knows that its direction has been toward a universal brotherhood. But it remained for the closing half of the nineteenth century to see the idea take a practical form and become a working force in an organized shape. Without intention, but by the quiet process of social evolution, it has become one of the most potent forces in our industrialism, and is working out the most radical revolution of the age.

The growth of the principle of unionism, whether expressed in the union of labor or the combination of capital, is the outcome of a deeper social consciousness, at the bottom of which is a serious belief in the brotherhood of man. To regard unionism as one of the abnormal and passing incidents of history is to misjudge both its force and its significance. It has upon it every mark of permanency. There is every assurance that it has come to stay. Instead of showing any sign of decay, it is steadily growing and becoming more and more intrenched as the fixed policy of industrialism. It has already reached every class in the world of industry and gathered to itself a commanding influence. If it were a mere intrigue of designing men to thwart justice, if it were no more than a scheme to command large power for private ends, or if it were only an economic convenience, it might give way before opposition, but it is the expression of a deep force at work in history raising social life to a new and a higher level, and no earthly power will be able to arrest its progress.

When viewed in the light of its practical results, it is the transition of society from an individualistic and competitive system to a fraternal and a coöperative system. Each man for himself was the basal ideal of the old system; each for all and all for each is the basis of the new system. The very essence of the old competitive system was endless warfare, brutal selfishness, and a survival of the fittest. In it the limit of one's rights was the might of one's arm, which was the ethics of the oldest paganism. Who can believe that such industrial antagonisms with all their confusions and strifes and wastes make the highest order of society? Who can believe in a social morality that inspires war between two neighbors that the general community may profit by their injury? Such a system was doomed before the growth of a civilization at the heart of which was beating a sense of human kinship. And this new recognition of human kinship in

the field of industry is the meaning of unionism. It means this among laborers, it means this among capitalists, it means this in all the associations and fraternities that have grown out of it.

It is nothing more than natural that such a radical transition in our industrial system, and the wide-spread revolution that it has worked and is still working, should create confusion and awaken deep misgivings. And unionism, especially unionism among capitalists, has given to government entirely new problems which the lessons of history furnish no aid in solving. The sentiment that approves the union of labor and condemns the union of capital, and would solve the problems of unionism by denying capital the right to combine, not only discards the principles of fairness, but also utterly fails to understand the central idea and the ruling force in unionism. If it is just and wise for labor to unite, it is just and wise for capital to unite. The solution, therefore, of the difficulties will not be found in less union but in more union, and all effective legislation must recognize a new order to be directed and utilized instead of a social danger to be destroyed. Unionism itself is to blame for many of the popular suspicions that exist against it. Having combined resources and set up a coöperative industrial form, it has too often taken over into its methods the spirit and the methods of the old competitive system. Instead of exemplifying the spirit of coöperation, it exemplifies the spirit of antagonism. Labor combines against capital, and capital retaliates. In all the legal prosecutions brought against our capitalistic or labor unions, the complaints have specified acts that belong to a competitive order of industrialism, and men have wondered why they could not do things as members of a union which they were once applauded for doing as individuals. Simply because, if we are going to have co-operative power, we must follow co-operative methods.

But unionism is not complete. It is in its initiatory stage. There is in it very much that is crude. The system is very far from being in final form and under the soundest administration. So long as it is class union in which the idea of exclusion is stronger than the idea of inclusion, there will arise contentions and conflicts. This is why I say there must be more unionism. It must widen its spirit and extend its aims until all lines and classes of industrial interests are included within one great organization.

The natural evolution of our deeper social consciousness is toward a larger grouping of unionism. The growth of all kinds of fraternal organizations and benevolent societies shows this tendency, while the gathering of single unions into national and international federations marks the wider extension of the sense of fraternity in our industrialism. But of far greater significance than even these examples is such an organization as the National Civic Federation which has since 1901 been at work to obviate and settle industrial disputes and to promote industrial progress. On the executive committee of this organization are represented the general public, the labor organizations, and the employers of labor; and the wisdom, success, and patriotism of the gentlemen who originally composed the Federation give full assurance that its work will continue to be seriously and efficiently done.

