POST OFFICE REFORM.

(Indianapolis News.)

CONGRESS is to have placed before it the proposal to sever the post office establishment from politics and political influences. This is in line with President Taft's desires to place presidential postmasters under the civil service, but it is to go much further. The bill which has been drafted by Representative George W. Norris, the Nebraska insurgent, includes all in the postal service except the postmaster general. No one is to enter any branch of it by the old gateway of politics, and when one has gained entrance by competitive examinations he is to advance only under the merit system. The plan outlined is

so broad that if a man in a small office shows unusual merit he may advance to the postmastership of one of the largest cities. The proposal is to wipe out state lines and also divisions in the service so that highly capable men may be used anywhere and in any division. The whole theory is correct.

The more we have got away from the old political plunder system, the more our postal service has improved until now the service is the best we have had. We have not progressed far, however, on the road that ultimately we must go. We shall see whether those who are in control of congress at this time have the courage to perform this great service for the nation.

The proposal comes just at a time when the President himself is not in complete command and when the plunder seekers are very hungry and full of expectancy. Undoubtedly the pressure brought to bear on the democratic congressmen will be great. But they must remember that the party that puts through such a reform will make a master stroke in politics. Many congressmen fully realize that such patronage is not an element of strength. It is the very thing that starts bitter factional fights and more congressmen have been retired thus than by any other influence. The members will do well if they eliminate this danger, for it is more deadly to political life than the temporary railings of the patronage seekers.

FORCES AND FACTORS MAKING FOR

INDUSTRIAL PEACE.

BY HARRY PHILLIPS.

IN the face of the deep seated and wide spread industrial unrest both in America and England just now these words "Industrial Peace" seem a mere mockery. The battle cry of

strikers and "lockout" men and women is resonant and clamorous throughout the land. Yet above and beyond all this din of battle we do believe that Industrial Peace is not a dream but a possibility. It is the true ideal of the nation.

If Industrial Peace is not capable of realization, then all the prophets and seers and teachers of the Jewish race, and the Jesus of the Christian faith, were dreamers and fanatics or cruel mockers, calling men and women out to an Ideal they could not realize.

There are two great forces surging around us today; we may not be able to grasp them with our hands, but they are tremendously real and very powerful; they are the forces making for Industrial Peace, and the forces making for Industrial War, and we must either choose or decide to stand by one of these.

What are some of the forces and factors making for Industrial Concord? First, Public Opinion. That mighty and determining force which you can not put into statistics, but which is so irresistible that no body of men can stand against it.

Public Opinion is weary and sick of strike and lockout and suspension of business; of Industrial War and bad feeling. Does anyone move an amendment to this statement? Does anyone say, "I believe in hunger and want and strike and riot and soldiers and bloodshed, hungry women and starving

children?" No one believes for one moment that these things are essential to the building up of a great nation. At heart we are all in favor of Industrial Peace and at heart we believe that the interests of capital and labor are identical. I know the Socialist will not agree but this article is not a debate on Socialism. I am a believer in Industrial Organization. I believe in it, after twenty years' honorary experience in the heart beat of the English Labor World, and I believe in Capital Organization. I believe in capital being organized to the full, and labor being organized to the full, and both united in a common interest for increasing their business with a proportionate form of profit-sharing. That is my Ideal and wherever that has taken place there you have a very large degree of Industrial Peace.

When you have two great standing armies they will not go to war over some small or sectional difference. It has to be some great issue. Last year a great European War was averted between France and Germany because facing Germany there stood three great forces so strongly organized as to make their demands irresistible. I mean first the force of combined capital voiced by Mr. Rothschild and the banking element, second, the voice of organized labor, speaking through Herr Bebel, and third, the voice of England with her army and navy at her back, saying to Germany, "If you declare war against France we shall have to stand by her side." So these three forces laid their demands at the feet of the German Kaiser and "There was no war"! That is my point. That when you have both capital and labor absolutely organized, you are going to make for Industrial Peace. That Peace may be born out of struggle and strife and suffering, but it will grow in strength to the fullness of peace. I take as an illustration the best which I know, namely, the London Dock strike of last summer. What are the broad facts? I am not now going into the question of whether the strike was justifiable or not. That is not the point. Broadly we had 100,000 men united in an Industrial Organization which held up London. No food came in, no food went out. It was like a city in a siege, but not a shop was looted, not a window broken, hardly a man locked up. And the best of good temper and perfect peace ruled between police and men. No soldiers were called out to shoot down the striker or guard the strike breaker.