Mr. VREELAND. You have not examined Mr. Foster's bill along that line? It follows the interstate law pretty closely.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. You might make it a condition of interstate commerce; you might make it a condition precedent to the entry of interstate commerce that any labor dispute should be submitted.

Mr. GARDNER. Could you do that? The National Government and the State government differ widely, one being a government of granted powers and the other of inherent powers.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. It is only by tacking it onto the interstate commerce proposition. I hope if any such power exists at all it will be taken away. I do not want to say it does exist. I do not believe in compulsory arbitration.

Mr. FOSTER. You do not understand there is anything of that kind in this bill?

Mr. MCDERMOTT. No, sir, no; but if you have the right under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to enforce arbitration, necessarily you must have the right to enforce your decree.

Bishop SPALDING. But in your opinion it would be extremely rare; the President would be called upon only rarely.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Probably only once in five years.

Bishop SPALDING. Take that trouble in Colorado. Would that be interstate?

Mr. MCDERMOTT. I think so.

Bishop SPALDING. Anything could be made interstate.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. I think you can take any great system of mines, iron or coal, and say that they would come under interstate commerce. Or you could take the wheat fields and say that anything disturbing the natural movement of the products there becomes an interstate proposition. I think the courts hold that. The coal from Pennsylvania, of course, goes into many States, and it is an interstate proposition a question of interstate commerce.

It was with the idea of meeting the conditions then existing that I framed this bill. I was very glad that the President took the step he did, although I do not suppose he ever saw the bill. Nevertheless he took the step that the bill provided for and eventually settled the strike. I had some hope that it would be settled before, because I recollect after the Grand Army of the Republic got here we had to burn slate and brick and oil and tar to keep the city lighted, all of which detracted from my value as a receiver.

Mr. FOSTER. Do we understand that one of the chief objections to this bill is that political influence would govern in the appointment of the members of the tribunal?

Mr. MCDERMOTT. I do not see how you could get away from that. It is not merely the appointment, because many men holding important offices are appointed-for instance, our Chief Justice of the United States is appointed because of political influence, and we are a nation of parties. What I am afraid of is this: You have a permanent board and it becomes a political bureau. It is bound to be political in its appointments and in its investigations. If the majority is Republican it will listen more kindly to a suggestion from the Republican Senators from Pennsylvania than from the Democratic Senators from Georgia. So you see it is bound to have that political environment-although I am not attacking your bill, and I have not studied

it sufficiently if I wanted to, and am here simply to revive suggestions made two years ago.

Mr. VREELAND. Do you want to be heard next Wednesday?

Mr. MCDERMOTT. After reading the testimony I may want to say a few words.

Mr. VREELAND. Do you know whether Mr. Gompers wants to be heard next Wednesday?

Mr. FURUSETH. He wants to be heard before the close of the hearing (Thereupon, at 1.15, the committee adjourned until Wednesday, April 13, at 10.30 o'clock a. m.)

WASHINGTON, D. C., Wednesday, April 13, 1904.

The subcommittee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. Edward B. Vreeland in the chair.

STATEMENT OF MR. ANDREW FURUSETH.

Mr. FURUSETH. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the purpose of this bill, the title of which is "to create a national arbitration tribunal and to define the duties and powers thereof," is to stop strikes, so that all its terms will have to be read with that central purpose always in view.

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It provides for a tribunal of six members, and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor as an ex officio member, the latter to be without a vote. They are to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." One of them is to be appointed each year, as one other completes the term of six years for which each is appointed. They shall have power to hear and determine all controversies "concerning wages, hours of labor, or conditions of employment between employers and employees in which a strike or lockout is threatened or exists, in which controversy there is involved. any commerce with foreign nations, or among the several States, or with the Indian tribes, or within any of the Territories of

* * *

the United States, or the District of Columbia."

The tribunal shall

investigate privately (unless both parties consent to a public investigation) the matters and things involved in said controversy, determine the merits of the same on the basis of right and equity, and render its decision thereon, which decision shall be definitely and distinctively an affirmative or negative decision of each of the claims of both parties to the controversy, respectively: Provided, however, That said tribunal, of its own motion, may make additional findings and recommendations for the purpose of adjusting such controversy.

