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COURTING THE COURT'S CRITICS

new world order an essential of success. The price asked for it by President Harding is not a large one. Europe will be forced into a defensive position by the offer just as the objectionist elements within the ranks of the Republican party have been."

The President has chosen the wisest and safest course, thinks the Charleston (W. Va.) Daily Mail (Rep.), as does also the Democratic Atlanta Constitution. There are times when a more compelling leadership is called for, but in view of present American sentiment toward the League and the Court, the New York Tribune (Rep.) is convinced "that the country is in no mood to be pushed into a decision by heroic tactics." Mr. Harding's "simple candid utterances" are more useful than would be any "brilliant campaign designed to force any particular plan down the throat of the American people or the United States Senate." We are reminded that Mr. Harding "did not submit the original Hughes reservations as the last word upon the subject. He now suggests other possibilities." In The Tribune's opinion:

I'VE GOT THE
IRRECONCILABLES
BUT I'VE LOST THE
DEMOCRATS

TOOPING TO CONQUER has not been the way recent Presidents have chosen to get things done, reminiscent editors remark. Roosevelt believed in speaking softly but carrying a "Big Stick," and the opponents of the Wilson policies were often given to understand that in the opinion of right-minded citizens they stood considerably lower than the angels. But when President Harding took the field against the foes of the World Court in his St. Louis speech, "he exhibited no impatience with them, shook no 'big stick' in their faces, nor did he by word or gesture challenge them to come and do their worst." So the New Haven Journal-Courier notes, while the New York Journal of Commerce calls attention to the President's explicit assertions "that he does not intend to force his proposal through Congress by the use of special arts of legislative manipulation or Executive pressure." The President says he will not try "to coerce the Senate" or to impose his will upon anybody, that he is "interested in harmonizing opposing elements," and "more anxious to effect our helpful commitment to the Court" than "to score a victory for Executive insistence." Thus he is willing to concede much to the isolationist views of the World Court opponents, and tho critics assert that by this gentleness he has killed the Court as far as this country is concerned, many of his friends believe he has chosen wisely and that in this instance the still small voice of the harmonizer will accomplish more than the strident tones so often used by such executives as Jackson, Cleveland, Roosevelt and Wilson. For instance,

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-Cassel in the New York Evening World.

as the Adrian (Michigan) Telegram (Ind.) speaks for that Middle Western public to which Mr. Harding has been appealing, "instead of taking the field with weapons designed to hammer the Republican irreconcilables into submission, the President has sugared the pill he asked them to have. It is finesse instead of combat, the compliance of a doctor, rather than the defiance of a crusader." The effectiveness of the President's policy is seen in the fact that Senator Borah is quoted as having come round to the President's policy, saying: "I understand the President's position to be that the League is dead and the Court should be divorced from it. With that position I am in hearty accord." Continues The Telegram:

"If the rest of the opposition follows his lead and comes trooping back into camp the President must be credited with a conspicuous political achievement. He will take into the 1924 campaign a Republican party united on a definite foreign policy. Even if a considerable number of the objectionist leaders who have been represented by Chairman Adams of the National Committee continue to hold out, their position has been notably weakened. Camouflage is no longer possible since the President has met them on the very basis of their previous objections."

And we are told that the President's new position is as strong internationally as it is within the party:

"Europe has made it plain by every possible means of international conversation that she considers our participation in the

"To the vast majority of Senators the President's words will make an incontrovertible appeal. His attitude is utterly free from egoism or unfair partizanship. He approaches the Senate with a full and generous recognition of its important power over treaties. He welcomes reservations which will perfect American participation in the Court. He suggests a possible course by which the Court might be rendered even more independent of the League than it is by making it self-perpetuating."

That the President's policy is likely to win over both the Senate and public opinion is

readily admitted by a host of newspapers, including Republican journals like the Albany Knickerbocker Press, Buffalo News, Buffalo Express, Philadelphia Inquirer, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Chicago Evening Post, Omaha Bee, St. Paul Dispatch, and Milwaukee Sentinel. His method wins applause from the Democratic Macon Telegraph and Nashville Banner; it also seems wise to representative independent dailies like the Washington Star, Providence Bulletin, Rochester Herald, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Duluth Herald, and San Francisco Bulletin.

For participation by the United States in the Permanent Court of International Justice, two conditions may be considered indispensable, said President Harding in his St. Louis speech of June 21

"First, that the tribunal be so constituted as to appear and to be, in theory and in practise, in form and in substance, beyond the shadow of doubt, a world court and not a League court. "Second, that the United States shall occupy a plane of perfect equality with every other Power."

