it conscious of common interests, to secure permanent committees and develop effective parliamentary procedure, is not only educational in the best sense, but it is precisely the kind of education those citizens most need. It is, however, when these locals begin to affiliate with State and National bodies that we see the full measure of this discipline. One of our ablest presidents of a National organization once told me, "It costs me far more time, anxiety, and tact to keep our local unions reasonable than all our differences with employers. I have much more to do in stopping strikes than in carrying them on. The local is so near the sources of trouble, there are so many green men and so many hotheads, besides no end of bitter rivalry in the organization, that our National body is on the strain all the time to keep the locals in order."

The single question of "jurisdictional fights" among different unions is of itself one of the most baffling problems with which the National body has to cope.

Perhaps one best of all sees the results of this long interior discipline by sitting two or three days in a convention of the Federation of Labor. I have heard very competent men assert that one saw there an average of parliamentary capacity which was distinctly above that of the best of our State Legislatures.

I repeat that so far as Socialism is thought to be a danger, this trade union tradition is not only conservative, but it has been the most active and sturdy exponent of Socialism in this country. The reason of this is that unionism practically accepts and co-operates with the competitive wage system. To uproot and cast out this system is of course one chief object of Socialism. That unionism should enter into partnership with the hated thing, should even make one of its highest aims the formation of joint agreements with employers, thereby making the partnership completer and more permanent, constitutes an offense which Socialists do not forgive. There is a body of Socialist literature containing far more bitterness of tone toward trade unions than toward the capitalists.

It is at this point that one of the most

difficult as well as one of the gravest of labor and social questions arises. Has the wage system elasticity enough to retain its hold on organized labor? Within that system can labor continue to secure what it will insist upon-a rising standard of income in conformity to general progress? Or can a competitive system in a world market afford to give the income which labor will ask? In New Zealand and Australian colonies labor concluded that it could not get these advantages within the wage system as now constituted, and therefore it turned deliberately to the open field of general politics. When Sir Charles Dilke wrote his book on "Greater Britain," he was impressed by the fact that Australian trade unions had so long put their trust in the old political parties. This confidence assumes that the interests of labor are safe in the hands of politicians who represent the capitalistic interests of the time, as our own Republican party now does in this country. Sixteen years ago capitalism, backed by its own politics, inflicted upon unionism in Australia a defeat so humiliating that labor turned in solid phalanxes to form a party of its own.

After years of hesitation, a strong contingent in England now boldly adopts the same policy. The powerful unions in Belgium long since turned from the wage system to politics, with signal advantage to themselves. It is the only country where one is quite certain yet that it was an advantage.

Is labor in the United States to follow these tactics, or are we to work out policies of our own, still within the economic field marked off by the old wage payment?

That the world's business in different leading countries is every year being done more and more alike and more and more under pressure of vast currents common to all, would seem to mean that the United States cannot maintain a difference in labor method so sharp as this. Yet two facts of extraordinary significance will aid capitalism in holding labor to the wage system in something like its present form. The first is the fact of race variations, including the negro; the second, the extent and

significance of our immigration. This need not be left merely as theory. At hundreds of points one may now see the competitive ways in which these races, with fewer wants, are pitted against those with higher wants so as to check the demand of the union except for the stronger and

more skilled worker. These are often deliberately selected and given a higher than the union wage, in order to cripple the men's organization. Strictly from the point of view of the average worker, it may become a terrible weapon, as one may see at the present moment in certain plants of the Steel Corporation, into which multitudes of South and East European laborers are being rushed. What this will mean in some future period of sharp and prolonged business depression suggests very ugly possibilities. But meantime, together with the growth of employers' organizations, it unquestionably tightens the grip of the wage system on labor and weakens the power of the trade union to act politically-to act politically in the new and not in the old sense. For two generations our unions have been in politics in the sense that they have been upon the field to secure specific benefits through legislation: shortened hours, prevention of imported contract labor, adequate factory and mine inspection, restricted child labor, and the like. They have again and again flirted with general politics, but invariably to their own undoing, as with the Knights of Labor, until the strongest of the unions united in keeping questions of party politics out of their councils.

