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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030455160 XHE ORGANIC STATE: 1 PRINCIPLES REVISING THE CONSTITUTION * * * * * BY CORYDON FORD * * * Cornell University Library JK246 .F69 Organic state j» * J> THE ANSWER TO PROGRESS AND POVERTY LOOKING BACKWARD j* DESPAIRING DEMOCRACY j* * * PRICE ONE DOLLAR * * .* THE ORGANIC STATE m THE ORGANIC STATE: PRINCIPLES REVISING THE CONSTITUTION * BY CORYDON FORD -• FOR THE CABINET OF NEWS * ^ * 1897 Copyright Dy Cobydon Ford 1897 NOTE This discloses exchange at cost, reaching the tmiversal five-cent fare and telegram ; shows the drift of banker and merchant ; renders the ultimate form of -money ; foreshadows the fall of Wall Street; sees the decay of the pawn-shop ; deter- mines the future of investment and insurance ; de- ciphers taxation ; aligns the trusts ; translates art and ethic ; foretokens the Cabinet of Intelligence , elevates the church; points to the wire in the school; foretells the disappearance of the legislative body ; gives the development of the ballot and legislation ; solves the land question ; interprets reforms ; pre sages the revision of the Constitution ; erects the stable movement in democracy ; reflects a stronger government; announces the Whole; is the dream of letters down to the present time. N.B.— This book is lpaned to the recipi- ent, to.be either returned after reading or paid for at the regular price, $1.00. NEWS, Madison Square P. 0., Sew York. PREFACE The Report is a construction of the State out of ex- isting action. It offers an organic treatment of the various questions and isms that make the present mul- tiplicity of writings and adventures in reform. It should not be regarded as- the ideas of a writer or a book. It is a framed attempt to point out some things in front of us, and in its character is not different from a piece of mechanics. Its importance is that we have ar- rived at a stage of the social which reveals democracy in its essential and final forms. The Report is the evo- lution of the State. We recognize that the cause of the French Revolution was the radical conservatism which denied reforms to tortured France. The guillotine was the fact which blind perversity had stored. And it has been perceived that the chaos of that world pass and the insufficient results were owing to the lack of preparedness of idea. Recognizing these as the history of the convulsions of State, students have for some time sought a fore- cast which should give them at once the warrant for turning upon old conditions of government and furnish them the clear direction out. The study has been to find how the State was dissolving away old bulwarks and what foundations were laying. Letters, made cautious by its errors in the past, will only attempt utterance on deep-rooted change when such PREFACE. change has measurably shaped itself, leaving no doubt as to new forms and new organs of State. The in- quirer, " bruised by events, waits until there can be no doubt of the bottom lines. But the student, once cleared as to the new, seeks to convey to men. Amidst the conflicting publicity and confusion of the time the Organic Report is thought to carry the resolving view. On these lines as basic, inquiry may everywhere meet. In the long wait the great body of the people have turned away because no unfolding thing was offered them, no new measure of equality. Bitter words have been said against the science of government. The name of statesman has been a disrepute. The finger has pointed at the universities as receivers of doctrines for enslaving men. The books have been burned as har- boring industrial bondage. But it is thought that the Organic Report works as the closing of the breach be- tween letters and practice in democracy and brings the answer which the people have asked. New York, January, 1897. CHAPTERS Page I. The Organism as a Whole - - 1 II. The Post : Intelligence Carrier - 13 III. Transportation: Arterial Carriage 30 IV. Farming : Distribution : Manufactures - • 72 V. Exchange : Organic Monet - 111 VI- The Synthesm op Mind : Psychology as Motion 166 VII. Ethic : The Freedom ... SOI VIII. News : Letters ... . 233 IX. The Meet : The Gathering Place 279 X. Archi : Design - 323 XI. The Home : The Intimate Association i 350 XII. The School : The Apprenticeship 364 XIII. The Negative : The Ballot- 381 XIV. The Police : The Negative Administration 430 The reporter would note on behalf of the Cabinet that the reduction of News, Chapter VIII, was originally worked out in principle by Franklin Ford during his editorship of Bradstreefa. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Organism as a Whole : The Dialectic of Life Page The Organism is division of labor. — The part exists as an organ through helping all other parts as organs.— The meaning of the individual is as the highest development of specific action. — The organism in its development builds toward a centralized intelligence as consciousness. The interchange of life as commerce has its law in motion. Hegel and Caird brought up to terms of motion. Philosophy is clarified as the practice of the sensorium in life ; it passes into politics, bringing men to consciousness of the laws of democracy. — A social system is an organism of individuals bound together as parts, separate but dependent. — Democracy, the high- est organism which we know, has its individual organs in the Classes, such as Mails, Transportation, etc. — The cerebrum of democracy, as the centralization of in- telligence, is the Organic Letters, of which Philosophy is a central figure. — Property is determined as use within the public demands upon it. Private holdings can only exist under the conditions which forward the public in- terest. Value in a thing is determined by public use. The private holding in conflict with the public good is the destruction of property. — Ethic is the freer action of the individual attained through organization as division of labor in life ; it is one with morality seen as ordered action. Ethic is that equation in life which has some- thing to trade ,1 CHAPTER II The Post : Intelligence Carrier The post office is the medium of the circulation of intelli- gence, the nerve of the State. — Intelligence proper is the instant communication. Its medium in the fuller de- velopment of the State is the electric wire. — The post office is retarded in its organization by the private in- xii CONTENTS Page vestment in the telegraph and telephone, and by the system of Presidential appointment which does not allow the Post Class to elect its own heads of service from postmaster-general down. — The post office is ad- vanced in organization, working under a single compre- hensive head and in much responsive to the demands of the State. It has the impetus to full development. — Advance waits on government ownership of telegraph and telephone. The public consciousness respecting this. — The attitude of publicity is divided respecting the out movement. It holds tenaciously to old ideas and is compelled by its counting-room. It confuses ad- vance by declaring that increase of office-holding will perpetuate in power the incumbent party. This amounts to a declaration that government by party organization is in decay. The new organs of govern- ment are the Classes. — The primary contract. In line with the growing consciousness the legislative bodies are regulating charges. At stake is the right of the people to demand service at cost. The courts are halt- ing in their decisions, but show a tendency to go over to the organic view. — The history of the post office reveals its uniform development toward centraliza- tion. — Property in the postal function is owned by the Whole, "but in charge of the Post Class, as operative through it. — The Post Class has its control by the Whole through its dependence upon the other Classes. — The reality of the postage stamp is to simplify book-keeping. — The ethic of the post office is the commercial freedom which it supplies the State. — Competition. Reduces to normal under normal exchange. Pound to be the strife for being, or place. Competition against the ideal. . 13 CHAPTER III Transportation : Arterial Carriage The railroads make the arterial channels of democracy. — The management shaping its organization through the Presidents' Joint Traffic Association. — The body of the service organizing through the different labor Unions. Their tendency to amalgamation. — At the Chicago strike in '94 the feudal interest turns to bay and the insect government at Washington dismisses its just minister. The defense of the individualistic doctrine. It is thought to indict a principle. The extreme of anarchy is the gatling gun of an unprincipled court and a shal- low administration. — Through an unequal circulation certain parts of the organism are plethoric while others CONTENTS xiii Page suffer depletion and miasma. — The unequtri rate in Transportation impoverishes sections of the State and overbuilds other sections. — Economic adjustment in the State waits upon a uniform rate for each product of commerce, of which the equal rate in transportation is one. — A single uniform rate for an average ride, and for an average haul. Conservative estimate makes the passenger rate Five Cents for any distance. — Govern- ment ownership of railroads is the public outleading in organization of the Transportation Class. — The news- paper opposes State control because the private inter- est is threatened. It has taken up the defense of the fraudulent bonds. The baron has but the semblance of freedom ; his liberty waits upon his organization under the public control. The accounting with the owner of a hundred vassals. — The convulsion of the State in the momentary clogging of its circulation in Chicago in '94. An unfelt pulse and a white face. The nearness of the subjection of the individual by the whole. The new trial by jury is arbitration. The revision of the Con- stitution. — The exigency of jurisprudence on the discov- ery of new organs of government, making the warrant for advance in adjudication. Industrial disorders to find their settlement within the Class. — The Class regulates its internal economy on the basis of a contract with the public. —Phrase as displacing ethic. — Public conscious- ness of disorder growing 30 CHAPTER IV Farming : Distribution : Manufactures The product of the soil in its movement to the consumer divides into the two channels, food and textiles. — The organization of food and textiles has grown from the home-made commodity to the high specialization and organization of the modern trade. The tendency is toward full organization, in farming, manufacture, and distribution. — These three phases of the movement of food and textiles have their character in the demand working down through distribution and manufacture to the soil. — The present department store is the tendency of distribution to organize the whole mercantile business under one head with a single distributive station for each locality. On one side it takes over the wholesaler and on the other side the retailer. The extent to which this has now progressed. — The Distributor General would be some man now organizing a department store or a big wholesale house.— The distributive business is to know xiv CONTENTS Page people's wants and how to supply them — The manufac- tures of food and textiles organize on separate lines. — Food organizes as the business of cooking. Its Food General is the master cook. Ultimately everything coming to the table is under the inspection of first-class cooks. — Textiles organize as the made-up dress. This means dress for the person and dress for the house. The tailor and upholsterer are brought together under one head. Dress. The Dress General is supplied in some organizing merchant-tailor. — The chains of restaurants now rising show the tendency of the kitchen to organize. — Great advance in the grading of food and fabrics, with corresponding economics. — Manufactures tend to locate at more economic points. — The crowding of the city gives place to light and air. — Examples of waste in the disorganic manufactures and distribution. — The Farming Class is bound together in one great whole through the common action of production from the soil. Its deficient organization is due to lack of ready com- munication among the farmers as a body. The growth of communication and full publicity tend to develop union of idea. Tno farmers to be united on some project of common interest. — The freedom of the soil through organization adds its part to the ethic of life. — The farmer possesses his land as use. He is that much of the State as action. His title is absolute because the title of the State is absolute 72 CHAPTER V Exchange : Organic Money Exchange is the trading of equal work by individuals in sup- port of each other. All functions equalize through the equal need of the whole for every part. This equalizes individuals. Its reduction to practice is the equalizing of the hours and pay of labor. The exchange is in terms of production at cost as determined by the actual labor entering into the commodity. — The freedom of men is in the equalizing of labor and its exchange at cost. The view that one man's labor is more valuable than another's is a sentimentality. An artist cannot estimate the value of his work by looking upon his own hand. All life is involved in any single production. — Exchange at cost regulates consumption. — The growth of the world's me- dium of exchange has been toward the public registration of the transaction. It is gradually pushing up with the general advance in the State. The margin of profit is confiscation. — The Banking Class is the machine of CONTENTS xv Page the registration of exchange. Its instrument is the Bill of Exchange, to which all forms of money reduce. — Banks organize on the accuracy of the Bill of Exchange. The meaning of credit and discount so many phases of the exchange bill. — Exchange is organizing through the Na- tional Bank system. The Clearing House is the machin- ery of centralization. The New York Clearing House ia the head of the system, the solar plexus of democracy. The National Treasury displaced. The banks border- ing the advance. — The nature of the organic money as revealed in the everyday* transaction is an equating of trade through the bank check. The principle throws out the private ownership. — The organic money provides the absolute record of exchange. It is the advance of the bank check. It is comprehended in a system of triple register by stamps. Like the postman, the exchange car- . rier collects his checks from the drop-boxes. The hourly balance-sheet of democracy. — Wall Street as the feudal Bourse is the obstruction of industry. The cataclasm ahead. — The Clearing House a menace to the watered shares. The banks to see labor as collateral. The pub- lic consciousness as preparation of the advance is turn- ing against the present exchange. A rising toward the truthful register. — Property in the Exchange Class is in terms of the stamp movement. — The preacher of economics with the itch of doctrine splits his image. Pursued by the ethic of life Ill CHAPTER VI The Synthesis of Mind : Psychology as Motion Psychology is growing toward simplified expression. The advance, in common with other sciences, is toward the language of motion. — Motion is realized as the method of the organism. It is grasped through division of labor as principle. The definition of motion rendered as an equilibrium between dual limits. This is expression of division of labor between diversity and unity. — The science of psychology has developed so far that it can be brought under the expression of the system as motion. The varied Sensations make the diversity. Will is the unity. As the completed revolution of mind, Will is the supreme sensation. — The practical use which this analy- sis makes in life. Man able to read his sensations with the same understanding that he reads the stars.— The stability of the movement is competent sense relation of things. Relation is what things do in common. A water-tight joint ia the relation of a cork and a bottle. — xvi CONTENTS Page Emotion is disturbed motion. It is the lesion of sense. — Subject and object are respectively the phases of diver- sity and unity in the movement. Subject is the subjec- tion of sense to an object, or purpose. — Spiritual is the sense integrate as action. The over-soul is the under- crust of a pie. — The vulgar revealed as the disconnected or partial sense. — Meaning is breadth of movement re- duced to unity. The intelligent mind is the mobile mind. — Belief is doing. — Humor is the rapidity of the mental movement. — Pathos is the moveless mind, the unfriended sense. — Poetry appears as the ensemble of the mental movement. — Love is the intenser relationship, the gravity of the mental movement. — Hate is referable to the impulse of mind toward order. — Revenge. — Space is the essential expression of the movement. — Science and Philosophy. — Logic. — Morality. — Cause and ef- fect. — Ethic advanced through the simpler reporting of mind. Mind left to the guardianship of its own law. — The chart of the mental movement. . . . 166 CHAPTER VII Ethic : The Freedom This field of knowledge is the demand of men to know how far life restricts them. News has to answer the question. Much waste in the writings on the subject. Countless books. The man of letters at last emerges with the simple page. — Ethic is the freedom, or enlargement, of life through Commerce. — Freedom of part of life neces- sitates the freedom of all. Mind cannot be free without its contact is freed ; and life external is dependent upon mind for its enlargement. Democracy is the organiza- tion as freedom of this mutual interchange of life.— Joint division of labor between mind and matter makes the various machines which go to free action. Life freed through all the inventions of men. — The notion of ethic has its meaning in its use by man. It is the call- ing up of the conditions of his freedom. He uses it as formula to know that he is free. — Man applies the for- mula to any particulars of his contact so that he may see his freedom in it. The ethical meaning of the news- report in life as measured by the formula. The way, the truth, and the life. — The charity concept. A make- shift for freedom. — The moulting feather. — Freedom is a wooden peg. — A carpenter's straight-edge aligns with commerce. — A Berkshire pig and good music. — The full stomach and the subtle stirring of the cat. — Saved by grace. The sacred. — Morality is bargain- making. — CONTENTS xvii Page Poetry in flux of life. — A truthful picture and days of battle. — The vigil by a thread ; the burning bush-. — The part of man in his own creation. Selfishness the device of freedom. Heroism. The slavery of lost days. The bondage of little. Happiness; the holy man. — Duty and its spelling. — The culture of trade. — Refined by fire. A few parcels of ethic 301 CHAPTER VIII News : Lettebs News is the business of explaining life in the aspect of order. The absolute news about a thing is its use in the State. News may neither add to nor take away. Illustrations of the truthful report. A bottle of mucilage. The man of leisure. The racing circuit. The burning which is life. Twice two is three in spelling. The spirit and the flesh. — News organizes primarily through division of labor in the report. Lack of this results in the weak re- port. The public demand enforces the principle. The papers in part conscious of the fundamental method. — The Cabinet of Intelligence is the head of the News Class. Composed of men having technical knowledge of the different industries in the State. The Cabinet re- vealed in any outleading utterance. Publicity sounded for indications of the Cabinet. The political conven- tions of '96 furnish the conditions. The Cabinet discov- ered in a New York paper. The body of the loyal press lines up with the Cabinet, showing the control of the machine of . news by the center. The slave-holding power creates a schism in the Cabinet. The schism as minority report. The method of the organic News and its Cabinet measured by the method of the Judiciary and the Supreme Court. — The incomplete report retards action in the State. The conflicts of the people trace- able to the divided News. It should be the attitude of News to get action in the State. Action the test of truth. — The integrity of the Cabinet of Intelligence. Responsibility, in the necessity of answering for action, creates faithfulness in men. The Cabinet less influenced by local prejudice.