Now "there admittedly is a League connection with the World Court," and altho President Harding believes "we could adhere to the Court protocol with becoming reservation and be free from every possible obligation to the League," he would "frankly prefer the Court's complete independence of the League." For

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"In the face of the overwhelming verdict of 1920 the issue of the League of Nations is as dead as slavery. Is it not the part of wisdom and common sense to let it rest in the deep grave to which it has been consigned and turn our thoughts to living things?"

While giving hearty praise to the Court as at present constituted, the President asks, "Why not proceed in the belief that it may be made self-perpetuating?"

"This could be done in one of two ways: (1) by empowering the Court itself to fill any vacancy arising from the death of a member, or retirement for whatever cause, without interposition from any other body; or (2) by continuing the existing authority of the Permanent Court of Arbitration to nominate and by transferring the power to elect from the Council and Assembly of the League to the remaining members of the Court of Justice."

"Since any adherence must be attended by reservations," President Harding is "willing to give consideration to our differences at home and thereby remove every threatening obstacle worth considering so we may go whole-heartedly to the world with an authorized tender of support."

Despite the eloquent appeal for peaceful settlement of international disputes, which wins high praise even from some of the President's political foes, it seems to many editors that in his willingness to compromise the President is not making a choice of weapons, but is retreating from the battle-field. The St. Louis Star (Ind.), in the city where the speech was delivered, contrasts the President's methods with those of Roosevelt and Wilson. It sees him strengthening the hands of his opponents and weakening the morale of his supporters. That the President has simply surrendered to the enemies of the World Court, is the assertion made in one form or another by such representative journals as the Providence News (Ind.), New York World (Dem.), Brooklyn Eagle (Dem.), Jersey City Journal (Rep.), Philadelphia North-American (Rep.), Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch (Dem.), Louisville Courier-Journal (Dem.), Birmingham Age-Herald (Dem.), Columbia State (Dem.), Knoxville Sentinel (Dem.), Dayton News (Dem.), Milwaukee Journal (Ind.), and Dallas News (Dem.).

In the first place, the Philadelphia Public Ledger (Ind.) does not believe that the President has really "lessened the 'Bitter Enders' bitterness. They are bound to hail this as a sign of

weakness and wavering, as evidence that internal war and threats in his own party are whittling away the President's determination." And then, President Harding's plan for completely separating the Court from the League will, according to the Louisville Post (Ind.), "alienate all those who believe in the great value of the League of Nations." The Asheville Times (Dem.) points out that "Mr. Harding will be hard prest to obtain a two-thirds majority in the Senate for his new plan," for "he has parted company with the Democrats by making a party issue out of the World Court question. He has said to them, in effect, that he does not care for their support." And then

"Even if the President is able to jam his new plan through the Senate and such a successful issue for his project is hardly probable there is no assurance that the nations which are now members of the International Court will accept the amendments which he makes conditions precedent to American adhesion. On the other hand, there is strong reason for assuming that the foreign powers will resent the suggestion that they should change the method of electing judges just to suit the wishes of some finicky Irreconcilables."

The New York Evening Post asks us to "imagine the Senate discussing the project of a self-perpetuating court, a court electing its own judges, a super-sovereignty court in a sense that the enemies of the League of Nations never have called the League super-sovereignty." The idea of a self-perpetuating court is attacked as un-American, unworkable, and unseemly by newspapers of such varying antecedents as The Wall Street Journal, Springfield Republican (Ind.), Philadelphia Record (Dem.), Atlanta Journal (Dem.), St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Ind.), and Milwaukee Leader (Socialist).

Finally, there is not a little proof that some irreconcilable opposition survives in spite of the President's conciliatory attitude. The Chicago Tribune (Rep.) simply does not believe the Republican party "will follow Mr. Harding into the World Court." Mr. Munsey's New York Herald (Rep.), quite unconvinced by the Harding arguments, declares it to be obvious "that in the American mind the present court, no matter what tinkering might be done with the League constitution, would still be the League Court; still be inevitably associated with a League which the United States, by a majority of seven million votes, refused to enter."

