labor has so hardly won and holds so dear?

Have not the adversaries of organized labor sufficient knowledge of history and human nature to tell them that what capital and organized society have most to fear is not the victories but the defeats of organized labor?

The safety of property and of society, the preservation of law and order, lie in meeting labor at least half the way. Co-operation is the characteristic of our modern industrial system.

Mistakes Minor.

It is not an answer to the argument in favor of the organization of labor, to point out abuses tolerated or injustice done, here and there, by labor unions. No human institution is perfect.

But organized labor, as it becomes more powerful, becomes at the same time more far-seeing and acquires a greater sense of responsibility.

What mistakes are made, what abuses exist, will be corrected in good time and from within the labor movement.

Our city has changed and grown in the same degree as the youth has into manhood, the brigatine to the ocean greyhound, the horse car to the electric tram, the automobile and the aeroplane.

Our products are exported to all parts of the world. Our industries are thriving in the driving of the rivets, in the construction of the ocean carriers and in the clanging of the hammer on the lofty skyscraper.

In the march of commercial progress we have not forgotten the march of Christian progress.

From our old Mission of 1776 we now find San Francisco a city of churches of every denomination.

We see evidences on every hand of prosperity and its hopes, of morality and its uplift-all of which speaks in most glowing terms for a community. I am a San Franciscan. I love my city

and love to sing her praises and extol her accomplishments.

Both Have Helped.

Capital has played its part-likewise has labor played its part-and, on this national labor holiday, I pay a sincere tribute to labor for its contribution to all that has made for the growth and development of this, our city.

Labor Unions and collective bargaining have come to stay, because they are a necessity to modern civilization, useful alike to the employer and to the workingman.

In my own business I have found that organization of men in unions has helped me just as much as it has helped the men.

Organized labor makes better conditions for labor and thereby more efficient workers and better work.

I have found collective bargaining very satisfactory. It provides a responsible body with which to deal. It maintains a control of the men by themselves which takes a great burden off the employer.

No union has ever broken a contract with me.

Employers of labor are fast learning that unions and collective bargaining have come to stay. Labor has become a partner in the business of the world and must be created as a partner. The world is big enough for all of us. There is more to be done than all of us can do.

I cannot close without asking you to turn back in your minds the pages of this city's history.

She has grown from a hamlet to a wonderful world's city. She has grown in might, power, influence and moral uplift, in the same degree as Golden Gate Park has grown from the sand dunes of the forties to its charm and enchantment of this day.

Our majestic City Hall typifies the soul, the life and character of a wonderful city, builded by pioneer enterprise and determination.-Courtesy of Ed. McGee, President Local No. 8.

So-called Efficiency

in Industry is Proving Both Costly and Brutal and is Productive of the Worst Form of Inefficiency, Says President Darwin P. Kingsley, of the New York Life Insurance Company.

With this bold paradox the inter view began:

"The inefficiency of 'efficiency' has proved both costly and brutal," said Darwin P. Kingsley, president of the New York Life Insurance Company.

None of the idols of that kind of "efficiency" to which Mr. Kingsley referred were to be seen in the chief executive office of the New York Life Insurance Company. Not even a monitory timepiece was prominent in the foreground; in the large high ceilinged room no even covert sign of that overkeyed tension which speeds up systems and machines and breaks down men. Instead, the whole atmosphere of the president's office was subtly eloquent of quiet, unhurried and purposeful composure, and it was in quiet, unhurried but emphatic tones that Mr. Kingsley continued:

"Every system of efficiency of the future must consider human life first. If human life is to be jeopardized by haste, don't hurry. If human life is to be sacrificed by speeding up efficiency, be less efficient; if the human body is to be maimed or destroyed in order to secure speed and power, get along with less power. This doctrine is not merely sentimental, it is more than a reflection of the woe and heartbreak that follow the cruel strokes of industry and traffic."

Then, as one who, from the commanding station of a nation-wide institution, beholds the rank of life and toll of the dead and disabled throughout the immense spread of a whole continent, Mr. Kingsley spoke of "the more intense appreciation of the value of human life" as a notable sign at this

time of the coming of the higher true efficiency. The colossal waste of life in Europe had sent a reflex of constructive sympathy that was to concentrate attention in this country on the primary importance of safeguarding and protecting life.

"That 'efficiency' which looked exclusively to output had no notion of the supreme value of life. In the industries we are beginning to realize this truth, especially in the better organized and more advanced industries, with the result in the end of not only greater efficiency in the conservation of life, but literally greater efficiency in production. At the last convention in Detroit of the Federation of Safety First Societies of America, a new national organization, I heard the manager of a large industrial plant relate that under shorter hours and increased wages the same number of men had attained a decided increase in total output. The purpose of this federation is to emphasize and spread a proper appreciation of the value of human life. In this movement we have been assured of co-operation from the cities and in fact from all sides."

Mr. Kingsley is president of the fed. eration.

men are.

some

"In machinery," said Mr. Kingsley, turning directly to the workman's viewpoint, "the human factor growg smaller and more important. Take a big steel plant. You enter a great room. It is filled with massive machinery carrying out complicated purpose. You wonder where the Then, up in a box car toward the roof, you catch sight of a single man busy working a lot of levHe is running the whole thing. He is the guiding intelligence in all that vast and intricate mechanism; it is an impressive lesson in the enhanced importance of the value of brains and skill."

ers.