— The news moves from a given Re- gion, like Michigan, to the head of this Region, like De- troit. News of wider interest is dissected and passed on to the National, or Cabinet, center, like New York. — The lesser unit of the news movement corresponds to the county. This news moves to its head at an office corre- sponding to the present county newspaper. News of in- terest beyond the county is dissected and sent on to the xviii CONTENTS Page head of the Region.— The local newsgatherer of the or- ganic News answers to the present local correspond- ent—News which goes to the center at New York from the different Regional heads is news of universal interest. It is made up as General News at New York and published simultaneously as The News-Book at all the Regional centers of democracy.— News which is stopped at the Regional head is made up and sent out to the Region in the print called The Region.— News stopped at the county head is sent out over the county as the more local news in the publication called The Town. The advertisement. — The country is bulletined simultaneously on all news through the news ticker. — Class News is a dissection of news of special interest to the Class. — The Bureau of Inquiry. The Individual News. — Sensation. — All the various writers and publish- ers come under the one organization of News — The edi- torial a lesion in the news report. The last ditch of authority, — The movement is away from the arbitrary censorship in Letters. — News pushed toward recognition of its own principles. It has in its action abrogated private property. — The mechanical mind to advance News. The carpenter-and-joiner of fact. — The news- paper without base of revenue. Blackmailing right and left. Taxing the private intelligence. Likely to be driven into a mammoth combination for self preserva- tion, making the Intelligence Trust. The one pipe-line to the sea. — The newspaper restricted in its ethic through its own disordered ideas and the disorderly elements crowding upon it. — News at cost 233 CHAPTER IX The Meet : The Gathering Place Men divided in their lives. The less action the more religion. The political economist and the preacher discovered in adultery of goods. The lesion in letters as institution has been between the Church on one side and the nom- inal letters on the other. The confusion has been in proportion to this lesion. The Church built upon the unrealities of men. The priest took advantage of man's emotion and plied a trade upon it. — The false letters of the Church not having truth to sell traded in symbols. The symbol any external shape for putting off man's question. Men paid tithes for graven images. The man of letters with the slow truth had to compete against the false letters with its ready symbol. The hard road and the long wait for place. The crucifixion. The early CONTENTS xix man of letters contending with the confusion of the sym- bol. The spires point away from life for the meaning of things. — The principle of publicity in the brooding of idea through interchange of experience among men. The man of letters gets his material and his art through contact with action. The miracle of the loaves and fishes. — The symbolic ministry of the elements. Sen- sualizing Christ's utterance. The miracle of the turn- ing of water into wine. The symbolic watchers of the clouds fail the good. The experience of the people builded against the symbol. Immutable laws the un- failing guardianship and fatherhood. — The ghost in the storm of State. A crisis of the world prepared for the mystic in the French Revolution. A man of tenets and phrases takes the helm of State. The wild nightmare which writes mysticism out of affairs. Mr. Morley casts up the account with the mystic. " We will ex- plain them." — The guardian of morals with a new mouthpiece. Anathema gone over to the daily press. The preacher under the charge of pilfering from the wicked. Life has gone by the pulpit. The preacher abdicates everything but a contradiction. — The last stand of the priest is as the interpreter of the spiritual insight. The reduction to logic of the "spiritual need." The " religious longing " of man is the need of fuller being. Man's being develops as the mental expression of ordered life. The discoveries of science have builded into man's being. The last realization of man's longing is supplied in his contact with the organized State. Man's longing and his fears allayed in his encompass- ment by universal order and law. The church has passed into democracy. — The Meet in life. The com- munion of men. The hymn. The bulletin-board the central function of the Meet. The platform in life. The exposition. The stage. Wagner and Beethoven. The yacht and horse, The anthem and the oyster bar. — Property at the Meet an aggregation of functions, each taxing for its own service.— The temple of the people. Line and color melt into human lives. The doors never locked 279 CHAPTER X Architecture : Design Architecture has its reality in design in form and color of every kind. Its central aspect is the business of house-building, or shelter. It reaches out on one side to landscape gardening and the plans of a town ; on the xx CONTENTS Page the Whole. Architecture answers to every demand for shelter, from the little cottage and its garden to the large public building. Men own their homes in abso- lute and cannot be displaced. The favorite chair. . 323 CHAPTER XI The Home : The Intimate Association The home is the commerce of companionship. Men and women trade in affection as in other things. — Love re- alizes itself as exchange of action between parties to a companionship. We realize affection by doing for the object of love and receiving its reaction, We love inan- imate things within the same law of mutual action and reaction. A wrecked engine is the broken affection of an engineer. The law in the love of neighbor. The law in patriotism. We love a companion having the attri- bute of mentality and sex as conditions possessing fuller reaction. — The State does not recognize the home as reproduction alone. Men and women do not marry sexual organs. — The action of the State defines the home as the fuller companionship. The instrument of marriage is safeguard to companionship. Divorce is logically the separation of parties not having relation. — The one abode is the economic exchange of companion- Ship. The drawn curtain. Seclusion is equated with action. The home saved from exaggeration. — The child is division of labor with the State and the home. The child from birth receives its pay for work per- formed; financially independent of parents. — The par- ent and the State. Being is summed up in the life occupation. Sex but a single contribution to the fuller conditions of man's and woman's being. A child is not born of sex.— The lie of the home. Owned for life in concubinage. Coerced in love. Ruined. The State formally divorces where the divorce exists in fact. The State cannot be a party to the lie, Present mutual obligation of husband and wife to support child. A friendship may succeed a mistake in love.— The ordering of the domestic service entering into the home. Care of house belongs to Architecture ; the kitchen to Pood; the nursery to School; laundry, heating and lighting, to their several Classes. The domestic ser- vice on an electric button. — The home frees State and individuals through its organization. The ethic of the sexual. A progress of the earth 350 CONTENTS xxi CHAPTER XII The School : The Apprenticeship Page Education is learning a trade that a person likes best. — The School organizes on the need of apprenticeship. The necessity of finding place. The tragedy of incertitude in life. The School groping for its principle. — The School systematizes apprenticeship. It puts children out to masters of trades and supervises them. — The ap- prenticeship promoted by collateral drill in reading, writ- ing, etc. This is a first step in apprenticeship. — The modern development of the School carries economic methods for the collateral drill. The School in its ad- vancing economy tends to go over to the modern ma- chinery of contact with life. The telegraph wire and the types the true test-book. Instead of reading about San Francisco in an unreal book the child may call up the town and be called up. The news ticker sends a stream of life through the schoolroom. A boy in New York watching a fire in Atlanta. All of life in a single in- cident of the wire, — geography, arithmetic, history, grammar. From Atlanta to Hamburg. — The classroom now approaches the wire in working-over the news- papers. In the tools of communication life is knocking at the door of the School. — The National center of ap- prenticeship. The Regional centers. — The Universities are comprehended in the organizations which are the different centers of the apprenticeship. As centers they universalize the School. The professional schools illus- trate a centralized grade of the collateral drill locating at the organic Universities. Apprentices go up to the centers for special study. Their contact is there univer- salized with the whole education movement. Direct contact with experts and the bulletin movement of the School. Alma mater. — The Trade School is an attempt to get over to realities. It is much playing apprentice. — A liberal education is to know the wider contact of one's own business. Life in the story of a horse-shoe nail. Logic is action. The reading out of the fetich of the Classics. — The School wasteful and the child in friction. A child loses two-thirds of his time. Where we learned geography. High schoolmen endeavoring to carry the School over to a practical status. The man of business speaks against the academic — The new conditions of the apprenticeship. The slave in a cellar has been trans- formed ... . 364 xxii CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII The Negative : The Ballot Page The Negative in democracy is the device for doing away with objectionable action. It is the reduction of legis- lation. — One aspect of legislation is the licensing of the Class to go forward in action on its own initiative. Voting to build a jail, a change of time on the railroad, etc., is the licensing of a Class to act. Allowing the Class to tax for its labor makes the effective license. All forms of pay for labor, including the private fee, are public taxation. Certain statutes have their reality in a license to the judiciary to act on its own motion. — The other aspect of legislation, its fuller reduction, is the forbidding, or negation, of any injurious action by the Class. This carries with it the license to whole- some action. If the people do not object to a thing, do not put a "No " upon it, they license it. A charter of a railroad company has its meaning as a negation of cer- tain action not specifically granted. Some of the statutes carry the logic of a negation to the judiciary to act in a contrary sense. It is the things that may be done wrong that the State guards against. The court injunction against injurious action a development of the Negative. Restrictions upon liquors, tobacco, etc., have their reality as legislative negation. — The present method of legislation obstructs the action of the Class and de- feats the will of the people. The post office obstructed in its development by the hampering legislation. The judiciary, medicine, education, etc., retarded. As though chemistry had to lobby its formulas through a legislative body. — The economic method of legislation as realizing the Negative. The extraneous legislative body a past function in the State. The Class is constituted a legislative body as to the needs of its own action. The machine of the Negative is the automatic voting battery. The license is simple acquiescence. The people only vote when they object. The drama of news in the re- turns of the Negative. Its lessened strain in contrast with the present election returns. The death of the "machine." The Negative registration carries auto- matic integrity. It is the reduction of the present vot- ing machine to a single key. The method of the regis- tration. The absolute check on the accuracy of the ballot. The official count. The permanent record of the count. The supervision of the machines. The Negative classifies into the local and general public and CONTENTS xxiii Page other side, to interior decoration. In the end it passes upon the shape and color of everything entering into construction. It touches the form and color of the bridge upon the highway ; designs the theatre, factory, power-house, car, steamboat, a hairbrush, the apparel. — Development in the shell of the building has been toward proportion in height, breadth, etc. In general it is low with broken faces. Windows and doors are wide. The general effect is enfolding by the ground. — The interior requires the low ceiling, the wide window and door, square hall, broad winding stairway, natural wood, built-in shelves, and seats in nooks. — External harmony in color requires agreement with the subdued surroundings ; pith green and russet fit the landscape and the sky. The architect taught by the weather- beaten house. Some touches of color may lighten a bleak place. — The interior harmony has no wide con- trast with the exterior. While a single room may have its distinct design, there must be a certain agreement in decoration between all the rooms as a whole. The wall melts into the ceiling. The variety of color in a given room must be modulations of one color. The window trimmings. The arrangement of the lights. Stationary furniture. Touches of color in contrast with the gen- eral tone. Some chairs that may be used. The pictures that may be hung. — Architecture centralizing. Firms in New York and other cities control the construction of entire buildings, extending to landscape gardening and interior decoration. These architects design the glass, wall paper, covers of books, piano cases, hang- ings, etc., that go to the building. Manufacturers re- ceive designs from these men, the virtual heads of Ar- chitecture. — The painter and the sculptor part of Archi- tecture. Mr. Whistler and other painters design their pictures to fit rooms. On the other hand they are reach- ing out to make the abode harmonize with the pic- ture. — The organized architecture liberates the people in relation to harmony of shelter. The painter is liberated through design in the building enabling the harmonious setting of his work. Architecture as a whole is liber- ated in relation to the painter through knowing that he designs for the unified construction. All trades and manufactures are liberated through being able to work by exact plans furnished them by Architecture. Aes- thetics as mathematics. — The nude. The "artist" and the " rigid machine." The cry for softened walls. The woman meets the master of color and form. Asking for the measure of a picture. The disunion of color in an emblem of union. — Property means use of buildings for xxiv CONTENTS Page the local and general Class. The ballot not "secret" The " initiative and referendum " the practical outleaa- ing in the Negative.— The Negative as controlling the Class and the individual. -The principle by which the legislation oe the Class becomes the legislation or the Whole and by which the Class is responsible for the in- dividual. Illustration of the actual working ot the Class legislation. A change of time on the railroads between New York and San Francisco, The defection of a Class. Rebellion in the State. The improbability of pronounced defection. Men love peace. Defection and rebellion within the Class. — The appointing power. Each head supplies his immediate service. The appoint- ing function has the power of removal. — The autonomy of the divisions of the Class and the public. The coun- try in its logical divisions of movement. Illustration of the divisional legislation, or autonomy. The drama of saving the peach crop of Arizona. — The more local autonomy of the Class and the general public. The tendency is to infrequent use of the formal Negative. Public sentiment and commercial demand a corrective of action. — The Constitution. The method of its re- vision. A specific report by News on the principles of action in democracy. When such report is not nega- tived by the people it becomes the organic law. The Declaration of Independence a constitutional report not negatived by the people. The convention formulating it the Cabinet of News. The succeeding Constitutional Convention an utterance by the Cabinet of News. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 an outgiving by News as to principle of action in democracy. Mr. Lin- coln the central figure of the News Cabinet of 1863. The succeeding amendments to the Constitution. Princi- ples of action in democracy at present undergoing a change. The successive amendments to the Constitu- tion have been in the direction of the adjustment of the private interest to common equity. The new outmov- ing in action is the further reduction. News now writ- ing the new Constitution. The logical executive.— The politician is the organizer and mollifier of men.— The statesman is the newsman having the discernment of principle on the state of action in democracy —Inter- preting reforms . . 381 CHAPTER XIV The Police : The Negative Administration The Police embraces in the one Class the "judiciary" and the " military." The " executive " reduces to policeman. OONTENTS. xxv Page. The Class here considered makes division of labor with other Classes in the technical administration of the neg- ative. It takes to itself such Negation as the disposition of crime. Marriage and divorce administered by the police. This Class subject to a Negative by the State like all other Classes. The injunction synonymous with the Negative. . 4du THE ORGANIC STATE CHAPTER I The Organism as a Whole ; The Dialectic of Life i The, organism is constituted as division of labor. In the animal body, for instance, the hand is able to exist be- cause the stomach digests food, and the stomach is able to exist because the hand brings food. But the stomach is only able to digest or the hand to move, in the full sense, through the related action of all other divisions of labor in the body, as the heart, lungs, kidneys, eye, ear, brain, etc. This division of labor among organs con- stitutes in principle, or way of life, any given whole of action as organism. A part gets its meaning as acting for the whole, as acting for all the other parts, as well as for itself; a part has its being as organ or office, in a unity of action. We may see that the action of the stomach has meaning, not as di- gestion alone, but as directed to the office of supplying elements for the life of all the other organs in the body; the ear has meaning not as hearing in itself only, but as contributing some economy in the life of other organs — the sense of hearing may direct the hand in procuring food for the stomach, or the mental poise which is song may rehabilitate a tired sense. By this it is said that to get the reality, the being, of a thing we state it in terms of what it does as division of labor, in terms of a concur- rent action or whole. 