The

Year after year the Socialists have fought the unions on this point, urging that the old parties in no sense represented the real interests of labor. Socialists' glee at Mr. Gompers's apparent change of attitude is natural enough. A Socialist friend tells me with exultation, "We all knew the Federation of Labor would sooner or later get its lesson. President Roosevelt and Speaker Cannon have given it the first shock. When Gompers and his friends left that conference, they saw for the first time, what Socialists have all along known, that trade-unionism must break with the stupid tradition of avoiding politics.

For several years the fight has been hot between us on this point. The sleepers have at last got out of bed."

Is this unconcealed purpose of President Gompers and his followers the first momentous step in removing the barriers between Socialist and trade union policy in this country? My friend thinks it rather absurd to question this. He points gleefully to the obdurate facts, first, of accumulated defeats of labor legislation in Congress, together with injunctions that grow in number and severity, and, second, to the high enthusiasm inspired by triumphs of labor in the English Parliament.

Labor organization in that country avoided party politics until convinced that its economic existence was threatened by laws made too exclusively in the interests of capital. The recent Socialistic vote of two great bodies of miners, together with the uncompromising attitude of some thirty of the fiftyfour labor members, has for the first time' shocked English Liberals into some sense of the situation. That the politicians representing the employers should have shown no recognition of this seriousness has its partial explanation (as in our own country) in the current belief that Socialism is a bugaboo-a mere conjured specter casting its spell upon faddists and upon many queer and unsuccessful people here and there. That Socialism was to be thought of as an alternative to anything has not yet been really faced by the successful business man. He thinks the trade union an organization chiefly to create trouble and obstruct prosperity. Yet the contention of these unions has been to accept the present wage system, to co-operate with it, working out common agreements under which the two organizations of capital and labor could continue to do the world's work together.

Here, then, capitalism itself has had a powerful if very irritating colleague, one ready to work with it along its own lines. Is this protection now to be withdrawn? For organized labor to "go into politics" in the sense now threatened by Mr. Gompers is to strengthen every revolutionary specific which Socialists have at heart. One of the hardiest and most seasoned of our politicians, com

menting on the Speaker's snub to labor, said, "The old war-horse showed his usual sense. These labor mouthers are eternally bluffing about going into politics. They have scared us now and then just as the Prohibitionists have done, but the labor vote is as little dangerous to the old parties as Christian Science." The stubborn fact on the side of this scoffing politician is the past history of labor in general politics. But what of the future? We cannot decide with any confidence between the gay certainty of this Socialist and the grim cynicism of the party hack.

Since 1900, however, great things have come to pass in the United States. No event since the Civil War is half so momentous as the recent moral outbreak of indignant judgment against this same capitalistic politics in the United States. To make popularly known just what relations the various kinds of party boss sustain to speculative and privileged forms of business is the elementary achievement that will make reform both in business and politics at last possible. To do this, a form of moral and intellectual slavery has to be destroyed. It is the slavery of our stand-pat party politics. As its commercial alliances have strengthened, it has crippled the spirit of freedom in this country as effectually as did slave labor in the South before the war. That strong and enlightened men now cower before issues like that of reciprocity, which deals with specific monstrosities in the tariff, or are afraid to take sides against men like Quay and Penrose, gauges the intellectual subserviency. The extent of our revolt against this slavery measures also our hope of freedom and reform. That the people are waking both to the fact and the obligations which the fact implies may be seen at a score of centers just now in the United States.

That this situation offers a chance for organized political independence is too obvious for comment. It presents an issue as commanding and as distinct as that about which the Republican party drew its first inspiration and greatness. That the issues at present are so conspicuously economic is the reason why labor is likely to see its chance and

follow it. When John Mitchell published his book, "Organized Labor," he said cautiously that the immediate policy of the unions was to avoid politics, but the time might be near when they would be forced to act. The breathless succession of disturbing investigations since then reads like a cogent list of reasons why independent politics has at last become both a duty and good strategy. The saner heads in the labor movement had experience enough to know that the time had not come even to break ground for an independent party, for the sufficient reason that organized labor was too isolated and too weak in voting strength. The changes in the last few years have converted to belief in political action a formidable host from all classes, including the many modest business interests that may set themselves against political and business spongers as doggedly as labor.