Just so. It wasn't the wizzardry of the clock-work machinery that had left the indelible picture in Mr. Kingsley's mind; it was the man up there in the box car, and it was in terms of life, as thus actively expressed, that he said:

"Human life is the only thing in the world that has any value; all other values are derived from serving this primary value. The asset of the average man, the only thing that stands between his family and perhaps future dependence on charity is his earning power. Some plan which capitalizes his future earning power, his physical strength, must be incorporated in the efficient industrial system of the future. We are making an encouraging start in this direction by funds to provide for the workman when he is unable to work and by the introduction of life-saving devices to protect him while he is at work."

Mr. Kingsley then turned to another phase of the life problem-the inefficiency of untimely breakdowns.

"An enormous vitality gain has been achieved in the earlier stages of life," he said, and his voice quickened as he approached a branch of study that lay very close to his thought; "a much larger percentage reach maturity through improved methods of sanitation, but the human machine begins to go to pieces at fifty-five. It is the result of the heavy strain in the United States, a product of our modern life. It is the outgrowth of the worst form of inefficiency, of an attempt to be efficient without properly counting the cost."

Mr. Kingsley is very sparing of gesture, but he raised a pointing finger as he exclaimed:

"Think of the value of lives snuffed out at fifty-five! Just when these lives have reached their maturity of power, when knowledge has become wisdom, when judgment has become well balanced-fifteen years of the choicest part of their lives snuffed out!"

"Should a man's full efficiency be maintained up to seventy?"

"Yes, a man should be at his best up to seventy. If a man disappears at fifty-five he is inefficient, no matter what he has done before that timeinefficient because he has thrown away the ripe fruit of all his life."

"Isn't that to be charged up to that kind of inefficiency called 'speeding up?'"

"It's inefficiency, though the inan and the system may call it efficiency. There has been a tremendous increase in the death rate at this age and onward. So marked is this increase that the great life insurance companies have radically modified their rules of accepting lives at fifty-five and above."

Another menace to

life-showing

how disjointed is our efficiency, how high efficiency in one activity is terribly destructive to another-next received the thrust of Mr. Kingley's telling comment. It was death and injury in the streets to which he turned.

"There is the automobile," he said, "an enormously efficient machine. In trying to get out of it its full efficiency the driver neglects human life. The loss of and injury to life thus caused may be charged up to 'efficiency' for speed and a brutal disregard of people's rights. The laws are not as they ought to be, and those we have are not enforced as they ought to be.

"The goal of the average man seems to be success, not safety, and success as a goal is a fine thing, but in the eagerness of our quest we strike right and left; we charge, and if in this process we have stricken somebody down or trampled on somebody or gravely crippled ourselves, we find it out usually when it is too late. Through haste, through following the fighting instinct, through utter concentration of our work, we probably destroy unintentionally and needlessly more value in the process of production than we restore afterward by all our private and public charities."R. E. Turpin in New York World.

By George P. West.

Washington.-Every charge brought against the United States Steel Corporation by the striking iron miners of northern Minnesota is sustained in a report just submitted to Governor Burnquist by his own State Labor Commissioner.

Miners have been exploited by the contract system, cheated, oppressed, forced to give bribes to their mine captains, arrested without warrants, given unfair trials, and subjected to "serious injustices" at the hands of the mine guards and police. This is the substance of the findings.

Mine guards employed by the company, deputized by Sheriff Meining without investigation, and supported by Governor Burnquist, are to blame for all disorder. The report says:

"We are not entirely in sympathy with the belief that vigorous measures were necessary to maintain peace and safety in this strike. We are entirely satisfied that the mine guards have exceeded their legal rights and duties and invaded the citizenship rights of the strikers; that such violence as has occurred has been more chargeable to the mine guards and police than to the strikers; and that the public police departments have entirely exceeded the needs of the situation, and have perpetrated serious injustice upon the strikers.

"Numerous cases of arrest without warrant, and unfair trials in the justices' courts were brought to our attention. We will not go into these cases in detail, as the Federal men have promised a thorough investigation, but we are seriously impressed that the mine guards should have been compelled to remain on mine property or disarm when they left it.

"Every shooting affray that has occurred on the range has occurred on public property. In no case have the so-called riots occurred on or even near company property.

"The parades of the miners have been peaceful, the public police have had no trouble in maintaining order, and if the private mine guards had been compelled to remain on the company property we do not believe that there would ever have been any bloodshed on the range."

Governor Burnquist, whose telegram to Sheriff Meining was generally accepted as an order to go the limit in breaking the strike, is now on the defensive. In the face of reports from the Committee on Industrial Relations and from his own State Labor Department, he can no longer escape a reckoning for the part he has played in aiding the Steel Corporation to maintain industrial tyranny. After reading the report of his own State Labor Department he issued a statement saying:

"As an official I am interested only in the enforcement of the law. Personally I have had four men up there to investigate conditions and none of the four has ever reported to me any undue violence on the part of officials." Apparently Burnquist's investigators were carefully selected.

A. F. OF L. IN NEW HOME. Washington. Last Monday the American Federation of Labor began moving its offices to the new sevenstory A. F. L. building, at the corner of Massachusetts avenue and Ninth street, northwest. The building was dedicated July 4 last.