2 THE ORGANIC STATE The individual is a complete division of labor in the or- ganism. The meaning of the Individual is that it cannot be further divided as action. An activity is individual because all other action has been apportioned from it, and carried over to other individuals or organs. The eye is an individual because, through process of evolution, it no longer digests, excretes, hears, thinks for itself, but has all these actions differentiated from it so that it may be individual, undivided, in its action and see for the whole body. The eye is individual, not further divisible, be- cause it is through the highest division, or distinction, evolved from all other specific action. The Individual is at its highest development, the highest distinction as action, when it does one thing well — opposed to doing a number of things indifferently. The law, or method, by which an organism attains its fullest being is the division of labor, or individuality, which centralizes intelligence: its expression is as the interchange, or commerce, which is motion: it discovers philosophy, the instrument of the fuller consciousness, the fuller reportin life, to be the practice of the sensorium or centralization in democracy. Intelligence in its type is the nerve reflex; that is, the full circuit, or in and out movement, of sense. The organization, or centralization, of the nerve reflex is the animal sensorium; it affords the way for the ultimate, or highest expression of the individual. For through con- sciousness, the individual develops a more intimate and mobile division of labor with life; the very notion of the reflex underlying consciousness is the more efficient re- sponse, or division of labor, through motion. This de- mands motion as principle in the fuller expression of the individual — consciousness. If we reduce mind to curi- osity, clearly the underlying manifestation of its active projection, we may see that it follows the law of all motion, namely, reaction in proportion as it is affected by contact with external conditions. And, in general, the very notion of the organism, as commerce of function, comprehends the principle of motion: function is that movement which is the perpetual interchange of life. THE ORGANISM AS A WHOLE 3 Distance, through motion, is revealed as essential ex- pression of contact ; it is the mode by which all things, not a few things, are in contact, that is, in that working relation which is reaction. The truth of this is instanced in the solar system, the social body, the animal body; also the molecules of a piece of iron or other solid, now held to be in motion. Life thus hingeing in its parts as a whole of reaction, or motion, we see that if we can establish its reaction in any part in mind, it would follow that life as a whole has its reaction or manifestation in mind. In other words, we would find that the development of all life as division of labor, or organism, is towards expression in conscious- ness. To this end, we may see that a stone constitutes a division of labor, or organ, in the particular expression of mind which we call being conscious of a stone ; the centralized reflex, or sensorium, constitutes the other organ, or factor, of this particular expression, or action. In the last effect, or highest division of labor, as joined to the sensorium, the stone, a phase of existence produc- ing reaction in mind, may be said to have its final ex- pression as consciousness. The stone does not of itself think, neither does the unsensed, or inexperienced, of mind itself think. It is the action which is division of labor between the sensorium and the stone that consti- tutes the expression called thought, or sense ; and so with any other division of labor between the sensorium and the contributory external action constituting thought. Consciousness is the meaning, or resulting action, of a joint division of labor, between external thing and sen- sorium, just as digestion is the meaning of the division of labor between stomach and food. Neither external thing nor mind are known in the fullness of the expres- sion of life, except in their joint action called conscious- ness ; and the external thing become knowledge, attains its own fullfilment, or highest expression, as this joint action. Thus it is that all life rises to a centralized in- telligence, finding its fullfilment in the widest expression of sense — the organization of men as social body, It is 4 THE ORGANIC STATE according to this, in the notion of philosophy, that life is said to find its attainment, or objective, in consciousness. We may more technically state the unity of life with reference to the reduction of the instrument of its report, philosophy. We say that if mind cannot express itself without being- effected in sense by the external, then the latter is a necessary part of the action called conscious- ness, and, as organ, absolutely expresses itself in, or acts as phase of, consciousness. The thing-world, as having part in sense expression, is in division of labor with that organ, or that factor, of intelligence which is called the self, distinguished from the thing-world as fac- tor in consciousness, which is the not-self; the self and the not-self, to attain their expression are joined as di- vision of labor in the sense. This may be said to be the development of the Aristotelian, Christian, Kantian, He- gelian, and Caird philosophy in terms of the organism, in terms of action as division ot labor, in its widest reach coping with the whole of life. It is the advance of Hegel and Caird to terms of motion, since we have seen function as that interchange of reaction which is motion. It should be said that these men wrote up to this point ; and such development, with all its antecedent philosophy, may be pleasantly found in the last half of Caird's little book "Hegel" (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, Lippincott). If the subject matter of philosophy thus reduces to the social whole, or State, we may see that the tendency of philosophy in its practical reduction is toward politics, that is, the practical outgiving of the principles, or ways, of organization in democracy. Philosophy reduces to the practical study of the "many in the one," the many in the whole, as operative in the economic S^ate — the practical study of the parts as organs operative in the social whole. The hand upon the dial points to this time as the coming to consciousness of the State through the attainment of its sensorium in philos- ophy as practical letters, or practical report of life in the ways of its fuller organism, democracy. THE ORGANISM AS A WHOLE 5 A society, or system, is that organism which is a commun- ity of individuals interdependent through their individuality, or division of labor. Society, or system, comprehends an active relation of parts in a whole. The evolution of the individual is the active cohesion, or life, of the organism. The eye having become separated from digestion, to that extent which is its own individuality as division of labor, has become dependent upon the stomach for its existence, and so upon other functions in the community of action, or society, called the animal body. In the society which is the social whole, or State, the differentiation, for in- stance, of the shoemaker and the farmer into functional individuals has made them dependent upon each other. Division of labor is the insoluble bond of union in society. We find in this a basis of meaning for the saying that we love our neighbor as ourselves — it is the law of self-pres- ervation. The highest organism of which we have fuller knowledge, democracy, is here viewed in its immediate organs, the Class- es, and their subdivision, the individual man. The Classes comprehend the classification of the State on its different lines of action. The law of evolution holding, that the higher organism carries the types of the lower, we may be helped more clearly to the organs, or Classes, by dis- covering and putting upon the social body the parallels of the animal body, in the more distinguishing features. As, we say that the excretory function of the animal body has its parallel in that aggregation of men and machinery in the State comprising the Class Hygiene, and having within its own organism such organs as the scavenger and bacteriologist. Or, we contemplate the Transporta- tion Class as the food circulation in the State, with its in- ternal divisions of labor, such as train-dispatcher and en- gineer. We look at the banks, the Exchange Class, as the ganglia of circulation — the sympathetic system, effect- ing exchange, or balance, of nutrition in the social body. It has certain of its divisions in the bank president and bank teller. The Mail Class is the carrier of intelligence — ■ the sense circulation of the social body, having divisions 6 THE ORGANIC STATE in the postmaster-general and the delivery clerk. To determine democracy in the effective, or culminating, manifestation of itself as organism, we have to recog- nize the Class which centralizes knowledge in the State. As indicated, this is the division of labor which is the sen- sorium, or organized intelligence in the State, being its cerebrum, or head as a whole. This last realizing and ordering function in democracy can be no other than the Organic Letters, being the office of publicity — the News- Office in life. Its business, as Class, is to explain life, that is, bring life to consciousness in its method, or law, of action. Philosophy turned upon the actual life, we have regarded as the central figure, or division, of this organ ; the rank and file is the great body of writers and reporters having its divisions. From this we see that the organ of the State is the Class, having within itself many lesser individuals, or contribu- tory organs. It follows that an organ may itself become an individual in a larger individual action, or organism. Thus, the organism Man, becomes an individual in the Class. Man, the common application of the term indi- vidual, is intimately responsible to the Class, and is regulated by it, the law of the whole. For the State exists, not of itself as abstraction, but through the opera- tion of its individual organs, the working external and internal relations of which make the governing social laws. Note that an apparently conflicting case, the disposal of the criminal, which is seemingly administered directly by the State as a whole, is really given over to a Class, the division of Corrections and Asylums. It is self-evident that to determine first the organ, or Class, in the State, we have to differentiate, or separate from it, all action that may better be given over to other divisions. To determine further the organ, we have to gather under one head and see as constituting concerted action, all the parts that may work together as one organ to the economy or betterment of the other Classes. Property, or material action, tends to be interpreted in THE ORGANISM AS A WHOLE 7 the functional or universal sense, as wider economic bear- ing (public), instead of as holdings (private) apart from universal or functional demand in the State; it lends to in- terpretation as use in full division of labor (public), instead of withholdings (private) from full demand, upon it as divi- sion of labor; value in a thing is its office as division of labor. So called natural products joined in division of labor to human intelligence may create a function, or factor of action, which is a broom ; but the broom or broom- making has no meaning as partial division of labor, not joined in completed action as fulfilling demand in the State; to be real, valuable, it must oe joined in sweeping. There might be also joined to the broom-making, the distribution and warehouse function of storage; but this act of distribu- tion has no meaning except as remotely or nearly joined to sweeping. The accident of distribution which would seek to withhold a broom from use to get more than cost on it can. be seen only as obstruction or disaster of func- tion. The "profit" margin, beyond the exact support of function, beyond exact cost of creation and distribution, is feudal, or part-isan — the Part (private) in conflict with the Whole (public). Again, the engineer is joined to such factors as produce the beacon light on the coast. He can only possess the lighthouse, or what is its ac- tuality, the light, when everybody else possesses it. The lighthouse hoarded, possessed out of its action, he would not have any lighthouse at all, it would lose its meaning. Possession merely, or privately, is thus not the posses- sion of reality. It is only when he employs the light- house that the engineer has its value, and not of itself but as beacon light; and he cannot employ it for himself, unless he employs it for all. A man can not employ an apple strictly for his own private ends. To attempt this is to subtract all meaning from it. If he eats it, regard- ing it for himself alone, he has not strictly withdrawn it from public use. He eats it to live. Now, whether he is conscious of it or not, he lives for something. This something is his own relation or place in life. He can- not have place without he gives something in return for 8 THE ORGANIC STATE what he receives. If he exists at all it must be as reaction in relation to his surroundings. He has thus used the apple for the whole. And this is the ultimate goal of all analysis of use — that is, all use has the end which is essential, or economic, relation to life. Finally, if any construe ownership as private control of public use, it has its meaning in lifting the individual himself into public use. Property (propriety of use) must thus be seen as func- tion in that economic sense which promotes easy action in the State at a given phase of contact. Stay of use by possession, as holding strictly, is congestion, or stasis — is destruction of property, or use. And we can here more forcibly bring home to ourselves the disaster and total substraction of value which results from the view of prop- erty as private — privat(e)ion relative to the whole — by conceiving the Judiciary constructed on the present con- cept of holdings in the State. Suppose, simply, that the judge acted upon the dictum that obstruction of the State is business, holding his decision indefinitely on his own pleasure, and for ' ' private " advantage. The only view that makes the present holdings real is to render them in terms of their more evident function, which would be to regard them as in trusteeship for the whole. This is a trusteeship in degree abused, because not answerable to the demand of the whole as is the judge in his decision. Mr. Astor, for instance, diverts large sums from his holdings as trusteeship, without making any accounting to the whole. Failure to see value as function in the State begets a loose thinking. Robert Ingersoll recently said that Gov- ernment cannot create money, that the value must be inherent in the medium of exchange. This is the denial of action and is equivalent to saying that use cannot create, or condition, reality. He fails to see that what a thing does is what a thing is. In the same connection Mr. Ingersoll said, " A bill of fare is not a dinner." He could as well say that a fire is not a dinner. The fire and the bill of fare are in the dinner, are parts of the action THE ORGANISM AS A WHOLE 9 we call a meal. In the same travesty upon the unity of life, this doctrinaire of liberty could say that a bed is not a sleep, a razor not a shave, a liver not a man. The "in- trinsic" which Mr. Ingersoll holds to in the gold, or which some one holds to in the silver, is in reality a division of labor on the part of these particulars which has force only if moved on to its full function, as exchange or the arts. We put to ourselves whether it is not the idea of use in gold which gives its value ? Whether "intrinsic" is not the idea of office which we put into a thing ? The calculus, words printed upon paper, has ' ' intrinsic " value beyond much gold when regarded with the idea of use. We ask if gold would have value if we take away the social meaning in it ; that is, take away the idea of use relative to a need by some one who is an item in the State. The broom, the gold, the calculus, the lighthouse and the legal decision are in themselves deprived, or depraved, divisions of labor, and have no value strictly as such, but only when habilitated with the idea of full division of labor. The anachronism of failing concepts sees value in partial or abortive action, instead of full action, or function. To recast their con- cepts such have to ask themselves where the part origin- ally got its "intrinsic," its value. Did it not get it from the whole, of which it is a part ? Let such recast the notion of a man's house, held as private property. The value of the house is not posses- sion but employment or control of it by this man in his action, necessarily public — action necessarily public be- cause a man cannot act outside of the State. He built the house with the notion of equalizing conditions in life, of which a bare shelter is the narrowest view. He built the house and uses it that he may be an efficient member of democracy — that he may be a man. He built the house under the exactions of the State, as impelled and conditioned by it. He put into the house the idea of his relation, or place, in the social body, thus carrying over to the house whatever meaning, or value, it possesses. He extended life in a sum which is the house and its im- 10 THE ORGANIC STATE plications; in such part he built the State; so far as the uses of the house go he created the State. And this is the value of the house, namely, a piece of action jointly in a community of men. Furthermore, we know that the man did not build the house alone; the State fed and clothed him while he worked; other labor supplied him tools and material. The thing was impossible outside of a connected life. He is a factor in a whole of action which resulted in building the house, just as in another direc- tion it resulted in making a legal decision. We know by this that the State itself built the house, using the man as one among a thousand contributory items in it just as it used the judge in the legal decision. And as the latter is public, or disposable by the public, so is the house. The partial views begotten of the disorganic concept of things are the measure of the low popular consciousness of the organism, to be noted on every hand, including the public press. We marvel at the tenacity of thought, now slowly passing, which regards the basic control of a thing as private, when its total value was acquired from the social. We ask ourselves if the State, to attain its freedom, or expression, will not ultimately have to rec- ognize property as use, not possession. That is, will not a man, as proprietor, be regarded as holding title to a thing only while he can directly employ it economi- cally, either for his own immediate use, as factor of the State, or as answering other direct economic demand, in op- position to mere holdings ? Will a man be allowed to use a thing in a way obstructive to public welfare ? Already the State has gone far in this direction. It exacts a man's farm for public use when his holdings conflict with the construction of a highway — the right of eminent domain. A man builds a bridge, but he cannot hold it; his holding is conditioned by the public need. He possesses the bridge so far as he can use it, no more. No one can displace his proper use of it, but there his possession ends. Does not the popular consciousness tend to go clear over to this interpretation of all property ? We ask our- selves whether we are not passing the withholding or THE ORGANISM AS A WHOLE 11 hoarding stage, that is, the right to possession in conflict with the better interests of the people ? Can we ultimately regard a house any differently than the judge does his decision or the engineer does his bridge ? Must not the holder in every instance regard the tenure of his posses- sion as a question of economic use in the social ? In line with this, can a man or a Class controlling a house rent it for more than cost ? — that is, enough to return its exact construction and running care and repair. Can such ob- struct its use, destroy its value, by the imposition of a private tax, called profit ? Can a Class having a hat to sell exact more for it than its cost, in all that this ration- ally implies, thus obstructing, destroying, it as property — despoiling it as free use at cost, impairing its exact di- vision of labor in the State ? For answer we may watch the public prints or other utterances for the rising state of consciousness -touch- ing the organism — seen in a practical sense in the degree in which the popular voice demands equality of distribu- tion of the products of labor. We examine the many labor publications, to find that they lean to control of all larger action by the public interest, thus more inclining to in- terpret property as public use. The vote cast for Mr. Bryan in '96 should be light-making ; arrayed against him, with lines more or less distinctly drawn, was the feudal concept, or the domination of the whole by the individual in the private holdings. The movement in the State has for some time betokened a deepening sense. Are not the strenuous party overturnings of the last decade the restless stirrings of a new consciousness and a new birth ? The danger, as in all history, is that it will be obstructed by the old concepts until it breaks violently through. It is hard for the king to die. It may be that we thus discern the approach of the final reduction of de- mocracy, foreshadowing the next Constitutional Conven- tion in its disposition of the question of property — the great question of the equation of life. The once invinc- ible dogma of the economists that "private gain is the stimulus to exertion," is, in view of the need of life, met 12 THE ORGANIC STATE by the dictum in kind, that self-preservation is the stimulus. Ethic is the freedom of the individual attained through organization, or division of labor; — it is one with morality, considerd as ordered action. Slavery has to be measured by the disorganization in life, having its meaning in con- finement of