THE NEW HARD-COAL WAGE DEMANDS

Swin

EVENTEEN DOLLARS A TON for anthracite next winter! This, in the belief of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, in the hard-coal State, is what the public will be called upon to pay "if, in a moment of generosity, the operators were to grant without argument all the formal demands which were adopted by the anthracite miners' convention at Scranton on June 29," and which have been under consideration between the operators and miners at Atlantic City during the past few days. The chief demands were for a 20 per cent. increase in the contract wage scale; an increase of $2 a day for all men paid by the day, with time and a half for overtime and double time for Sunday work; and a two-year contract on this basis. "Which puts the anthracite miners in the same class with the bricklayer barons," notes the New York Journal of Commerce. Moreover, declares this business daily, "both are equally arrogant because they are under the impression that the public is helpless." But "no one supposes for a moment that the operators will, or can afford to grant such demands offhand," asserts the Coal Age, a New York trade organ.

The Post presumes that "the anthracite fields are as fertile in such chicanery as the soft-coal districts."

What the Government will do "to stop the coal operators and their allied agencies from boosting the price of the fivemonths' supply of anthracite now on hand, which has been mined under normal conditions," is the question that interests the Providence News. "What the coal-consuming public would like to know is whether they will have to pay higher prices for coal if wages are advanced," remarks the New York Times. As we read in the Brooklyn Citizen:

"The American people believe the coal-miners are entitled to a little more than a living wage in view of the dangerous nature of their occupation. The operators contend that they are unable to comply with this demand without increasing the cost of coal to the consumer.

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The answer to this is that the labor cost is not the only reason for the present high price of coal. The freight charge by the railroads of a ton of coal from the mines to New York or Buffalo, as was recently pointed out by Sir Arthur Llewelyn, is $4 per ton, while Welsh anthracite is shipped to this country from Cardiff, Wales, to New York, for seven shillings sixpence a ton ($1.70). Because of the lower freight charges Sir Arthur was able to obtain contracts for 5,000,000 tons of Welsh anthracite."

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch recalls that in 1920 the miners received a 17 per cent. wage increase when they asked for 65 per cent., and in the same year, after striking for 20 per cent., they got nothing, but resumed work under the old increase. Their recent demands, in the opinion of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, are merely counter-propaganda against threats of the mine-owners of a general wage reduction at the end of the present agreement. But, according to the Newark News:

OUR OWN VOLCANO IS AGAIN THREATENING
-Harding in the Brooklyn Eagle.

The contract year in the anthracite industry formerly began April 1, but as a result of the settlement of last summer the year now begins September 1-or, as the Washington Star observes, "when the public need for anthracite is greatest." For this reason, thinks the Cleveland PlainDealer, "it is unfortunate that the President's Coal Commission did not make its report on the industry before the miners made their demands. It is scarcely possible that any recommendations now made by the Commission will affect the miners' demands. That is the position into which the public has been jockeyed." True, the Commission virtually served notice on the miners before the convention that the Government expected the miners to take "no action that would precipitate a strike," but, as one editor reminds us, "the Commission has no authority."

In his Cheyenne speech, President Harding advised everybody who could buy coal now to do so. Until last year, writes George Nox McCain in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, "it had been an annual custom of the anthracite trade to make a reduction of fifty cents a ton on all coal purchased in April, with an increase in price of ten cents per ton each month until the first of September. That practise was abandoned last year on account of the strike, and it was not put into effect last spring." In this way, maintains John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers, the coal-consuming public has been gouged to the extent of from $8,000,000 to $10,000,000-"enough to compensate the operators for all losses incurred during the strike." Moreover, notes the Washington Post, "Attorney-General Daugherty, who is in a position to know what he is talking about, declares that many of the apparent controversies between coalminers and operators were actually concocted to frighten the public into purchasing fuel at high prices." And while the Daugherty statement concerned the bituminous industry,

"This year's demands are more moderate in relation to conditions other than wages, particularly in ignoring the six-hourday provision of previous years' attempted exactions, and likewise the demand for the check-off provision, which is a feature of soft-coal working contracts, whereby the employer deducts the worker's union dues and assessments from the pay-checks and turns the deductions over to the union. . .

"What will be the outcome can not be foretold. The Coal Commission has warned the Mine Workers that no strike can be tolerated, but it has no power to prevent one. The operators know that the public will revolt against costlier coal." With this statement the Philadelphia Public Ledger heartily agrees. As this paper declares:

"The public wants cheaper coal, and particularly an uninterrupted supply of coal. It is tired of riots, strikes, suspensions, dirty coal and pyramiding prices. It is weary of shortages, investigations and conferences. It is worn out by uncertain deliveries, and exasperated by annual and perennial threats that it is to be frozen into its grave by the stubbornness of one side or both sides in an unending quarrel.