Nor do I forget that the unions themselves sorely need purging. There is not a vice of our political and business tyranny which has left them unsmirched. But who has set before them the open and flaunting example of these vicious practices? Their first effective schooling was from the same alliance of privileged business and party politics. The most dangerous corruption of trade unions begins with City Hall affiliations, and here business and politics had long before set up their partnership of public exploitation. This is but another illustration of the common responsibility for these evils which lies so heavily upon every section of the community; most, perhaps, on those who do not vote at all.

The saying that we have not had a government by the people is now worn to a platitude. We have had government by professional political cliques working in sympathetic partnership with specific privileged interests. Practically every signal victory since the "awakening has sprung from this new spirit of political independence. This new spirit is the strict measure of our achievement up to date.

Now, if labor organization be considered as a whole-Germany, France, England, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand— no influence matches it in bringing in this

political independence, which surely is the first condition of a living democracy.

From the first there has never been a doubt about the main purpose of unionism toward democracy. The document. ary evidence of this is complete; the union wants the referendum, the initiative, and primaries so revised that the people can act at the determining points of their political destiny.

Nothing will now permanently hinder the extension of these democratic agencies. The revolt is now on. It is on in Oregon, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey; indeed, in so many centers that it seems to beat with the pulse of the Nation. No class (if that word must be used) has so much at stake in all this as the wage-earners.

It is into this wholly new atmosphere that organized labor may enter upon its heavy task of leading the fight against a party tyranny that has become grotesque in its unfitness for the impartial, constructive service which society now awaits. To get the determination of political policies free from the clutch of privileged interests in every form is what the people have come to see as their

first task. There is no influence that can indefinitely postpone this task of enlarging the political motive so that it shall lie level with the common weal. To use local and National politics to hedge and coddle the speculative schemes of commercial cliques has been the occupation of the moneyed men of this country. They have secured the domain, the franchises, charters, and strategic privileges of every sort, while throughout the entire game party politics has been their lackey. All this could not have been avoided, because we, the people, ignorantly sustain them. What the new time has brought is common knowledge of these facts and a great wave of feeling which makes action possible. In the old days labor could not go into politics for utter lack of this popular insight and propelling sentiment.

These may now give to labor its opportunity. If it shows the valor to avoid the grosser errors of the monopolistic spirit, the strength of its legions will be redoubled by accessions from the multitude of electors whose passion for self-respect and independence makes them ready to take the field against the despoilers.

M

ANY writers from time to time give suggestions as to specific instances of waste. It is the purpose of this article to classify under broad heads the main sources of waste, with an example or two under each. If an intelligent housewife appreciates the force of a general proposition, she will be able more readily to recognize the specific violation when it arises in her household. It will be helpful for a reader to ask herself under what heads the errors of her establishment fall.

This article deals only with waste in household affairs, though many of its principles apply also to other expendi tures; as dress, travel, amusements, entertaining.

Waste arises in buying, from lack of thought and good judgment as shown in

various ways. It is always wasteful to buy articles of inferior quality, as sleazy towels and tablecloths that have no wear in them, or loosely woven matting that soon pulls apart, or poor food that cannot be eaten. But it is equally wrong to pay extra prices for fancy stock. If fine large peaches can be bought for $2.50 per bushel, there is no merit in paying $3.50 for extra large ones. If a chair of artistic design, beautiful wood, and fine, plain finish can be bought for a certain price, it is folly to pay ten dollars more for some carving to catch the dust. Waste arises from failure to buy in quantities when it is advantageous to do so: as laundry soap and starch by the box, olive oil and molasses by the gallon, vinegar by the five gallons, matches by the dozen boxes. But, on the other hand,