action. An individual that obstructs his neighbor not only enslaves him, but takes the bonds, or restrictions of the resulting disorder upon himself. The ethic, or effective life, of an individual is determined by the degree of freedom in action, as the consequence of order. If a clerk or a school teacher or a blacksmith is hampered by improper cooking or incompetent rail- road service or newspaper lying, he maybe said to suffer abridgment in his being; he lives that much less. Ethic, as enlarged conditions, may be seen as the efficient life in exchange of service, the equipoise of action. In this commerce, ethic is seen as good business ; the life that lives up to its day. THE POST 13 CHAPTER II The Post : Intelligence Carrier The Post Office has its distinction as that organ which is the common carrier of intelligence in the State as a whole. Its physiological parallel appears as sense transmission — the nerves of democracy. Belonging to the Post Office as efficient organ are all the avenues of carrying intelli- gence, mail-bag, telegraph, telephone, etc. The office of the mail in relation to the whole determines its organization within itself ; it must be a complete working part of the whole and not complicated with other organs or parts of organs. In this we require to uncover the line of cleavage between the Post Office by rail, in the carry- ing of its pouch of written and printed matter, and the regular transportation of passengers and freight. The distinction between the two turns on the question of what intelligence is in its essential character, and what its medium as instrument of carriage necessarily is. In- telligence in its essential character is active intelligence, or economic communication in the State. This may be deferred in its fuller treatment to the chapter on the Intelligence Industry. It is sufficient to know here that the essential intelligence in life is the communication, from whatever source, that meets some immediate want of men. And that is the more strictly intelligence which has its character shaped on the demand in life. The demand is for the least delay in communication of any fact ; men do not wish to wait very long for a fact which they may need. And the intelligence, answering to this need, that has prompt communication is the active and essential intelligence, relative to the movement of any day. The cleavage between intelligence and freight is that the old thing, or the thing that men already know 14 THE ORGANIC STATE or do not immediately want, is removed from intelligence in its active type, and in so far in its carriage it ap- proaches freight, or transportation proper. The cleavage between intelligence carriage and freight carriage in the absolute, therefore, is between the more active or instant communication and the less active ; in short, is between the wire and the car. And the mail-bag has its distinction from freight in proportion as it works in the more active communication, or in such measure as it approaches the type of the active intelligence carriage, the wire. The reality of this may best be gained in the develop- ment of communication. There was a time when the vehicle of communication had low differentiation in the State; this stage was when a messenger rode from one point to another in a canoe, or walked, or rode a cow or a donkey. A later differentiation was the letter-pouch in the boot of the stage-coach. Steam furthered the differ- entiation down to the postal railway car. But latterly the essentially active communication has passed to the electric wire, the attained medium of intelligence. In the lower development of the State, communication had its physiological parallel in the low differentiation of the mole- cules of the animat body, before the nervous element had separated itself from the slower physiological side; the later attainment of the type of communication in the State, the wire, has its advanced physiological parallel in the nerve. Having Jius cleared the medium of the later communication, as the instant, or electric, we see that the transportation of intelligence by the railroad car is but a left-over phase which still lingers in the slow pro- cess of growth. This indicates that ultimately the whole movement of active communication, or intelligence proper will be by the telephone and telegraph or their con- geners in electricity. Already to the dweller in the city, and in some country districts, the bulletin-boards and the news- tickers, and the telephone and telegraph in private houses, have made most of the matter in the newspapers hours old before it is delivered in the slower form. It has thus ceased to be intelligence in its essential aspect. And the THE POST 15 tendency is also on this line in personal communication. More and more the people are discarding letter-writing and using the wire or the telephone. Any general large advance waits on cheaper rates — the cost service. In some of the states of Europe and in New Zealand the telephone is much displacing written communication. In Sweden pretty near everybody now has a telephone in the house. And the public stations are extensively employed. The charge for the instrument in the house, office, or shop in local service is as low as $15.00 yearly. The minimum charge at the public stations for distance ser- vice is four cents. This reduction on long distance rates is due to the government ownership of the trunk lines, though it has not yet settled to cost service. The con- sideration is not so much how far the movement is ad- vanced, but rather that it is advancing and that the tend- ency is away from the slower conditions in the handling- of intelligence proper. In the remove from quicker process of transportation, printed and written matter is seen to lapse from intelli- gence to become freight, as conditioned in its character by demand and manipulation, being out of the channel of the exactions of intelligence strictly. And it only re- turns within the pale of intelligence as action through some after use of it, some new creation of it relative to demand. As, some fact in life may need enlargement and a person goes to an encyclopaedia or history which in itself is a piece of freight but by virtue of this demand upon it in some adjustment of fact it is raised into the in- stant intelligence. That is, this piece of freight has be- come an element of intelligence owing to conditions of readjustment of fact either in a larger or smaller move- ment. It has become intelligence by its use. A person wishing to convey a fact about a peach may go to a box and take up the peach itself. This peach becomes part, or factor, in intelligence through entering into active use in communication. But in itself, it is freight. So the book or other printed page out of active use reverts to the essential character of freight. What we therefore 16 THE ORGANIC STATE hold before us as news or intelligence, is the instant ad- justment of fact amongst men which as such makes cleavage from other phase of carriage, the latter having its character in transportation proper, or the freight and passenger business. It is seen in this that communication is not yet fully developed, or freed. In its partial differentiation much of the instant movement is still retarded to go by freight. Ultimately, the intelligence business proper will in its fullness carry, or circulate, by the nerve of the State, the wire. The Post in England has taken over the wire ; but this does not universally obtain. Nor is the wire freed in England on the cost basis. Telegrams in the United Kingdom go at twelve cents ; the possibility is one penny. The English telegraph is paying interest on a fictitious investment and is carrying high salaries ; and, as with the mail in this country, it is used to support other branches of the government service. // follows thai in general the Post Office is retarded in gathering to itself, organizing, under one head all its in- struments, or parts ; it is retarded in fuller function. We have to inquire what is obstructing its organization. We see as such the private interest which attempts to pre- serve the feudalism of a "capitalist" faction in the tele- graph and telephone stock, a control exercised against the interests of the State. It is the private tax on com- munication. We see as further obstructive a phase of the private in- terest which trades on the feudal lease of office, the baronial interference in the affairs of men. The Presi- dential appointment of heads of departments in the Post Office, reaching down through these to employees, does not allow the Post Class as a body to exercise its own technical control, that is, does not allow the Class to elect its officers, and so become responsible to the people for the organization and conduct of the mails. It is as though a man ignorant of music should be allowed to appoint a leader of an orchestra, in some outworn politi- cal usage, and the orchestra be looked to for good music. THE POST 17 The Post Office is advanced in organization and has the impetus to full order. Its parts are well along and it has attained to a centralized intelligence, working under a single comprehensive head. The country is marked by- postal divisions. Each such department has its chief of mails, with its department headquarters. Such chiefs and their several territories get their general direction from the national superintendent of mails. The divisions are answerable to his bureau in their action. The organ as a whole thus centralizes in the national superintendent. The postmaster-general stands in one light as the me- dium of communication for specific demands of the public upon the mails through its national superintendent. In other respects the postmaster-general represents the partisan, or feudal, interest engaged in serving private de- mands upon the mails in the way of appointments, frank- ing privilege and contracts. His chief activity, as nomi- nal head, may be best set down as interfering with the real head, the real postmaster-general — the national superintendent of mails. The Post Office has a chief mark of organization, however, in its well-nigh exact service to the public. It is shaped, or organed, the present stage considered, to successfully cope with the public demand upon it. But for the outside interference in its affairs, which we have noted, it must speedily advance to the wire and service at cost. And this tendency pushes ahead. Different chiefs of service have tried to carry through important measures forwarding the organization. Former Postmaster-General Vilas attempted to cut off the robbery of the service by the railroads, for carriage of mails. The govern- ment now pays the roads for this carriage sixteen times what the express companies pay for equivalent matter, though they go on the same train and in the same car. Former Postmaster-General Wanamaker attempted a three-cent telegraph and telephone service. To the end of reduction in postage, managers at various times have sought to relieve the service of the support of other 18 THE ORGANIC STATE departments, put upon the mails through the franking act. The impetus is strongly toward the highest quality of service and the organization which it involves. Farther advance in organization must overcome the narrow private interest. This means a growth in the public con- sciousness, the ballot, sufficient to subordinate the private interest where it is most viciously obstructive. The movement would take practical shape in the government ownership of telegraph, telephone and any other means of transmission. Touching possible advance in organization of the Post Office, along with other phases of the State, we watch the public utterance showing degree of awaking of popular consciousness as subjecting the private interest. Public consciousness shows some advance. A party leader, Mr. Truman of New York, recently made the remarkable statement that the bond-holders were preventing the ex- tension of the Post Office, the reference being to the holdings of the Western Union and Bell Telephone stock. Expression on every hand is growing against the aggres- siveness of the private interest in the large corporations. The movement known as the Populist party cast in '96 approximately one-tenth of the whole national vote for avowed government ownership, in railroads, telegraphs and mines. That the private interest is more on the de- fensive in every direction is to be taken as a sign of the awakening. In line with the growing consciousness, we see in re- cent years the attempt of the state legislatures to fix maximum rates in the public service. The whole anti- trust legislation of recent years, state and national, as an- tagonizing corporate combination is of course directed against overcharge in public service, organically all ser- vice being public. But the most direct outmoving has been the attempt to specifically fix a lower maximum rate in some of the western states, notably Nebraska and Dakota. The discussion involved in the attempt 0/ the public to control and subject the corporations reveals the nature of THE POST 19 the primary contract and tends to raise the organism. The private interest in its resistance has gone to the courts. The corporations meet the attempts to control them by the assertion that reduction of their returns of profits is impairment of contract and dispossession of property without valid process of law. It does not appear that the legislatures in their attemps to regulate the rates of the railroads have sought to reduce the tariff below a fair interest on the actual investment for construction. The claim of impairment and dispossession made by the rail- road attorneys is based on the excessive bonding of the road, with obligation to pay the face and interest of the so-called watered shares, that is, stock above the cost of building the road. The answer to this by the State's at- torney is that all bonding of the road above legitimate cost and all unreasonable salaries or other expenditures in the conduct of the road represents theft by the corpor- ation and should be outlawed. It is asserted that an earlier "impairment of contract and dispossession without valid process of law " was made when the railroads com- mitted this theft ; and the claim is made further that the courts should no longer protect injustice in its hiding un- der technicality in violation of the showing in the case. In some directions the courts lean toward agreement with this, evincing a disposition to confine the railroads to returns of profit on the actual investment, virtually re- garding the watered stock and the trick of unreasonable expenditures as fraud. Some of the western courts have sustained the acts of the legislatures fixing the maximum rates. But whatever attitude the courts for the moment may take it is clear that they are halting and divided in their decisions, under the old notion of property as grant- ing privileges to the individual to set up any trick of os- tensible legality and play it against the public good. In the prevailing confusion by the courts, the news- papers and the college professors touching the right of the State to interfere against some claim of contract hedging the people in, there are signs of a disposition to go back to the base of the Constitution wherein the State 20 THE ORGANIC STATE contracts with the individual to give him a form of gov- ernment that secures him equality of external conditions. The disposition is to interpret the declaration of our principles of government as a contract with the individual to afford him that equation which is opportunity of ser- vice and its corresponding benefits, that is, returns on labor. The inquiry begins to be put whether any creation of legislation or legal technicality can stand against this basic contract which existed at the birth and involves the continued life of democracy. But there remains the as- sertion by the corporation attorneys that the men who made the Constitution could not have meant this, that their reference to the scope and force of contracts is specif- ically and distinctly stated, the study of the discussion and the conditions of the time showing this. It is answered that the most fundamental reference in the written Constitution and the discussion relating to it is the question of equality of rights ; and that no secondary clause in the instrument can override this when the two conflict. With the rise of the sacredness of contract, through its assertion by the corporations, the people are disposed in all ways to go back to first contracts. Whatever the makeshift of the courts in their present quandary over the interpretation of rights it is certain that they will ultimately encounter the question of the abso- lute status of the individual, in relation to the whole and of the whole to the individual under the original contract of the State. They will be asked to define how far later falsities of contract have impaired this contract and dis- possessed these two of their primary rights. For it is clear that the consciousness of the nation is evolving its own interpretation of rights and that it is think- ing of asking a return of its own under the original writing. When the courts and the people finally face the ques- tion of the exact status of the impairment of contract and of dispossession and are thus carried back to the under- lying compact which is the concept of the State itself, they must regard the individual in the light of his part, as THE POST 21 action, in the State. If, therefore, the absolute reduction of the individual is as contract, or relation, of Part to Whole, any secondary contract between individuals specif- ically, in conflict with this, is in subversion of the organic law — is impairment of the basic contract uttered in the Declaration of 1776 and in the succeeding Constitu- tion — the underlying formula of rights and of democ- racy. If the courts and the people yield to this analysis and ask themselves for its application, an inquiry at once arises as to the working status of the individual and the whole under the basic contract. This has to accord with the underlying consideration set forth. If, therefore, the State cannot recognize a contract as absolute when be- tween individuals as such then the process between the in- dividuals must be as agents of the whole. The question of exchange, of barter and trade, between two people in a strictly private capacity enlarges itself, to give place to the relation of two agents of the whole. Of this re- lation, the clerk at the postal window selling stamps to a messenger from the organic banking Class would afford an example. The contract, or process, arising be- tween individuals must find its limitations on the one side in the rights of the whole relative to the individ- ual and, on the other side, of the individual relative to the whole. But we are to keep in sight that the status of the individual is as working part or instrument of the whole, as reasonable service in the State. He does a day's work. And this service of the individual must mean adjustment of the part to the whole, or vice-versa, being the law of their realization. The individual works on the job he can do best, the State giving him the conditions of being, or action — what he needs to do good work. So that the ex- pression of exchange of values under the absolute con- tract betw«een the individual and the State, is that the latter gives to the individual his wage and all that it im- plies as conditions of being, or life, and in return the in- dividual gives his life, or service to his job, as to the State. We know that the part cannot receive from the 22 THE ORGANIC STATE whole more than is sufficient to keep it an able instrument, — since that is the meaning of the part. And we know that the State can give no less than what is needful to the part, since it is the meaning of the whole that it exists by- efficient parts. This attains to the best exchange possible, and makes the essential definition of the primary status of each. In the practical reduction of this we see that the indi- vidual gives his service to the State in his exact share of the amount of work to be done. He does his part of the whole number of hours' work each day. This day's work is figured by dividing the whole number of hours' work of a day by the whole number of able bodied workers, except the percentage sick or regularly absent on vaca- tion. And on the other side there is guaranteed, through the agents of the State to the individual, food, clothing, shelter, recreation, and other support sufficient to make him an efficient member. The State figures this support on the ratio of the sum of all its members, to