their dispute by law and equity and not by the methods of barbarism.

Government does this in Canada; if not perfectly, at least far better than we. They have in our neighbor country what is called the Lemieux act, under which employer and employed are compelled to arbitrate their differences, and are severely punished if they use violence before the board of administrators has rendered its verdict. During the five years which have elapsed since this measure went into effect ninety-three cases of disagreement out of one hundred and ten have been amicably settled.

The Erdman act in the United States is applicable only to a small portion of labor troubles. The National Civic Federation has done much good. But what is needed is a vigorous, efficient government.

Government has abdicated its function. It is honeycombed by the group spirit, as George B. Hugo says. It leaves combinations of capital on the one hand and of laborers on the other, to manage affairs. In our ignorant fear of paternalism we are like to return to savagery.

In every strike there is a third factor, the public, whose welfare should come first. A street railway does not exist for its owners, nor for its workmen; first of all it exists for the people.

Ordinarily I am a violent adherent to the cause of labor, but one thing I never could understand,

and that is why in the world the strikers always cry out against the presence of the police or the militia. I should think the laborers would be the first to demand every security for law and order. They certainly have nothing to hope for in chaos and riot, for it is they who get beaten up, shot down, and maltreated generally. Whoever heard of a capitalist being hurt in a free fight, except by accident?

If I were czar of the United States, and if there were a strike, I should order out the soldiers at once, capture the labor-union leaders and the company directors, imprison them, and tell them they could go free when they had come to some practical agreement which would protect the public, and not till then. And I would not allow them to Pankhurst me, either.

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH GOVERN

MENT BUSINESS?

The matter with it is that it is not Business. It is Politics.

The men who are elected to run the Government are not chosen as representatives of the United States. They are representatives of Tie Siding and Podunk, respectively. They hold office not to take care of this country, but to take care of their fences at home.

One of the most vicious results of partisan politics is the fact that this country has no National Budget. That is, Congress goes ahead and spends money without any clear idea of the amount they have to spend and the relation which the various expenditures bear to each other.

Joseph W. Harriman, President of the Harriman National Bank, in a recent article in “The Magazine of Wall Street," points out pithily exactly what the trouble is.

He says that in the British Parliament the Chancellor of the Exchequer submits a written budget which contains an estimate of the Government's entire expenditures for the coming year, including appropriations, salaries, and other disbursements. Everyone can perceive exactly what is going to be spent and where the money will be spent, and everyone is free to criticize and suggest. The whole procedure is an open book.

The Government of the United States, on the contrary, follows the old obsolete guessing method of appropriation. Expenditures are based on the demands of the heads of different departments, often exaggerated, never correlated, and resulting consequently in waste and extravagance.

The Government is now in trade, says Mr. Harriman, and it ought to observe business practices. No business house could last very long going it blind, as the United States does. One of the vicious by-products of the war is the habit we have acquired of spending money easily for public purposes. That habit we must break, or it will land us upon rocks that will break us.

Both political parties have promised a budget system. Congress will probably do nothing unless forced by public opinion, because the liveliest influences that bear on Congress are partisan ambitions and the pork-barrel.

The force that will make Congress change its methods must come from the people. Every Liberty-Bond owner now has an interest in the business concern known as the United States, and ought to make that concern do business on business principles.

People who buy stock in the United States Steel Corporation are given complete and detailed statements of what the company is doing. And it would be just as easy for the United States of America to form a budget system that will inform the investors and tax-payers of their Government exactly what becomes of their money.

This is a matter that every businessman, and particularly every banker, in the United States should lay to heart, and he should use what influence he has upon his Congressman to induce our National Legislature to do its plain, simple, obvious duty.