"In past mine conflicts public sentiment has lacked the facts upon which to form itself. In the tides of propaganda from miner and operator it has been uncertain and confused. This year the facts gathered by the Coal Commission, a nonpartizan body, will be available. Given the facts, public opinion will have more driving punch and hitting power. It can shape quicker, move faster, and hit harder."

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order to set up a group of railroad families all about equally prosperous and self-supporting. But the law permitting these mergers has been in force two years and the adoption of any comprehensive consolidation scheme is still far off. In the meantime we find the New York Central raising its dividend rate to 7 per cent., while the Chicago, Peoria and St. Louis, bankrupt for nearly a decade, secures permission to tear up its rails and go out of business. To use the matrimonial figure again, it is very much as if all the prosperous young bachelors of a community refused to wed and the

girls all died of starvation. Of course, editors suggest, compulsory wedlock may not be the only way out. A paternal government may decide to assume the responsibility for supporting the whole community, or the girls may learn to earn their own living. There are farm

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they have on their side as opponents of radical legislation not only the influence of the President but of his entire Administration."

The head of our political system does not believe in government ownership of railroads because he does not believe that his political system has "reached the state of development when we could insure proper administration." He can not agree with those who would lower rates "without regard to railroad good fortune." But he does see reason, justice and promise in the

COMPULSORY MERGER OF RAILROADS

IS THIS WHAT MR. HARDING MEANS BY "NEXT STEP"?

ers who object to railroad consolidation because it suggests to them, in the words of one newspaper correspondent, "the formation of great trusts, and they are everlastingly down on trusts." What they want is lower freight rates, and they believe the roads ean make a good living even with lower rates. And important railroad terminals like St. Louis and Kansas City strenuously object to becoming "whistling stations" on new through routes. Others argue that the practical difficulties in the way of wholesale consolidation are insuperable.

But widely as opinions differ over the necessity and advisability of compulsory consolidation, the President's address is generally welcomed by the press as a sensible, conciliatory effort toward the solution of a most difficult problem. Mr. Harding's championship of consolidation "removed it over night," in the Syracuse Herald's phrase, "from the domain of purely academic discussion." On the financial page of the New York Times we read that nothing has developed in the railroad world in the past year, which put so much heart into the industry as a whole as did President Harding's Kansas City speech. Some leaders in the transportation field were actually heard to speak of it "as if it marked the dawn of a new era for the roads, one in which

-Pease in the Newark News.

program of "consolidating all the railroads into a small number of systems, the whole to be under rigorous government supervision, and the larger systems to be so constituted that the weaker and unprofitable lines would be able to lean upon the financing strength of the stronger

and profitable ones until the growth of the country makes them all earn a just return upon capital invested." The Railroad Act of 1920 made consolidation "permissive rather than mandatory," but the doubt arises, as President Harding notes, whether the roads can of their own volition "reconcile all the conflicting interests involved." "It is therefore being seriously proposed that the next step be to further amplify the provisions for consolidation so as to stimulate the consummation. It is my expectation that legislation to this end will be brought before Congress at the next session." We can

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not simply abandon railroads that do not pay, continued the President, "because people already dependent on the railroads would be ruined and because, further, in the not very distant future we should be compelled by the country's development to put them back, or their equivalent in capacity for service." The roads must be saved, and Mr. Harding sees "just three possible ways to do it": government operation of the weak roads, government operation of all the roads, or consolidation. The third program is preferred, because

"It is not unjust to the strong roads, for the prosperity of these, like the prosperity of all industry, depends on keeping the country as a whole prosperous. In this manner we will best help to insure the credit of the railroads, assist them to new capital for future expansion, and insure, for the future, against wildcat and competitive railroad construction. There is another particular reason which urges the early adoption of the largersystem plan. It would be a long step toward solving the problem of keeping the railroad equipment adequate."

Among railroad executives commenting on the President's speech, President Rea, of the Pennsylvania, thinks that railroad consolidations will go forward quickly enough when the lines are permitted to make fair profits. President Willard, of the

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Baltimore and Ohio, favors consolidation through the development of the existing 25 or 30 large railroad systems. Mr. Willard does not believe the President meant compulsory merging when he spoke about "stimulating" consolidations; "there are several ways of stimulating consolidation and none means coercion." In the opinion of The Railway Age, a reasonable policy of consolidation seems to be the only feasible way to get rid of the 'lame ducks' and render it practicable to secure a system of rate regulation that will enable most or all of the railways to earn reasonable net returns." Walker D. Hines, former Director-General of Railways, in an article in The Harvard Business Review (July), argues for consolidation on the score of economy of operation, of ease in adopting uniform policies, of simplification of regulation. Mr. Hines believes that the consolidation of the Hill linesthe Burlington, Great Northern, and Northern Pacificwhich is desired by those roads, would make an admirable first step in consolidation.