the total cost of supplying them. The problem is, of course, the simple one of finding one man's wage, or support, by di- viding the total expenditure of the State by the number of people, not excepting those under working age, those de- crepit, and those on vacation. This is the equalizing of wage, or returns of labor. Exact definition of impairment of contract, therefore, must come to mean disturbance of this primary relation, or proceeding, between the man and the State. And dis- possession must come to mean any debarring or curtail- ment, any deprivation from the privilege of that service or work which is the life of the individual and in turn the life of the State. Impairment of contract and disposses- sion work at once equally upon both. Continuing the reduction in its application, we see that any proceeding in trade, or exchange, which collects more than the exact cost of production is violation of the primary contract in the State. This is true because a man's wage is figured in the cost of production. This wage, the equal wage of every man, is all that one can THE POST 23 exact under the terms of the contract — being the support of the individual based on the average cost of living. Any charge on products passing through a person's hands which seeks to collect more than this direct wage is so much stolen from the State and is in so far infringement of the contract and dispossession of the State, and through it, dispossession o>{ the individual. To the objection, arising under the old concepts, that one man's work is more difficult or more valuable than another's, the answer is made that such a concept is a violation of the primary contract. Those making such objection have to be reminded that the State does not recognize ratios, or relations, between individuals; but between the individual and the whole. Any other rela- tion is seen to confuse this relation and obstruct its work- ing. The practical answer is, further, that the State through a long turmoil worked out of the confusion, and inequality resulting from this view, coming finally to the clearer light that the State cannot sustain itself on the basis of a status, or contract, between individuals as such; that, through the logic of action, it is compelled to have resort to the relation of the individual to the whole, the practical operation of which we are endeavoring to reduce. It thus in the main becomes clear that if the courts and people are to move in this relation it must be in the direc- tion of the primary interpretation of the formula of de- mocracy itself. Cases like the recent ones attempting to fix the maximum charges of the railroads, when coming to the courts, must tend to meet the primary adjudication. The bench, confronted with the growing order, must latterly tend to go further than to limit the corporations to interest returns on the actual investment. The ten- dency must be to raise the primary contract and declare that the railroad corporations, having their parallel in all corporations, cannot exact from the public more than the cost of creating the road and continuing it in opera- tion, this to include abundant support, or wage, to all men in the Railroad Class as based upon equality of wage throughout the State. The answer of the courts to the 24 THE ORGANIC STATE claim of the corporations that in this decision they are dispossessed of the original investment, is that such moneys represent a previous dispossession which the State suffered under infringement of the original contract. The court can say that these moneys may now stand as previous payment of the cost of construction of the roads by the people. The reply of the court is further that it is disposed to regard the past private control of these moneys in the light of a trusteeship upon which the State now exacts accounting, to determine whether the people paid exactly the cost of construction. In those cases where the balance is against the trustee the court can say that it is disposed to parole the delinquent under a general amnesty of the State, and in consideration of certain un- doubted quality in past service. This is the organic handling, whatever form it may take. The first practical adjustment on these lines, the phase of advance now pressing upon the courts, is of course the cutting clear of watered shares and reducing rates to a ' ' fair profit " on exact value of the roads, or the holdings of other corporations. It may be said that the conscious- ness of the State is now approaching this point. Any assertion of the rights of the whole in subordina- tion of the part, as seen in this curtailment of the corporation by the commonwealth, must tend directly towards the completion of the Post, and not alone this organ but all other organs of democracy. It must tend to this because it is so far the return to normal of the overlying private interest which we have seen as obstruc- tive to the outmoving organization. And, if the outlet toward government ownership of the telegraphs and rail- roads is by purchase, as cheaper than building them, a first step is to reduce the inflated figures. We look for the attitude of publicity respecting outmove- ment. The newspapers, dividing the public action with their hue and cry, obstruct the advance, or fuller organ- ization, of the Post Office, declaring that it will, by in- crease of office-holding, perpetuate in power the incum- bent party. This is the distrust of government by party THE POST 25 organization ; it amounts to a declaration that the princi- ple inhering in it is now obstructive in the State — that government by party organization is passing its useful- ness and is a decaying form of government, no longer lending advance. The question which we then put to ourselves is as to what new organs of government are disclosed. These are the Classes, in their fuller organization. In the con- fessed failure of party organization, we invite Class con- trol. The pressure upon us is, for instance, to give the Post Office its own technical control and allow it to gather to itself all its machinery for effective service as may be, the Post class to make its own appropriations by fixing the price of postage at sufficient to cover expenses, be it less or more. This takes the mails away from the par- tisans. The answer to the fear of office-holding is, there- fore, the proposition to make everybody an "office- holder." Under the injunction of the newspaper to dis- trust party organization, we turn to a new order in the State, the organization of labor in each of its specializa- tions. The feudal editor, the ready essay writer, standing for partisan opinion, sees in the technical control by the Class the principle which is moving in upon his preserves ; he foresees that he may have to maintain his place in letters by actual and skilled reporting of the fact instead of au- thoritative juggling in opinion ; or he feels that the prin- ciple of Class organization is against manipulating place in letters through favors of the newspaper counting-room, the obstructive private interest. Facing the organism, it is borne in upon him that position in letters may some day be removed from the accidental. And, again, it is the dying to old concepts that is hard with the feudal writer. We may see in the halting conditions the pathos which accompanies advancement. Scrutiny shows that the newspapers for the most part seem ignorant of the meaning of democracy as an organ- ism — they act more on the lead that it is a public hold- up. The consciousness of the newspaper is so low that it 26 THE ORGANIC STATE has no clear notion of the great need of everywhere sub- ordinating the private interest to the whole. The papers suppress and misinterpret facts when they conflict with the private interest, being illustration of the narrow indi- vidualism which does not see its own interest as pro- moted by advancing the whole ; the counting-room, in the obstructive property sense, is always in view. Some- what in the words of Mr. Morley, applied to Bazire in his "Robespierre," the newspapers identify government with organized peculation. Working under the old concepts, they cannot extend the principle of property which is seen in the Brooklyn Bridge or the Philadelphia Docks — use for everybody, as far as anybody's needs go. The news- papers, for the most part, work by the whole in their in- terpretations only so far as it does not conflict with the private eccentricity. They do not yet raise organic truth into principle of universal proceeding in publicity. In the histories of the Post Office, to be found in the li- braries and bookstores, one can study the rise of the trans- mission of intelligence. It will be noted how the institu- tion gradually individualized, or classed, its action into a unified organ of the whole. Such unity as exists in the Post Office has been realized through the law of the growth of organisms — a gradual development toward a centralized function, or head. We ask the interpretation of property, or ownership, in the Post Class. The real property, expressed in action, is of course the function of intelligence carrying. The di- visions of labor, or parts of this property, are the factors in life that in any way contribute to it ; they are the mail- man, the letter-bag, the postal-car, the hatter, the cloth- ier, the food-man, and so on to every phase of labor. In this view it cannot be said that the Post Class owns the function of mail carrying, since it is realized only in terms of the action of the whole : it belongs to the State as such whole of action. In the principle which makes property the organized ac- tion of the whole, is seen the control of the Class by the whole. Suppose the food-men, the clothiers, the builders, THE POST 27 etc., each to be as closely organized as we determine the ultimate Post Class to be. They can then only act through their general rules of service. It follows that if the former do not get their letters promptly the mail-men, through general orders shutting off trade with them, will not get food, clothing, housing, etc. Once erect machin- ery on this principle for the convenient lodgment of complaints in divisional heads, affording an accompany- ing publicity, and the Class is in the relation of exact ad- judication to the whole. If we study the reality of the postage stamp as phase of organization we see in it the economic book-keeping, or check on trade. The local postmaster turns in an equiva- lent of money for the stamps he requires, covering the running need of his locality. There is no further book- keeping except for the central office to set down in a col- umn the amount of stamps sold to the postmaster, that the aggregate may be known, or that casual reference may be made to the transaction. It is a cash trade. The postmaster cannot misuse the stamps, because they are only good in their proper use. He cannot overcharge for them, because their face is their value, which every- body recognizes. Self-interest keeps the record clean: the postmaster requires return of money for the stamps he sells, and the customer insists on stamps for the money he pays out. This indicates possible reduction in the en- tire exchange medium of the country, carrying it over to an automatic stamp transaction. We may see, however, that this phase of the stamp development lacks the ele- ment that it gives no absolute vouchers back*to the whole in the aggregate movement of the Post Office. There is no immediate and direct accounting to the public as to cost of service and the accuracy of the trade. We know that any lack of reckoning must beget in that degree a slack responsibility and looseness of administration, with a corresponding tendency to pilfer. It is certain that there is a vast swindle in the franking privilege and the contract jobbery ; how much, we have no accounting. The ethic of the Post Office. This is found to be its effi- 28 THE ORGANIC STATE ciency in action, told in the freedom it promotes among men. The question of how much a thing ethics is the question of how much it acts in economic relation to men in terms of commerce. How much does it help the free- dom of trade? How far does it meet the needs of men ? This is of general application, applying not alone to the Post Office, but to any section of the State, to any field. Ethic is freeing action. If we ourselves wish to ethic in relation to the Post Office we have to act to fur- ther its organization. Our practical ethic, accordingly, is plainly to promote organization through the government ownership of the telegraph and telephone. The Post Office presents the standing refutation of the claim that competition, or contention, for money gain is es- sential to good service. Competition in its underlying re- ality is rather the strife for being, or action, equal to one's powers. Competition is to be compete-ntas meeting con- ditions in life. This is, simply, to be equal to some trade. The principle goes back of money gain as motive to exer- tion. Self-preservation, or being, the organic view pro- poses, is the underlying motive to exertion. A man may be so far disordered, or money-mad, that he loses sight of his normal relation to life, making money an object in itself. But a normal person who canvasses his reasons for wanting money must testify that it has meaning to him only as he can use it to satisfy his faculties. The pursuit of money in its abnormal relation is still the ex- ercise of one's faculties, or being, in certain power or freedom of play. It is still the strife for place, or action, conditions considered — in principle of mental operation, as though it were normal in object. And the culminating testimony is that while in the development of life men as a mass have been more and more restricted in their money-making to what is exactly necessary for their free action, yet service on every hand has advanced, the Post Office being no more than a notable example of this. Conclusively, money has its significance in what being, or free action, we can get out of it. THE POST 29 With the advance of organization in the State the exag- gerated, or diseased, competition is reduced to normal, through limiting to actual use of living the amount of the exchange inst-ument an individual may gain. Organiza- tion cuts off the unreal object of competition. Not being able to acquire more than one needs for actual use, and resting secure in this, competition resolves itself into normal test of place. Does a man wish to be as a rail- way mail clerk ? Then he must compete, must rise compete-nt, with the kind of talent or quality of art be- longing to such place. The underlying competition works organically to ad- vance efficiency. The practical art is the average prac- tice; in other words, the plane of practice that is the proper working of any branch of the State. In the rail- way mail service, for instance, the instinct of being, or art, drives the deft clerk to greater deftness in moving the mail. A pace thus set, other clerks strive to be some- where near a good clerk. The management of service in its instinct of art demands that all clerks approach the best work. And, more, through natural impulse of being, the mass of clerks strive to attain place with qualified men. There comes from this an average practice on an advanced plane. To this art all indifferent persons must attain if they pursue their desire to live as mail clerks. Individual competition is thus the competition against the ideal. There results an efficient arm of service in the State. The mail service, affording example of a high plane of practice, is in the main the simple competition for existence as action, or place. 30 THE ORGANIC STATE CHAPTER III Transportation : Arterial Carriage The railroad in relation to other organs of democracy has its meaning as common carrier, or transportation. It affords the nutrient circulation, or blood current, of the social body. We see the wires as nerve-lines accompany- ing the railways, or arterial routes of democracy — like the animal body. The integrity of the organ of transporta- tion must gather under one head the different parts of the carrying business. These include railways, city and neighborhood tramways, the public cab service, the various water lines. Centralization, or organization, is growing up in two directions ; one is the welding of the management in the Presidents' Joint Traffic Association, the other is the rail- road labor unions. The former is one phase in the progress of the Transportation Class toward consolidation. The As- sociation is a governing body for fixing and pooling rates. In other ways it determines regulations affecting the rela- tions of the various systems of roads. As the name indi- cates, the Association is composed of the presidents of the various systems. It is extensive enough to control the larger traffic of the entire country. Its affairs had originally to do more especially with the so-called competitive through traffic, that is, with traffic wider than local that might go over one of two or more lines or systems, reaching the same point or equivalent points. The situation that brought it about was the contention between lines for through traffic. For instance, lines be- tween St. Paul and Chicago would each secure rival out- lets among the half-dozen trunks between Chicago and New York or other seaboard point, and then cut rates on the through traffic. Or the situation might similarly arise in TRANSPORTATION 31 the several Pacific roads each securing independent Eastern connections and entering upon prolonged rate wars. The roads of the country being thus liable at any time to pre- cipitate traffic war, the stronger roads entered a combine, bringing in with them lesser lines and systems. The start of the organization was in the so-called pool meet- ings by representatives of various roads. These made agreements on rates and pooling tor a fixed period of a year or more, to be signed by the several roads. These arrangements, being inflexible, were frequently broken by some road that felt that it had the worst of it, and ex- tensive rate wars were in consequence precipitated. The "Presidents' Joint Traffic Association " was the further growth of the movement in an attempt to make condi- tions of control more adaptable or flexible and more cer- tain of maintenance. With a permanent Board or Asso- ciation it is possible to hear complaints of a road at any time and issue a new rule modifying the objections. In general it is seen that a permanent board like the Asso- ciation, subject to call, and having represented in its body related knowledge of the movement of the entire country, is better able to effect rules adapted to changing situations. The Association thus arising in the necessi- ties of what are clearly underlying conditions of the wider movement in the business of transportation, it has to be counted as in the direction of permanent growth in organ- ization. Economic considerations in all directions press toward this centralization of carriage. As illustration, it is stated that since the creation of the Association sums reaching beyond the $100,000 mark have been saved to a single road in the one item of switching alone. Rentals, salaries, and commissions tend to be greatly lessened. The number of competitive travelling agents, freight and ticket offices tend to reduce to normal conditions, and the enormous sums spent in advertising by the various roads fall away. Conditions thus press forward, making reces- sion improbable. In fact, the thought of recession is as chaos. If we look in another direction from this league of 32 THE ORGANIC STATE managers we face centralization in the different railway men's organizations. For a considerable time the several divisions of the body of railway service have each had some degree of efficient organization. The strongest of these is the Locomotive Engineers. Owing to the ex- treme technicality of its work and its far-reaching organ- ization this labor body is more feared by the obstructive capital interest. It is stated that there are now no competent locomotive engineers not members of this branch of organized labor. In the engineers' strike on the Toledo & Ann Arbor road a number oi years ago no capable engineers could be found to take the place of the strikers. The company had some engines wrecked through running them with sawmill firemen. We find this important factor of carriage acquiring cohesion through a general head, the President of the Locomotive En- gineers. He has his action under rules voted upon by the whole body of engineers either directly or through re- presentatives meeting in convention. Latterly there is a movement to affiliate under one head the