In addition to sitting in private the tribunal may publish as much or as little of the testimony as it shall think proper, as much or as little of the correspondence as it shall choose, after having obtained the consent of the parties to publish anything at all, unless one or both shall refuse to abide by the decision, in which case it is to publish whatever it shall deem proper as a penalty; or where one party has submitted the controversy and the other shall refuse to confer jurisdiction by also submitting, then it shall publish such refusal as a penalty, along with such other matters as it shall deem proper.

The tribunal is to acquire jurisdiction by the parties to any controversy granting the same by submission. If one party shall refuse it will be compelled, it is hoped, by public opinion. If both should refuse-something almost unthinkable-then the tribunal may, after endeavoring to obtain jurisdiction, give such information as it shall think proper.

Public opinion is to compel submission of jurisdiction. Public opinion is to enforce the decision.

The tribunal is to decide who is in the wrong, and to furnish to the public, in order that it may have an opinion, its decision along with such other data as the tribunal shall think wise and useful, and both parties shall agree to. to. If it shall be refused the opportunity to ascertain who is wrong, then it shall inform the public of who stands in the way, and that will give to the public the presumptive evidence of who is in the wrong.

The public being, it is thought, prejudiced, too busy, interested, too careless, or perchance incapable to make up its own opinion, is by this tribunal to be corrected, assisted, and guided. In substance, this tribunal is to furnish the public with an opinion ready-made.

In doing so it is to "determine the merits of the same on the basis of right and equity." In other words, it is to apply to industrial disputes, as it understands them, the religious and moral principles as understood by it. This tribunal, which is to be supreme, from which there will be no appeal, is to act according to its spiritual light and to appeal to the religious or moral—that is, to the spiritual-force in society. Then what is this tribunal? It seems to me to be the Roman censors under a new name. This tribunal is theocratic. Its members are, in the highest meaning of the word, priests.

What is public opinion in the sense in which it is here considered? It is the public conscience, the aggregate of all the individual consciences; it is the aggregate of individual spirituality, which, when really individual, and therefore healthy, is said to be the voice of God.

Public opinion. Will it be strong enough to stop strikes? Who can doubt it? It was this force which made it possible for the Roman Emperors to slay Christians by the millions, and which, changing around, made Constantine the first of the Christian Emperors. It kept the Roman arena as a festival, yet abolished it after the selfsacrifice of Telemachus. It supported and was the strength of the spiritual power which compelled the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to debase himself at Canosa; it made possible the imprisonment of the Pontiff in France. While the temporal and spiritual powers were apart, it permitted the guilds to grow, and, when together, they were killed by legislation. It sent the populace to the auto da fé as to a festival, and later crowned with oak leaves the champions of freedom of conscience. It made possible the success of the revolution of the American colonies; it burnt witches at Salem. It deprived the negro of his humanity, and later poured out seas of blood and untold wealth to reestablish it. It gave force and effect to the emancipation proclamation and wrote into the Constitution the thirteenth amendment.

It sent the Nazarene to the scaffold, and, later on, recognizing His divinity, made of that scaffold a sacred emblem. It is the spiritual force, when guided by men, known as the spiritual power. "Grasp the spiritual scepter and thy crown shall shine like the sun" is a legend found on a prison wall in Europe.

In the struggle between the spiritual and the temporal powers which raged for centuries it was made abundantly plain that unless these two powers could be united there was no possibility of reestablishing that absolutism which had been the strength and pride of Rome until disintegrated by the spiritual solvent poured in upon it by the doctrine of human brotherhood, human equality, and human sympathy derived from Christian teachings coupled with that fierce desire for human freedom which was characteristic of the barbarians of the north.

While the struggle was progressing the wilderness was made to bloom, cities were built, industry developed, chivalry was instituted, and churches were erected. Kings were respected by their people, if personally they deserved respect, and in return they respected the rights and liberties of the people and generally observed such guarantees to preserve "the rights and liberties of the people of the realm" as they had sworn to maintain and protect.

When through the alliance of these two powers there arose the dogma of "divine right," the formerly intense activity amongst the people began to wane. Continental parliaments became mere recording bodies to register the king's will; first losing the power to determine war or peace, then the power over taxation and expenditures, and finally the power to refuse to register the king's decrees. The king was supreme, the people his property.