F

FRENCH SKY HORNETS WORRY BRITAIN OUR YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, and sixteen days after the greatest and most disastrous war in history, according to the precise calculation of the Boston Globe, "England and France, two nations who were sworn to brotherhood by mutual baptism of blood and suffering, are arming, one against the other." France has built up the most formidable air force in the world, and Great Britain now announces that she is to build a large defensive air fleet. "Russia is not far behind," declares the Providence Bulletin. So the "vicious circle" of armament and counter-armament-in the aircontinues. In fact, observes the Brooklyn Eagle, "Europe,

PRESENT AIR STRENGTH OF GREAT POWERS From an article by Ladislas d'Orcy in Aviation (New York, July 16)

Country

France.. United States. Great Britain.

hint

Italy.

Japan.

*Estimated.

President Harding's that an effort might be made to force consolidations is, according to the New York Journal of Commerce, "decidedly unpopular with railroad executives." President Byram, of the St. Paul, and Vice-President Howell, of the Erie, are quoted in the papers as agreeing that enforced consolidation would meet almost insuperable legal difficulties.

First Line
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President Alfred of the Pere Marquette insists that mandatory consolidation would be an infringement on civil rights, and he fears that even voluntary consolidation will lead to government ownership: "having only fifteen to twenty large systems with which to deal, instead of several hundred smaller ones, and with the simplified financial structure resulting from the merger, many obstacles would be removed that now stand in the way, and the transportation system of the company would become an easy prey to advocates of government ownership."

As a representive of rural dissent from the President's railroad doctrine, we quote The Herald of Washington Court House, Ohio, which says "the excessive rates being charged by the railroads at this time" are an indication of what would happen if they were allowed to unite into giant monopolistic systems.

Even editors admitting the wisdom of consolidation are quite aware of the practical difficulties in the way. The Washington correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce cites an expert transportation authority as estimating that a consolidation would take at least seven years, even if Congress were willing to expedite the mergers by the grant of the most drastic powers. We are just beginning to make a study of possible groupings, says The Journal of Commerce editorially, and "there are no indications whatever that it will be possible at best to settle upon groupings of existing companies that will give even reasonable assurance of successful operation for a good many months to come." And "when such groupings have once been decided upon, the task of consolidating the railroads is only half done":

"Without doubt the practical welding of the two or three hundred existing lines into a small group of compact systems will offer as many and as troublesome difficulties as the matter of deciding what the systems ought to be is already doing."

with half a million more men under arms than there were in 1913, despite the compulsory reduction of 696,135 in the standing armies of Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria, seems to be back where it started in 1914." This, in the opinion of the Providence News, is nothing less than a reflection on the League of Nations. "England, with due reverence for the League as a force for world peace, places her first trust in a fighting air force equal to that of France," pointedly observes this paper.

The Washington Conference of 1921, we are reminded by the Louisville Courier-Journal, "did nothing regarding the limitation of air forces, even tho the world was convinced that the next war would be fought in the air. And what avails reduction in battle-ship construction programs if such reduction be followed by an increase in the aircraft construction program?" Continues this paper:

"France's militaristic policy provokes Britain's program. It is not forgotten that France has not yet even ratified the Washington Treaty. Time that might have been passed in ratifying the pledge given by France's commissioners at Washington has been passed in strengthening France's military establishment, in projecting military expeditions into Germany and the Near East.

"For months France has been working feverishly to outbuild the rest of the world in aerial war craft. Of late its plans have looked to the control of the English Channel and the Mediterranean, the machines to have a flying radius of 1,000 miles. That England has been watching its next door neighbor is evidenced by the statement of Prime Minister Baldwin in the House of Commons that there would be an increase of thirtyfour air squadrons, giving England a total force of fifty-two squadrons for home defense."

In his statement on the proposed expansion of the British Air Force, Prime Minister Baldwin said:

"In addition to meeting the essential air-power requirements of the Navy, Army, Indian and overseas commitments, British air power must include a home-defense air force of sufficient strength adequately to prepare us against attack by the strongest air force within striking distance of this country.”

However, he added:

"In conformity with our obligation under the Covenant of the League of Nations, the British Government would gladly cooperate with other Governments in limiting the strength of air armaments on lines similar to the Treaty of Washington in the case of the Navy, and any such arrangement, it is needless to

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