various railway labor organizations. A form of this is the American Railway Union, notable in the Chicago strike of 1894. The strength of the movement, it is apparent, is in so far as it designs a central head, or control, for the different railway organizations, but allow- ing each organization an autonomy in its own peculiar, or technical, field. The larger accessions to the Railway Union are from the trackmen, brakemen, firemen, and station men. The engineers in sections of the country make some membership in it, but in any considerable body they do not yet join. Among the causes keeping the engineers aloof from a central movement in organi- zation of their Class as a whole, is their fear of being drawn into embroilment with the railroad management through having part in demands for betterment of what is considered the lower or less skilled and less self-con- tained grades of the service. The engineers feel that falling to a minority place in the larger organization they could be pushed into an inconsiderate and poorly planned TRANSPORTATION 33 contest with the management, likely to result in the un- doing of their own union and the advantages it has gained. The engineers seemed disposed to wait, on the part of their greater numbers, for the brother organizations — the firemen, the brakemen, etc. — to demonstrate their cap- acity for fuller and more conservative action. Again, we may say that the engineers are not for the moment quick to subordinate themselves to an organization which as a body does not on the surface appear to have interests closely identified with their own. On the other hand, the conditions pressing for the amal- gamation of the engineers in the one central railway body, or Class, are the very conditions of the advancing de- mocracy itself. Men cannot always^ stand out against their own consciousness when once it becomes clear that the tendency of natural law is to centralize the Class as a whole. The growing publicity regarding the law of ad- vancement and making for the complete liberty of the engineer must in time commit him to an alliance with his Class. The shortsighted and narrower issue tends to fall aside with the rearing of the supreme cause. The en- gineer must presently see that his fuller liberty and the cause of his home are pushing him to centralized union with his technical body as a whole. He must tend to realize that he can ultimately in the inner nature of things no more hold aloof from the union of his Class than he can from the union of the commonwealth. The present holding apart of the engineers is in sec- tions of the country little more than nominal. In the Great Northern strike in '94, at St. Paul and west, the en- gineers, as members of the Railway Union, were in the fight with the other divisions of that portion of the Trans- portation Class. The fight was won in part through the engineers supporting the cause. In other strikes they have gone so far in their sympathies as to refuse to take out their engines with non-union firemen. They know that they may sometime need return of favor. More than the sense of justice, which moves all great bodies, the en- gineers feel common cause with their fellow organiza- 3 34 THE ORGANIC STATE tions. In this the alliance may justly be prefigured. A force that is propelling the engineer toward essential policy and justice is the rising consciousness in democ- racy. At the Great Northern strike and at the Chicago strike the trades-people and working-men generally re- fused dealings with any one having an attitude averse to the strikers. Along the line of the Great Northern road during the contest those opposing the strikers found it hard to buy food or shelter. Some of the hotel men at Fargo put them out. And such of the railroadmen them- selves as would not actively support the cause were out- lawed in the attitude of the masses. Beyond the growing perception of the railroad men and the public generally as pushing all phases of railroad labor organizations together, we must see a compulsion upon such tendency in any condition that may arise which would require the railroad body to act as a whole, through a central head. Such would be the proposal to federate with some other Class advancing in organization, the conditions requiring the two Classes to have each a head. Or, in the growth of things, there may arise the necessity for the Class as a whole to deal with the state and national governments, through the courts or other medium ; these might refuse negotiations with anything less than a head empowered to act for the whole railroad body. The engineers would then find their direct inter- ests pressing for close organized relations of their divi- sion with the other divisions of the Class. We may watch for all conditions thus forwarding centralization among the railroad labor organizations. A menace to the engineers, as a body aloof in their Class, is the imminency of simple machinery for displac- ing the more complicated locomotive. Experiments in 1896 on the New Haven Railroad with the third rail for electric feeder, show the nearness of this. Should elec- tricity come in, the driving of an express train will be hardly more difficult than driving a motor street car. In fact, the proposition is to entirely do away with the loco- motive and put a motor on each car with a driver on the TRANSPORTATION 35 front platform, as in the tramway service. Should it thus become easier to displace the engineer, he will be ready to seek an alliance with the strength of the whole railroad body. Or we may see the three sections of the service — engineer, fireman, and brakeman — entering the one classi- fication of motormen, thus making alliance of these im- portant sections through technical amalgamation. Though the Railway Union as a nominal organization fall away, the idea of federation which is its reality can- not fail. If the movement stands for anything it stands for the principle of defensive co-operation among the branches of the railroad labor body. Sooner or later they must be driven to form a railway union, whatever be its name. The private and narrow view, as in the Post Office, obstructs the organization of Transportation. The lack of sight of the people opposes the trust, or centralization of the man- aging interest. The people, instructed in their partial views by the press, cry out against the Presidents' Joint Traffic Association as something in its nature vicious and subversive of the individual good. On the other hand the bond, or private, interest opposes the advance in the organization of the railroad labor unions. They see in such advance the ultimate downfall of the investment, or the private tax at will on labor. In some of the recent strikes in other fields, labor unions have gained the point of compelling the removal of offensive managers. The railroad king fears the last great issue in his defeat by the railway unions. • Such coming to pass would be the vir- tual control of the heads, or management, by the body of workers. It carries in it the principle of the election of the technical control, by labor — by the body of the Class. The counting-room sees in this that the move- ment is toward its subjugation by the wider interest. Seeing this, it strenuously opposes any large progress in labor organization. The feudal interest, in the private control, knows that it has entered upon the battle. The course of the whole conflict of interest here must be to advance the organism. Anything tending to make 36 THE ORGANIC STATE distinct the stand of the management as opposing the interest of the body of workers, going to intensify the conflict to extreme issue, must result in the final subjuga- tion of one side to the other. The final outcome of the struggle must be in favor of the economic conditions. We can but invite the conflict, until it brings the irrepres- sible issue of the control of the management by the Class as a whole. The Chicago strike of 1894 went far to intensify the issue. The offensive and defensive alliance of the rail- way managers against the American Railway Union came into prominence. This alliance of the managers was in existence before the strike for blacklisting employees, its animus being directed especially towards men active in labor organization. It exists to-day, in stronger force. It aims at the full issue of the strike, in the persistent following of organized labor. Under the machine of its so-called labor bureau, every road in the alliance refuses work to any one active in the strike or known to be at present influential in labor organization, of a grade below the engineers. An employee coming under the dis- pleasure of some road, for these or other reasons, is dis- charged and refused clearance papers, the latter whengiven amounting to a recommendation to favorable considera- tion by other roads. Without ' 'clearance, " the discharged is unable to get work on any road belonging to the alliance or in sympathy with it, meaning any road in America. The roads are bent on subjecting the men by starvation. Latterly the alliance has worked to carry the election for Mr. McKinley, making for the control of legislation, the Federal courts and the army. Facing this, the members of labor organizations have become con- scious that their existence is at stake. As the essential body of democracy, labor must see its own advancement in the increasing assertion and aggres- siveness of the feudal management, tending to arouse the public. In this final pass of the private control, which stops at nothing to perpetuate itself, we must see Anarchy, the partial interest, opposing the organizing Class as the TRANSPORTATION 37 advance of the State in the growing order and equality. The intensity of the private interest may be trusted to overreach itself as in the fifties. The result must be the precipitation of the climax, in one form or another, as in 1 86 1. Bound up in his limited view and insensible to the jar of the earth the slave-holding Brigadier in the earlier day asserted to the last the powerlessness of forces, that democracy did not carry within itself its own correction, and that it was not a union. But, nevertheless, Grant rode down the lines at Appomattox. And until the Chicago upheaval in 1894, perhaps the beginning of the final des- perate stand of the feudal lord, the wheel has not gone so far over. The coming to bay of the feudal interest and its last entrenchment in the anarchy of obstructive process, has its method illustrated at the Chicago strike. It is not different from the treatment with which the malady of old conditions in conflict with the rising consciousness of the people has sought to stay itself at every fever of the State. In all the story of renewing life it has been hard for the clogged and fatted interest to take the legal prescription for the purging of congested tubes. The sick of a failing movement turns rather to the charlatan with his incantations and who feeds still the occluded passage. When the conditions were gathering for the Revolution in France, the king dismissed Turgot, the just minister, at the dictation of the nobles. A new science and the proposal of releasing remedies is embar- rassing when the feudal lord has entered upon a severe course of old things. The extra flesh-pot at Chicago was the assertion of the intense individualism disguised under any convenient form of the public good. And in some cases not dis- guised. Under the Interstate Commerce Act, directed ostensibly against corporations in their restraint of trade, injunctions were issued by the Federal courts which re- sulted in jailing the leaders of the strike. This law, under which the courts nominally acted, had previously been declared inoperative by the leading Federal judges. 38 THE ORGANIC STATE Its life was revived by the courts against the strikers, who were declared to be acting in restraint of commerce be- tween the states. It seems the question of the restraint of the interstate commerce turned on the fact that cars loaded in Illinois were prevented through so-called con- spiracy, or combination, of the strikers from leaving the state ; and also that cars passing through the state were delayed in their movement ; and that the U. S. Mails were obstructed. Here was the appearance of the individualistic stand under the guise of public good. The strike had its origin in the demands of the em- ployees of the Pullman Car Works for sufficient wages and other conditions for enabling them to perform their division of labor in the State. Clearly they were ob- structed by the private ownership in the person of Mr. Pullman in the fundamental commerce with their fellows. But no writ of the Federal court issued against Mr. Pullman in his obstruction of this underlying commerce. The distinction of the judiciary, as the logic of its action, is therefore clearly that interstate trade is a bill of lading. Apparently in this distinction they do not take any account of the making of the goods or of the question of the man as an efficient instrument in making them. The individualistic interpretation rears itself in the failure to see that any kind of commerce whatever has its reduc- tion in the service of the individual in the interest of the whole. The failure of the judge in his distinction is that he does not see that the crippling of the Pullman car builder in his duties might be as far-reaching in its ob- struction as would be the sidetracking of any number of bags of mail or cars of beef. Mr. Pullman, in his private holdings obstructive of the whole, was dismissed in- violable by th.e public mandate, while the judge hastened to formulate his individualistic definition. Again, the courts seem not to have weighed the new principle pressing in another form for decision. This is the public need for labor to organize and better its service to the State. The court in handing out its injunctions upon the leaders of organized labor seems not to have TRANSPORTATION 39 taken cognizance of the fact that the reality of its man- date was itself obstructive of this the most vital distinc- tion and far-reaching movement in commerce to-day. Had the court informed itself in other than private view it would find that the exaction of a transportation tax from the people to pay interest on from six to eight billions of fraudulent railroad paper has more of moment in the stalling of commerce than any strike of organized labor of which we know. The judge in effect erected the pri- vate and fraudulent investments against the basic move- ment of the State, which, in its ultimate development in the line of organized labor, being the incline toward car- riage at cost, goes to obliterate the private tax upon the circulation of the State. When we look toward Washington we find that again in the history of busy insects at court, the King had dismissed his just minister — let such be any man capable of recognizing the principles of industrial order. Instead of finding his resources of counsel in a man balanced in the bread issues of affairs, Mr. Cleveland had his advisor in the person of a man corrupted in thought through a generation of service in the individualistic doctrines. This man, Mr. Olney, his Attorney-General, was a cor- poration lawyer old in the cunning which interprets the extreme private interest under the guise of the public good. Born to the pettifogger's court, -Mr. Cleveland in his double years of office had plied his vocation of "get- ting on. " He was the better in this through intrenchment in some millions of the private investments acquired in a purported service of the people. He was thus a party in the cause of the strenuous private interest at the bar of the court. Forwarding this uncleanness of the adminis- trative hand, an investment lawyer, attorney for one of the roads in the controversy, was sent to Chicago by Mr. Cleveland to direct the movement of the judiciary in the matter of the creation of the injunctions or what else, and to give the word for the calling out of the Federal troops which the evidence shows had been outlined beforehand by the representatives of the private, or corporate, inter- 40 THE ORGANIC STATE est. The troops were sent and camped in the city on the call of the feudal attorney, whatever nominal process it assumed. It does not appear in the reports of the strike that there was warrant in necessity or custom for the proceeding, and it was against the protest of the local authorities who a short while before in the coal-mine strikes, measurably as formidable, had successfully as- serted the peace. It was clearly the private interest reas- suring itself by the overawing phase of the military ; indi- vidualism had become alarmed at its own length of procedure. The climax in the defence of the individualistic doctrine came with the packed jury which, on the showing of the corporation lawyers, and the general alarm raised by the press, indicted Mr. Debs and the other strike leaders for asserting the Organism, the new integrity of democracy, the new Union. It matters not what the reading of the indictment may have been, it had the circumstances of its creation in the betrayal of the new consciousness of men, the new State. This jury which returned the in- dictments jailing the leaders of the strike, was without re- presentation of organized labor upon its lists. The rich had procured it. If the point is raised that it has not hitherto been law or custom to indict the private holdings as phase of con- spiracy in restraint of commerce, we may reply in kind. It may be asked how long it has been statute or cus- tom to interpret as conspiracy in restraint of trade the advance of organization in the State, the advance of com- merce through the labor unions ? If labor men in organi- zation, seeking in the underlying reality to promote the life of the public service, are conspirators in restraint of com- merce, what have the courts to say of a combination of railroad managers acting in ways subversive to this growing life of the State ? And why did not injunctions issue in the last case ? Or, as action conserving equally each case, why did not the court bring both parties, in a controversy overstepping order, and inquire the middle ground of public policy as affecting both ? The court TRANSPORTATION 41 could have arrested both the Managers' Association and the strike leaders as menacing the peace. It would then have had left to adjust the issue on the facts of the public welfare. This would be to forward the reasonable de- mands of fretted and ill-conditioned workers on the one side ; while on the other, there would be restraint of the overreaching private interest. If the warrant for the new proceeding by injunction, the new interpretation, rests in public policy in the one case it must also in the other. Finally, it is left to ask where the court is leading in its lesion which thus divides the State in its interpretation of public polity? If the point is urged that the railroad management was not manifestly anarchistic or violent, the answer is that disorder of whatever kind is both anarchistic and violent. And the answer continues, that ihe gatling gun of a suborned administration and an illogical judge, thinking to indict a principle, is the last degree of anarchy. Through the lack of economic relations between the organ of carriage and ihe whole, and the corresponding disorder of ihe organ of carriage itself , we find parts of the organism overfull, congested, and other portions depleted, starving. Adjustment between the organ of carriage and the whole has its meaning in efficiency of service at cost. If other organs are not receiving the proper return for service from Transportation the whole must be that much disordered in its movement, in its exchange of service, or nutrition. And if Transportation goes beyond exact division of labor and takes double what it gives, double its own service, diverting it to private channels, the social body as a whole is that much impoverished, there is that much de- pression of exchange, of nutrition ; other organs in their individual members must have as much less as Transpor- tation diverts. If in the animal body the heart does not give its level pulse, we have for result a lessened movement and lowered tone in each organ ; the sluggish circulation, begetting a faulty trade in chemistry, impairs the body in one and all its parts. If in the other view the blood congests, is unlawfully diverted to any place, these 42 THE ORGANIC STATE parts are overwhelmed in proportion as others are starved. In either view, the body becomes an inoperative and un- related miasma. The physician of the human body carries in his mind two main classifications of diseases. Both alike