The right of employees to a voice in determining the conditions under which they shall work and to a stable and living wage have already been dealt with. Other goals that are now generally recognized as right and just, include:

(1) the right of employees to unite for purposes of collective bargaining;

(2) a gradual and reasonable reduction in hours of labor; (3) compensation for industrial accidents as a just charge on industry;

(4) the right of labor to be safeguarded in all matters pertaining to health, steady employment and good working conditions.

Men and women fit for American citizenship, the working hours of whose lives must be spent in stores and factories, in mines and on farms and railroads, must and will demand just solutions of such problems as are presented by these statements of principle. It is to the advantage of us employers to lead in finding these solutions. It is to the advantage of the consumer and of society that we shall do so. If the elimination of outgrown ideas and the righting of old wrongs is left to labor alone, wage conflicts and strikes will continue on an increasing scale. The strike is their principal weapon. If they are forced to fight for their rights they must and will use it.

A great employer of labor said to me during the War, "When we employers in the past have had the advantage of our employees by reason of an over-supply of labor, we have used it for our own selfish ends. Labor now has the whip-hand and is merely doing to us what we have done to it in the past. I wonder," he added, "which of us will be wise enough to end this wasteful process of industrial conflict by first using its period of power wisely and generously?"

The opportunity of the employer has now arrived. The future relations of employer and employee will depend in no small degree and on whether or not employers as a group, by hard thinking and friendy conference with our employees, go honestly at work to bring the industrial system up to date.

4. THE BASIC REMEDY FOR STRIKES

Important for the establishment of good industrial relations as are the three matters of which I have spoken, there is in my judgment a fourth reason of a still more fundamental nature -namely, that business shall more and more become a profession and be carried on in a spirit of service to the community. The motives with which the employer directs his business and with which the employee works will in the last analysis determine whether there will be industrial war or industrial peace.

Asked recently by the editor of The Annals to prepare an article on "A Simple Code of Business Ethics" as one of a series of studies on the ethics of the several business and professional groups, I ventured to base it on two brief formulas:

(1) That a business in order to have the right to succeed, must be of real service to the community;

(2) That real service in business consists in making or selling merchandise of reliable quality for the lowest practicably possible price, provided that merchandise is made and sold under just conditions.

The merchandise must be sold as cheaply as possible so that as many as possible may buy as much as they need. It must be made and sold under just conditions, as one must not oppress his employees in order to make merchandise cheaper than it should be to his customers. But the chief point of the ethics of the profession of business, as I understand it, is that the great buying public is to be served by giving them dependable merchandise at an ever cheaper and cheaper price.

One of the tragedies in our industrial life to-day is that when we employers are finally successful and the difficulties and perplexities are over that in our earlier year prevented us from giving full coöperation in solving the problems of our employees, and we have at last gained the financial freedom that enables us to decide questions between ourselves and our employees on their merits, we so often fail to use our new-found

freedom to this end. We often begin, instead, to use our thought, time and money to build bigger houses than we need, to buy too expensive pictures and live in a needless luxury. We men have learned to simplify our clothing so that in neither cost nor styles is there a yawning gulf between those of employer and employee. But only rarely do we keep our living simplified to any such degree. But even if we are too sensible or public spirited for ostentatious display, we feel that it is our first duty to give large sums of money to hospitals and other philanthropic purposes. For these and like reasons, we throw away the opportunity, won by a life of successful labor, to heal the wounds of industry.

Philanthropy becomes a sin and an offense, when it uses for charity the earnings of industry that should be used for justice to employees and the public.

The first legitimate use of large profits, and the main use, is to reduce prices. These lower prices will, in turn, cause increased demand, increased production and increased total profit at which point prices can again be reduced. It is worse than useless to merely increase production. Prices must at the same time be reduced enough to bring in the greatly increased number of purchasers needed to absorb this greater output. Employers are wrong when they endeavor to obtain mass production through lowering wages to a degree that lessens the number of possible consumers for their product. Employees are wrong when they try to get higher real wages or more work through limiting output. Both will find it far more profitable in the long run to join hands in efforts to furnish reliable and essential merchandise to the public at prices lower than it has been sold before. In this way they will greatly increase the number of consumers and increase the demand for workmen. They will at the same time increase wages, and the purchasing power of those wages.

When this spirit of service comes to be generally recognized for what it is, namely, good business as well as good ethics, the reasons for strikes will have been greatly lessened. The cooperation that will result between employer and employeebetween management and labor-is perhaps the nearest we shall need to come to common ownership or the socialization of in

dustry. Perhaps here is the door through which the strike will make its exit and industrial peace will enter.

The practical and compelling thought in any analysis of the reasons why men strike is found in the fact that the elimination of the cause of strikes is not only good ethics but equally good business. We employers like to think of ourselves both as good business men and as good Americans. In studying and removing the reasons for strikes, we shall find the road to that real coöperation with our employees that will largely satisfy our aspirations in both directions. And a grateful general public, which after all is most concerned in the solution of the industrial question, will applaud and reward our success.

FREDERICK PERRY FISH

EDISON AND THE ELECTRIC LIGHT

Frederick Perry Fish is a prominent lawyer of Boston and was president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from 1901 to 1907. He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1855 and graduated from Harvard in 1875- The following address was delivered at the dinner in honor of Thomas Alva Edison given by the New York Edison Company, at the Commodore Hotel, New York, September 11, 1922.

MR. CHAIRMAN, MR. EDISON AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: We are celebrating the little Pearl Street Station of forty years ago, which was the foundation of the great electrical development all over the world with which we are so familiar. As Mr. Insull has said, many men have contributed to that development; great engineers and inventors like Dr. Thomson, Mr. Tesla, Dr. Langmuir and Dr. Coolidge; great executives like Mr. Coffin and Mr. Westinghouse who organized and directed the manufacture of the apparatus, and Mr. Lieb and Mr. Edgar in the central stations. Mr. Insull has been a leader both in manufacturing and in central station work. But we must recognize that this whole great development goes back to Mr. Edison. He was the man who originated it. He started it, and placed it upon a firm foundation from the very beginning. It has never departed from that foundation, although it has grown and grown mightily in every direction.

It is a rash thing ever to say that one man is the greatest in his line of achievement; it is futile and absurd to ask who was the greatest poet or the greatest soldier or the greatest statesman; but I believe that if we approach the matter coolly and sanely we shall all be obliged to recognize and to assert that Mr. Edison is the greatest of all the inventors whose work has been recorded in history. [Applause.]