But the spirit of fraternity that pervades our industrialism also expresses itself in a magnificent benevolence. There is a sympathetic soul and a patriotic spirit in it. The cry of distress in any quarter of the earth finds in American industrialism a ready and a rich response. Ships loaded with food and raiment have sailed away from our shores carrying help to the suffering in distant lands and illustrating in a substantial form the brotherhood of mankind. However, more striking than such deeds of brotherliness toward the afflicted are the enormous gifts to colleges, universities, libraries, museums, orphanages, and other institutions for the public benefit. The recorded gifts of 1908 amounted to more than the combined amounts paid by our government for the Louisiana territory, Alaska, and the Philippine Islands. To intimate that back of this wonderful philanthropy are immoral motives shows both a shameful ingratitude and a spiteful prejudice. Such deeds not only spring from a social conscience and a true patriotism, but they bear everlasting testimony to the benevolent spirit that has been a marked characteristic of our industrial system.

Do not understand me to claim perfection for our industrialism. It has its imperfections, it has its weaknesses. But there has been no lack of men to point them out and to magnify them. I have tried to show some of the virtues of our civilization as they are embodied in and expressed through our industrialism. There is very much in it to inspire a steady faith in our form of gov

ernment. We are the citizens of a great country, the heirs of a glorious heritage, and the trustees of an immeasurable wealth. There are hard tasks to be performed and tremendous problems to be solved, but I have confidence in the wisdom and the patriotism of Americans, and believe that they will master their difficulties.

But Americans must learn that the final test of every civilization is moral truth and moral righteousness. It is not enough for them to grow rich. Moral forces are vastly more vital in a nation's life than wealth. And when these decay every other force will decay with them. It is then of first importance that every patriotic American should labor earnestly to keep alive a strong moral sense in the minds of our people. This moral sense is of supreme importance in its relation to the problems of our industrial life.

We are apt to depend too much upon the power of legislation to cure our ills and remedy our evils. To make laws has become a national mania with us. But ill-considered legislation is always a far worse evil than the wrongs which it is designed to correct. When St. Paul said that men are saved by grace, not by law, he laid down a principle of personal salvation. In society something must be left to the moral direction of the individual, and the personal conscience must be the omnipresent security against crime and anarchy. The law should come when it comes as the mature expression of the best moral sense of the community. A glad obedience to law on the part of the individual citizen is the highest patriotic service, and our industrialism must be put under the rule of well-ordered consciences. It is no honor to any man to boast of the genius to evade by a perilously narrow margin the laws of his country, and the standards of morality in our industrialism should condemn any person who pitches his business transactions at that low level. No man at all times has a right to all he can get by the law on the outside of a prison cell. There is a higher law than has ever been put in our national code. The sense of universal brotherhood, the dictates of an intelligent conscience, go far beyond the enactments of Congress, and the best standards of business conduct should assure their enforcement.

Scotland Yard Methods in Literature

BY JAMES FINCH ROYSTER

Associate Professor of English in the University of North Carolina

The student of literature who, in the seclusion of the academic world, aspires to apply the principles of critical scholarship to the study of literature is forever conscious of the suspicion—to avoid a harsher term-with which the "scientific method" in literature is regarded, not only by the outer world, but by many of those within his own restricted circle. The creed of the critical scholar denies him the right to enter into an analysis, for instance, of the poetic powers of Cædmon until it has been proved that such a person ever lived, or, at any rate, until there has been assigned to him with reasonable certainty a body of poetic production greater than one hymn of nine lines. This desire to be accurate and exact, accompanied by a zeal for the furthermost possible truth in regard to the facts of literature before the formation of an opinion as to the worth of a production, he is told, does not dwell in the same breast with a fine and delicate appreciation of the beautiful in literature. He is reminded that his method of approach to literature is deadening to the spirit; while he is catalogued as a dry-as-dust pedant. The critical scholar feels the antagonistic attitude still more keenly, perhaps, in the contrasting veneration in which popular opinion holds those who have read five hundred thousand lines of poetry (with small care, it may be, as to who in fact wrote them) and have remembered the half of them for ready reference; those who talk bewilderingly concerning Browning or Rossetti; and those who lay down with confidence and back by quotation the all-sufficient canons of art. To the world in general these are "scholars;" while "the public, with its vulgar and superficial standards, has nothing but disdain for the whole of critical scholarship."

There is not the least doubt that in the ranks of the critical scholars are to be found too great a number of over-zealous counters of statistics, too many who are suffering from an "excessive pre-occupation with little things," who here, as in any other sort of endeavor, would never rise above commonplace dullness,