have their origin in disturbance of the circulation, that is, a lack in the balance of growth and repair — a disturbance of the exchange which is nutrition. The great wen, or fatty tumor, upon the shoulder is an occasional spectacle to the layman. The physician finds that this is due to disturbance of nutrition in the excessive production of diverted, or unbalanced, cells. And in the other direction most people are acquainted with the weak and shrunken hand of the man paralysed in this member. The physi- cian finds that the hand fails of its nutrition because it is cut off from full blood supply. In the first instance, the disturbed circulation gives us a monstrosity unrelated to any normal economies of the body. And in the second instance, a diverted circulation shows in the lifeless mem- ber. Following the same law, the types reappearing in the evolution of life, we find that the disturbed circulation in one direction in the social body produces a monstrosity of unbalanced cell-life in the crowded centres of popula- tion. In the other direction some section or community has, like the shrunk hand, become dormant in its life — through a depleted circulation places and persons are starved, dead, cut off from the active movement of the State. The life of the overgrowth, the crowded city, car- ries likewise its aspect of starvation in unrelated, low life. It is the nature of the unbalanced cell, or the excess and unfunctioned growth, that it is of low quality and low resistance, tending ultimately to break down and become the malignant tumor or cancerous sore. Fifth Avenue in New York, representing generations of unfunctioned life, exhibits the tendency of the running sore, the malignant decay in democracy. We know it in the debauchery and excess of the unbalanced and errant life of the later generations in the aristocratic portion of the great city. And adjacent and involved in the meshes of this tumor TRANSPORTATION 43 are the broken cells of the State — the slums of New York and other cities. The great growth has fed upon this broken life. We come thus to view as abnormal in the State the excessive growth on the one hand and the slow, isolated and deprived life of portions of the common- wealth on the other. Discrimination, or inequality, in rates acts to cut off sections of the State from carriage, impoverishing them. The inequality of rates affecting different parts of the country lodges in the present principle of fixing charges. This is the making of distance a factor, or computing rates on the basis of the long and short haul, nominally a uniform rate per mile. If the distance is twice as great the charge is twice as much, though this is modified considerably in long distance hauls, for otherwise the toll would eat up the freight, which in some cases it does, notwithstanding. That this principle of fixing charges makes for inequality of different portions of the country, has example in every locality. In more notable cases we find certain sections of the West paying double price for coal — people west of the Missouri pay approximately ten dollars for coal where the citizens of New York State pay approximately five dollars. This double charge is the difference in the cost of transportation added to the price of coal. The Western section is again dis- advantaged by the rates on the commodities which it sells. The price of grain west of the Missouri is usually quoted at ten cents less a bushel than the seaboard farmer is paid for his. This is the Western farmer's grain reduced in price by the amount of the freight charge to Eastern points. This ten-cent reduction in the price of his wheat and the five-dollar increase on a ton of fuel has for a number of years represented about that much cut off the meagre living of the average trans-Mississippi farmer ; deprived of these two leading items he barely has food left, with no margin of leisure or movement or other of the amenities of existence. The farmer, coming off the prairie into the cheerless village, to deliver his grain at the station, can seldom take home the basket of 44 THE ORGANIC STATE grapes, costing fifty cents, which he passes in the grocer's window, and which has the memory of tree-walled fields in the home from which inequality had forced him. Im- mobile conditions sap his spirit. And we know the common practice of the Nebraska farmer who burns his corn for fuel because railroad rates have made coal beyond his reach. After years of labor in improve- ments on his farm, without returns to meet his mortgage, his roof is sold over his head. If he repeats the opera- tion or if he becomes a renter it is still the same deprivation as regards any movement adequate in the life of man. And the experience of such is the ex- perience of whole sections of the country wherever we turn. In portions of California numberless of the smaller ranchers have been abandoning their places, worn out with the futile effort to pay even the annual interest on the mortgage, preferring to work a five acres ' ' on shares" for the barest substance and a leaky roof. The farm holder and the farm laborer quite commonly join fortunes and become tramps in search of work and food. Mor- rison Swift, writing in 1896, relates this typical case of California fruit growing: "Near Wright's Station, a rancher owning nearly forty acres of fruit trees, unmort- gaged, stated that in '94 he lost between three and four hundred dollars by picking fruit with the assistance of hired help. The succeeding year he hired but one man, letting the fruit fall and rot that could not be picked. By this species of economy, himself and wife working overtime, he came out a few dollars ahead." The ranchers paying the long-distance haul cannot get returns where the railroad charge is deducted from their sales. Against this, the grower near the great markets has some advantage, though the prostrating charges for even short hauls often amount to stagnation. Continuing, Miss Kent, stock-ranching in Wyoming, worked four years growing a carload of Norman horses. In 1 896 she sent these to New Orleans. The agent there was obliged to bill her for $200 to cover freight charges over and above the sale of the horses, though they brought a good price and the TRANSPORTATION 45 commission was low. The Boston publication, The Arena, October, 1895, relates two instances of confiscation by the long-distance rates. In the summer of '95 a car- load of potatoes was shipped from Colorado to Chicago. The railway charge was $28 more than the sale of the potatoes. Thirty cases of peas shipped from Texas to Chicago were sold on Water Street for $22, while the ex- press charges were $26. The grower in the South and the small merchant dependent upon him suffer the same way. Individual farmers and farmers' clubs have in instances tried shipment of water-melons, sweet-potatoes, and green vegetables to the Northern markets. The almost invariable result is that the longer distance charge leaves them nothing for their labor. In some cases, like the above, the freight charge has not left enough to meet the cost of selling, the farmer finding himself in debt to the commission merchant. In the fall of 1896 some farmers in a Southern state contributed a number of barrels of sweet-potatoes to the New York Journal fund for the Bryan canvass. The commission merchant who sold them for the Journal got but little more than enough out of the sale to pay the freight and his own charges, and that at regular rates. The long distance charge had absorbed the shipment. The contributory points, the places where a number of railroads centre, tend to uneconomic growth and crowd- ing, through the unequal rates. The large buyers or dis- tributors of the products of the manufactory and the farm tend to come together at these points on account of ad- vantages of collecting and forwarding products. In addi- tion to better shipping facilities, such centres have advantages in the way of telegraph and letter post. Economic conditions of communication and distribution rightly tend to build the more or less populous centres, but the unequal rates tend to create proliferation and growth beyond such conditions. We know that the manufacturer, other things being equal, finds it to his ad- vantage to save heavy charges on his freight — especially if double, one in to the centre and one out. To have his 46 THE ORGANIC STATE factory at a favorable point gives the manufacturer ad- vantage of a single haul on his product. An industry- brought to a centre often means an addition of several thousand people to the population. The manufacturers' operatives and their families are moved from the country to the town and the small shop-keeper follows them, for their consumption represents his business. Again, the long-haul charge tends to over-fill the immediate region of such a centre with the farming element that feeds it, or that has to ship its produce through the centre as point of distribution. We are familiar with the crowding of the farming region immediate to the great city. Much of the gardening for New York is done within the thirty-mile limit. But for the long-haul rate it would be distributed over the state and other states, tending to seek soil and climate advantageous for any particular product. When the hot-house men around New York and other Northern cities are putting a few green vegetables on the market at a price beyond the reach of most people and outside of reality in trade, vegetables and fruits are growing out of doors in Georgia under conditions of their cheapest production. Or when in the summer the gardeners around New York are working under the disadvantage of a gravel and shallow soil for their celery beds, muck fields in the interior of the state are without planting. Similar uneconomic facts often prevail in locating a fac- tory in one of these centres of distribution. But for the double long-haul charge an industry would seek location by water courses or other advantages of power. And reasons urge that operatives of a factory should have their acre garden and their home on the ground instead of en- during the crowding and deprivations of the tenement district in the city. This latter fact might alone avail to place the factory in the open region. The questions of the equalization of the population and correspondingly of trade, are thus seen to depend in much on the equalization of railroad rates. That is, the singie rate to and from all points, as with postage. Obviously, the recession from the centres into the stag- TRANSPORTATION 47 nating districts waits in measure upon the removal of the cause of congestion. The abuses which have multiplied under the unequal rate tend to further the excess growths and to dry up the sections contributing to these. The custom has grown up among the railroad managers of giving to individuals and certain terminals, special advantages, or cuts, in rates. The result is that the dealers and manufacturers living at points not so favored by the will of a railroad chief are either crushed in business or they remove to points where they can get the reduced rate. A combina- tion of railroad managers like the Joint Traffic Associa- tion, working under the principle of the unequal rate, can thus turn the tide of blood from one city or terminal to another, by the simple exercise of its pleasure. A decade ago Kansas City was a rising entrepot as immediate dis- tributive centre of the great stock regions west and south- west of that point. At this juncture the big Chicago packing houses, finding trade dividing between them- selves and the Kansas City packer and in other ways seeking a normal level throughout the country, secured rates from the railroad managers by which shippers could bring cattle into Chicago at half the rate of carriage to Kansas City ; and with similar advantages in rates from Chicago to eastern points they have been able to limit the growth of the Kansas City packing industries. With the decline of these, Kansas City and its region have lan- guished. Similarly, Cincinnati and Indianapolis have fallen away from their former position in the packing business and we see the whole industry virtually central- izing itself in Chicago in the hands of two or three men possessing the special advantages with which the railroad kings have endowed them. In turn, these men become in their growth manipulators of the railroads and masters of the fortunes of the great cities. For they can at will throw their shipments to this or that road and favor this or that terminal as distributive point. The methods by which the railroads evade the statutes denying these special favoritisms to individuals and 48 THE ORGANIC STATE towns is by charging the regular rate and then paying back a rebate— often from one-third to two-thirds the charge. The Federal Grand Jury in November, 1891, presented an indictment against Swift & Co. , the dressed beef shippers of Chicago, for having received $5,000 a month in rebates from one road alone, the Nickel Plate. Considering that train loads of their cars may be seen any day passing east or west over the various lines centering at Chicago, some computation can be made of the enor- mous gifts which they receive nominally from the rail- roads but virtually through tax upon the great body of other shippers and of the producers in the remote regions. For on the showing that the railroads are bound to make so much anyway we know that if one town or in- dividual is favored with less rates some other town or individual has to make up the deficiency in the road's revenues. We know that the Standard Oil Company, as one of these favored shippers, now in some respects dic- tator to the roads, usually receives half a million dollars a month in rebates. This is the secret of the crushing out of the smaller refiners in oil. The long distance rates in their case practically amounted to confiscation of their plants. They were compelled to sell to the Standard Oil Company at the latter's figures, or close up. This favoritism in rates works in certain cases to com- pletely prostrate the country districts. It is the custom in the fall in western states like Nebraska for grain rates to be held up to the long distance charge or at a point which makes it impossible for the farmer or small dealer to ship. The rate to Chicago, for instance, would practi- cally confiscate the whole load. Dealers favored by the railroad with the rate, buy up the corn at a price that leaves the farmer impoverished. Similarly we see these favored shippers handling the sweet-potatoes and melons in the South and paying the farmers prices that are not very far removed from starvation of the whole section which they touch. In general reflection, it is apparent that the circulation, or commerce, of the State is stopped in any large pro- TRANSPORTATION 49 portion where the medium of trade in carriage, hinders or prevents. The reality of it is as simple as the creation of an impassable barrier between sections. It amounts to this : A shoemaker in Massachusetts, standing- for the life of his section, needs to sell his shoes to a farmer in Georgia. The latter, standing for the movement of his section, needs to sell watermelons in Massachusetts or New York. If the shoemaker and farmer in sending their products to each other find the profit part of their loads confiscated on the way, then they are compelled to stop trading. An impassable barrier has been erected which they cannot cross. Trade and the life of each section is dead. In asking what is the matter with the languishing business of the country, we find important bearing here : that trade, so far as dependent on free communication, has been killed by the railroad. The tendency of the railroads is to become more auto- cratic and overbearing, crippling trade. The whole New England system is now practically combined in one great corporation. Its general policy under the un- equal rate is to stifle the movement of the region. In their purpose to absolutely possess this territory, they have secured most of the wharfage in Boston and other New England ports, the tendency being to control the water lines in conjunction with their railroad system. They have gone beyond this to exercise control of the state and county officials elected by the people, with the effect that these officials have of late refused license or charter to extend the trolley lines which had begun to move out into the adjoining regions from Hartford, Bos- ton and other points. General Freight Agent Mellen in- formed the Board of Trade of Hartford not long ago that his corporation was not an elymosynary enterprise; this was his justification of the rates which the Board of Trade regarded as blighting to the region, from which they asked relief. The action of the Presidents' Joint Traffic Association is strenuously towards upholding the unequal rate. They have recently cut off the excursion fares to Niagara Falls from the central passenger district. And in 50 THE ORGANIC STATE general results, we observe that the prostration and dis- content of the farmer and trader of the remote regions are growing more and more. The single rate to all parts of the country based on the cost of service for the average haul is the economic adjust- ment of transportation charges. The controlling thing here is the interest of the whole as promoted by the one- fare rate, on the cost-of-service principle seen in the Post Office. Or, conversely, it is the promotion of the indi- vidual interest through forwarding the interest of the whole in the equal rate. We readily get this view if we conceive the interest of the whole best promoted by ser- vice at the point of least friction. For instance, a man raising beef, as his division of labor, or contribution to the whole, should not be put to any unnecessary disad- vantage in his service. Conditions in the operation of the State should tend at every point to promote his ser- vice instead of retarding it. The prime condition discommoding, or disrupting, service in the State is the inequality of rates in general, that is, a non-uniform exchange, of any product, whether it be transportation or grapes. It has been the purpose of some pages to show the viciousness of the unequal rate in transportation. A single instance as typical of trade in other directions should go to enforce the equal rate, on whatever product, as universal principle under- lying the interests of the State and the individual. If we go to a grocery store to find that the price of grapes in one basket is 25 cents and in another basket 50 cents, we ask the reason of the difference, the fruit being es- sentially the same. The answer, under the unequal com- putation, couid well be that the 25-cent grapes are home grown and that the 50-cent grapes are from California, having paid longer carriage, or, in another case, having come from higher priced land. It is clear that the man who gets the 25-cent grapes has at a disadvantage the man who gets the 50-cent grapes. The question presents itself whether there is not some solution that will equalize the price of grapes and so relieve the confusion TRANSPORTATION 51 and inequality. The first thought would be to add the two prices together and divide them by two — that is, put the average, or one rate, price upon each. Every man would in this tend to work under equal conditions. We would ask the dealer to proceed on the equalizing prin- ciple that all the grapes were raised on a common farm and that the railroad, or in another instance, the aggre- gate cost of certain land added so much to the total cost of any particular grade of any particular kind of grape. In other words, we would ask the distributor to proceed on the principle of division of labor, which is the construction of the operative State ; that is, give every man equal conditions of service. Pursuantly, we may see that the basic unit of compu- tation for any line of production in the State is the aver- age cost of living. On the face of things, the State can- not complicate its accounts with entries for as many different prices of labor as there are millions of individual men. It must have a uniform rate of wage for all men as the best practical adjustment obtainable in the nutri- tion of service. In addition to food, clothing, housing, etc., — recuperation by vacation, short hours and other needful items may be seen as phases of the nutrition of service. It is reckoned that the interest of the whole primarily demands the average cost of nutrition to the in- dividual in all that that implies — full life and movement. If service suffers under given conditions of average, it has to be remedied by raising or lowering the average unit of living, as required. And this