In Britain alone did the Parliament retain the power over the purse, and from that power, judiciously used, arises all the freedom now enjoyed by the British people.

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Redress our grievances and we will furnish supplies" were the terms laid down and lived up to; and thus, the King knowing that supplies might be refused, and the people feeling that they each year had a remedy by and through which they might destroy the very Government itself, there gradually developed that political democracy which has made England the political model of other countries.

The right to petition the Crown for redress of grievances and the right to withhold supplies, along with a gradually developed public opinion arising out of the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press in that country, caused freedom to broaden down from precedent to precedent, until there are people who consider the English Government the most democratic in the world, the one most responsive to popular will.

The popular will, knowing that it could assert itself, knowing that it could express itself in statutes binding upon the king, had no fear of him, but this knowledge made the people to feel the responsibility of such power and to act with that care which can only come from such knowledge and responsibility. Thus has been developed that conservatism in the making of new law, in the gradual development and tentative absorption of new ideas, together with the respect for the common weal and the obedience to law, only found among a people that feel themselves to be really free. Otherwise it is with a people which feels its freedom lost. It becomes saturnine, suspicious, treacherous, and then dull-dull as the ox, but also fierce and relentless as he. Having been reduced to mere animal existence the human qualities atrophy, and the very power of a real human life becomes more and more impossible until some catastrophe brings death or regeneration. The CHAIRMAN. I beg your pardon, but what is this?

Mr. FURUSETH. I am trying to describe the results upon human

society of the coming together of, the uniting of, the spiritual and temporal power existing in society. I hold, sir, that this bill is that in its essence. It provides for that.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought you were describing some actual condition somewhere. This is a hypothetical case?

Mr. FURUSETI. No, sir; it is not, really. What I am saying here I think can bear investigation as being absolutely historical.

Ill fares the land where those at the bottom are losing or have lost hope. To take away the power of self-defense is to take away hope, and that is what the enactment of this bill would do, if it meets with the success which its sponsors claim for it. It is nothing less than the abolition not only of strikes but the very possibility of strikes, through the focusing of the public anger upon those whom such tribunal shall determine to be responsible for them.

Mr. WHITNEY. Do you believe that the bill will absolutely prevent strikes and lockouts?

Mr. FURUSETH. I do; not in the beginning.

Mr. WHITNEY. But in the end?

Mr. FURUSETH. That is exactly what it will do. It will do exactly what was accomplished by the statute of laborers in England under the operation of the quarter sessions.

Mr. FOSTER. May I ask you why you leave out lockouts?

Mr. FURUSETH. Because that is simply the other side of the shield. Mr. FOSTER. But you believe that it would be also effective in stopping lockouts as well as strikes?

Mr. FURUSETH. It will stop lockouts, I presume, except in so far asand that is not called a lockout, and would not be-except as a man running a business would close it down.

Mr. GOMPERS. Would another question interfere with your train of thought?

Mr. FURUSETH. Not at all.

Mr. GOMPERS. When you say if that bill were enacted into law it would stop strikes and lockouts, do I understand you to say that it would absolutely stop strikes and lockouts or that it would ultimately tend to the enactment of a law seeking to stop strikes or lockouts or to make them unlawful?

Mr. FURUSETH. I should think it would do both; but I am dealing with this bill purely as it now stands, having within itself, giving within itself certain powers that men agree to, and I am dealing with the weight that public opinion will have. I look upon this bill as transforming public opinion as seizing upon it, as using it.

What is a strike? It is quitting work in combination to enforce a petition for redress or to resent additional grievances being imposed. It therefore has its origin on the mental plane. The reverend Bishop assented to it being defined as being "indicative of an effort on the part of the wage-earners to realize, practically to materialize, some higher standard of life which they had intellectually and morally evolved"-to change the existing order of things. The truths of the concepts of the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and man's body being the temple of God are penetrating the mind of the wageearning class somewhat unconsciously, it is true, but penetrating nevertheless and he applies the power of nonresistance to change the existing order of things to make it conform to the newly developed ideal.