematic labyrinth.
Ihat fact will show in my Illustration
labor.
The greatest modern device for protect
ing the laborer against the consequences
of being a laborer is admittedly social in
surance. In that device the Germans are
admittedly this orlginators and the mas
tiers. But do they operate 1t through one
man or one set of men or a few sets of
men? Quite to the contrary.
German social insurance, except in small
part. is not even state insurance. The
state does not operate 1t at all. The In
surance against accidents to laborers Is
operated by groups of employers. The in
surance against sickness is operated by
countless groups Of employers and en-
ployes together. If people get hurt too
much or IL people get sick too much. these
groups begin to lose money too fast; and
50 tney Introduce SaIety devices TO pre-
vent accidents and so they build sana-
forums to prevent illness, on their own
initiative. The marvel of German social
insurance is precisely that 1t spurs indl-
vldual initiative to top speed.
No German Army of Idle.
Leaving insurance, look now at a Ger
man labor exchange. where laborers come
to find jobs. Look at the one in Strass-
burg. Is some fang or tusk of the i'm
perial government projected into Strass-
burg to poke the docile German laborer
into employment? Quite to the contrary
again. The Strassburg labor exchange is
managed by a joint committee Of employ
ers and employees. And more.
When a Strassburg laborer, going to the
Strassburg labor exchange. can not there
find a job, he begins to draw q certain
amount of money each day from a certain
insurance fund which insures him against
unemployment. That is, he begins to
draw 1t In certain circumstances. And
those circumstances are these; that he has
contributed to the fund and that he is a
member of some one of certain trade un-
ions. For the municipal unemployment
insurance fun of Strassburg Is a coop
Grafton between the municipality and the
organized labor of the city.
Paternalism? Coercion? Drill? There
is plenty of all that in Germany. But the
lesson out of Germany for us In the util-
all groups and classes of people, the or
operative national purpose. And this is on
mere centrs LIKED autocracy.