average cost of nutrition, or unit, is the uniform cost of service paid the individual by the State, that is, his rate of wage. It must here be seen that the State can get no compu- tation on this average cost of service unless the items of its computation, or rates on a given product, are uniform. Otherwise, there remains the vitiating fact that under in- equality of rate some man is fattening and some other man is starving, working toward the complete undoing of industrial life. For instance, the State in comput- ing the cost of service finds that the average person eats 52 THE ORGANIC STATE so many grapes per year ; if the State goes any further with the computation, if its figures are to be practically operative, as reaching through to equality in men's lives, it must have a uniform price on grapes of a given grade. Or, it is found that a man sends so many letters per year, being the whole number of letters divided by the number of people ; the continuance of the computation, on prac- tical lines, requires a uniform price on postage. In fine, it is not potential in economics to reckon the average cost of service, as underlying unit of computation in the State, unless there is an average price on each article or each grade of an article of consumption. Finally, if each article has, in the interest of the State, to be a uniform price, the transportation charge as en- tering into all items of consumption must be uniform, else the computation is instantly at fault and the State is not feasible, at once facing the general disorder of present conditions. Or, again, if we cannot reach lines of aver- age service, cannot equalize the movement of the State, uniform rates of transportation being required, we are thrown back on the present situation with its starvation and asphyxia in one section and the festering congestion of another — conditions underlying red nightmare. The unit of transportation which gives basis of uniform rate has to be computed in terms of some comprehensive average of what the railway does. What an egg does, we may see, is its contribution to the whole. But an egg, simply, without further reduction, is the comprehensive unit of an egg's doing. The economic form in which to compute its results, is as so much nutrition, briefly, which is fitly represented by the term egg. Not so the railroad. What the railroad does is, in one instance, to transport a given number of passengers 3,000 miles, a much greater number 1,000 miles, and it transports a many times greater number less than 25 miles. Again, the railroad shows another class of doing in transporting given tons of freight varying distances, from 1 mile to 3,000. To get any rendering of what the railroad does as sum of doing we have in the first case to reduce the varying rides of TRANSPORTATION 53 passengers to the average ride. And in the second place we reduce the varying hauls per car to the average haul. If we take the whole number of passengers in a year and the total distance which they travel and then divide the latter by the former we find that the average ride per passenger is close to 25 miles. And similar figuring shows that the average car haul is close to 125 miles. It is this average alone that gives us comprehensive grasp of what Transportation does, at once advancing us to an economic base for computing a uniform rate. That is, what a railroad does, in its reduction on the passenger side, is to give a ride of 25 miles. Distance does not in any controlling sense enter into it. It no more enters into it as expression of results than does a grade, or a curve, or a tunnel, or a bridge. It is as legitimate to estimate railroad results by curves, grades, bridges, tunnels, stop- ping and starting, etc., as it is to estimate by distance. In fact these items are often many times as expensive as is running distance, considered in itself. So that if we are to get any grasp of what the railroad does it must be in terms of its average resultant — its whole doing. And this we have seen, on the passenger side, is the ride, one ride. Similarly; we may say, referring to freight, that what Transportation does is to haul a loaded car 125 miles. We have- next to find the average cost in each of these cases, the ride and the car haul, as entering into cost of service in the State. In other words, what does it cost the State to give a man one ride or to draw one car ? We may be informed at once that the proposition of conservative economics is to make the rate on this aver- age service equal to the lowest rate now charged on any road, either in fares or freight carriage. This would be five cents for a ride on any passenger train to any place, the passenger getting on the train where he likes and get- ting off where he likes ; he may get on at New York, and get off at Yonkers, the first station, or he might get off at San Francisco, the last station, paying but the one rate, five cents, for the one ride any distance. On the freight side, the proposition is to make the rate $6 for open, or 54 THE OR&ANIO STATE flat cars, and $8 for box cars, any distance and whether the car be full or partly full. The proposition on the smallest package is ten cents from domicile to domicile, whatever the distance. Larger packages would increase the rate by small gradations. The general considerations entering into the proposition to the low uniform of rates are, first, the actual cost of ser- vice. Next, comprehended in this, that rolling-stock be handled at its capacity. The average freight car now makes scarcely twelve hauls a year. By reducing the time limit for loading and unloading to one day each it could serve ten times its present use. Another item in the full working of rolling-stock is the carrying of full trains, freight and passenger. The average passenger train now is two cars, about half filled. The big passenger loco- motive can draw twelve or fifteen cars full, which it is estimated the low rates would crowd, just as the five-cent fares now crowd the street cars. The average freight train now carries only a small portion of what the engine can haul, and a large part of these cars are empty. A consideration is that it practically costs no more to run the train to its full capacity than it does to run it at the present low service. And it costs practically as much to build and man the road for a single half train a day as one hundred full trains. The difference in expense is so small an item that it does not materially affect the figures. And a considerable item in the wear and tear of rolling stock at the present time is non-use and decay. In addi- tion to all this as making for advance of service, but not entering into the computation, is the proposition of Westinghouse to build locomotives burning but one- twelfth the fuel at present consumed. And all are familiar with the prospect of great cheapening in motor service in the growth of electricity and other inventions in power. Conservative men, like Mr. Ackworth in Eng- land, foresee the possibility of one-cent fares to any part of the world. The basis of the computation in passenger rates, as shown, is that a train on an average empties itself every TRANSPORTATION 55 twenty-five miles, the length of the average ride. It costs to run a twelve-car train on almost any road con- siderably less than $1.00 per mile — and by some expert estimates not anywhere near half that. But we may take the $1.00 as the outside conservative limit. The run be- tween New York and Chicago is 1,000 miles. The twelve-car train carries, when full, 780 passengers ; through emptying itself every twenty-five miles it would carry in the journey of 1,000 miles considerably more than 30,000 passengers, or in terms of the unit of com- putation, 30,000 rides. The cost per passenger, the per ride, would be not much above three cents. Even though the train went but a little more than half full it is seen that five cents would cover the cost of each ride. To repeat, this is the outside conservative estimate. Better figures would reduce it to one or two cents a ride. And if we extend the system to include the street cars and trolleys of the populous districts, the estimate falls considerably below one cent a ride. And these figures would cover, under economic conditions, construction both of the roads and the rolling stock, with full manning, re- pairs and reconstruction. It will be noticed that no separate account is taken of the long distance passenger. He is regarded as a mere incident in the general movement and of course he has originally been figured in on the average. In the usual train there are always enough empty seats to accommo- date him, and in the general movement he is not noticed; his fare is simply so much gain, affording so much re- duction to the average. But in the present view, the through passenger would tend to class in a fast train ser- vice which in itself cannot be much supported by the local, or way, traffic and so does not so often empty itself. The average ride on such trains roughly approximates 100 miles, so that such a train might empty itself a half- dozen times between New York and Chicago. It would be the proposition of the present, requiring these fast trains to be self-supporting, to fix the rate on them for any dis- tance at $1.00, with an increase for." palace-car" service. 50 THE ORGANIC STATE In the oulleading toward the further organization of the Tra?isportation Class, the public sight takes the direction of Government ownership of the railroads. This popular movement now gaining ground is of course organic and toward a centralized head, as v/ith the Post Office. The man who sees the organic State will abet the popular movement toward Government ownership, as it is in the direction of the reality of what he is seeking, by whatever name. [The full account of the abuses under the unequal rate and its natural tendency to monstrosities of ser- vice, together with the full treatment of the equable cost-of-service rate for all distances, has been wrought out in a popular vein by James Lewis Cowles, in his little book, " General Freight and Passenger Post : A Practical Solution of the Railroad Problem" (Putnam's, New York, 75 cents). Mr. Cowles' easy indictment of the system makes the convincing propaganda for the Government ownership of railroads. All may read his waking account for the fuller story, the romance of the feudal rail. It might become the catechism in the home. The book contains references to the more exhaustive bibliography in statistics, etc. There are other popular books on the subject] Ihe newspaper in relation to the advance in organization of the Transportation Class has the adverse view, in line with its attitude toward the Post Office advance. In exceptional cases there is uncertainty of utterance ; but the general press speaks more or less positively against the Govern- ment ownership of railroads. The management of the newspaper does not discern the unfolding position of the State and does not see that the advance is mounting, defer or obstruct it as we will. As in the Post Office, the press speaks against a flood of office-holding and the domination of the will of the people by a President who should come into so much patronage ; they say that we are confronted with the likelihood of an administration re-electing itself by the numbers and power of its own constabulary. Without going any deeper than the sur- TRANSPORTATION 57 face, the reply to this is, of course, that the country might as well be run by a President, retaining a certain subjec- tion to the people, as to be run by a combination of rail- road presidents who, as we have seen, hold absolutely the power of life and death over the nation's being, while controlled by the principle of the private, interest which tends to subject the popular good These men them- selves possess all the patronage which the feudal editor professes to fear, should it pass to the Government. The Vanderbilt system has in its immediate gift something like a quarter of a million places. In 1896 this army of employees were served with notice to vote for Mr. Van- derbilt's candidate for President. How many were sub- jected to his coercion through threats and innuendo quietly passed by'the immediate lieutenants of his service cannot now be known. The proposition of the Government ownership is the proposition to limit the private patron- age now assuming such frightful proportions. And to the cry of the press against paternalism in government, the reply is taken that it is better to be fathered by the vote of the whole people and the instruments which it creates than to be fathered by the private interest aiming to sub- ject the whole machinery of government in its effort to establish its licentious will. It is better to be fathered by the principle of the public good than to be fathered by the anarchy of private greed. We need not expect that the newspapers, so far as allied to this dissolution of prin- ciple, will be quick to welcome a day of judgment by the people on the usurpation of government, which day may be forecast. Fearful of revealing its hand, the newspaper's defense of the private interest ever takes on semblance of the public weal. It urges that the Government would have to bond itself for above nine billions, the present paper on which the railroads are taxing America. We may suppose it did so bond itself ; it would be but doing what is now done actually under the greatest license to irregularity. The private ownership is now exacting from the people a measure of interest on these bonds, without giving the public any accounting. The meaning 58 THE ORGANIC STATE of the Joint Traffic Association is to steady these securi- ties, over two-thirds fraudulent, as representing no expen- diture whatever. The ultimate purpose is to collect from the body politic the face of this forged paper in gold. The newspapers draw a distinction between watering milk and watering securities. The railroads are further taxing the public for enormous salaries and the wholesale plun- dering of investors in the guise of rolling stock and ter- minal companies. The officials of a road organize a rolling-- stock or terminal company and officer it themselves, or with their own people. They then turn round and rent, in one case, the rolling stock, and, in the other case, the terminal facilities, to the road at rates sufficient to take its best earnings — the "rake-off," in broker's par- lance. These schemes are invented to rob the stockhold- ers and to deceive the public as to the actual earnings of the road, the rentals paid to the bogus rolling-stock and terminal companies being counted as legitimate ex- penses. Legislatures attempting to reduce rates on the roads have been confronted with these accounts to show that the road could not pay expenses if its rates were in any way cut. But did the government move to possess the roads in fee simple, it could be by purchase on the basis of the ac- tual cost, as determined by experts who were familiar with construction. This would reduce the inflated values. For instance, a section of the Northern Pacific in Minn- esota was bonded, or stocked, for grading alone at$25,ooo a mile, when the actual cost was less than $1,000 a mile. Similarly, a certain station on the prairie, costing not $500, was audited at New York and passed into the fraudulent paper of the Company at §15,000. The newspaper, to the extent of vitiating its news col- umns, has gone to the defence of these securities, and of course the whole private interest, as connecting with its own counting-room. At the time of the Chicago rail- road disturbances of '94 the newspapers struck hands with the railroad managers. The press taking the alarm at the possible defeat of the railroads by organized labor TRANSPORTATION 59 began deliberately to create news prejudicial to the strikers. The character of the dispatches was such as to lead the public to suppose that organized labor had de- veloped into an armed mob bent upon burning property and destroying life. Whereas the facts in the case were that the strikers were an organized and orderly body, officered by men with reasonable respect for the rights of things. The leaders and the great army of strikers were well aware that any marked disorder would spread alarm to the public and work against their interest. Their atti- tude was in the direction of order. Whatever disorder took place was, with respect to the great body of the strikers, of the character of the stragglers that go with an army. And of the threats against life and of the com- paratively small destruction of property that took place the charge has been made that these were the work of hired agents of the railroad managers. Most of the destruction of property was due to fires located in yards distant from water so that the fire department could not perform its duties. And the few fires that occurred were set by stealth. This charge against the railroad mana- gers has support in the character of the fires and in the fact that if the railroads could substantiate the report which they sent out, that the fires were set by a mob having no connivance with themselves, they could collect full pay for the $200,000 or $300,000 worth of property which the estimate shows was destroyed. Though this money is subject to simple draft on proof of loss by mob, the railroads have never made any attempt to collect it. It seems improbable that they will attempt to collect it, unless through some turn in the elections they gain a court that will do their bidding. Exaggerated reports of riot- ing, loss of life and incendiary words by the leaders of the strike were made up by the newspapers and tele- graphed over the country. No other news was obtain- able, as the machine of News, the Associated Press with its wires, was party to the conspiracy. The Chicago newspapers, in whose rooms much of the matter going over the wires was written, deliberately put inflamed CO THE ORGANIC STATE words upon Mr. Debs. And they represented him as drunk during the strike. As is now known, he is a man who works on the concept of order and one who does not drink intoxicants in the sense conveyed. A reporter on a newspaper in Dearborn street was sent to see Mr. Debs and instructed to draw him into intemperate language, and if he could not do this to put the words into his mouth. He was told that a long dispatch full of mutter- ing was needed to send over the country that afternoon. Failing to entrap Mr. Debs and bringing in but a mild re- port showing containment by the strike leaders, he was discharged from the newspaper and blacklisted on other of the Chicago dailies. Any words of Mr. Debs at first sight apparently straining this view, have the aspect of mildness when regarded as the struggling for utterance of a new Union in the State and directed against the slave-holding league. One can but recall that some of the same newspapers, at another strike, said of Mr. Lin- coln's speeches that they were the utterance of a fire- brand. The papers distorted the utterances of Governor Altgeld in relation to the strike. His intelligent and con- servative dispatches to President Cleveland protesting against the camping of the Federal troops in Chicago were deliberately garbled by leading newspapers and by many entirely suppressed. The idea was conveyed to the public that Governor Altgeld refused to send the Illinois State troops and that he connived at disorder. The truth is the opposite of this. No adequate report of the Chicago Strike can now be found among the files of the great dailies. Carroll D. Wright's government report was suppressed or garbled by the newspaper. For any adequate treatment of the strike the reader has to be re- ferred to the official publication of Mr. Wright's report, to be had at the libraries. He is also referred to Governor Altgeld's speech at Cooper Union, New York, during the Bryan canvass in '96 (Oct. 17). The printed text of this speech is to be found in the New Fork Jownal of Oct. 1 8. The other newspapers misreported it. The speech of Mr. Debs at Cooper Union, in the fall of '94, recounting TRANSPORTATION 61 the strike, was ignored by concert of the New York dailies. This speech dwelt upon the action of the strik- ers and their attitude of order and told of the work of the press in the handling of the news at the strike. There is no report of this speech extant. There are evidences that the people have for some time taken the alarm against the attitude of the news- papers. The flood of pamphlets and books springing from the new ideas, and finding distribution through or- ganizations of the people, go to show that for the most part the country entirely discounts the newspapers in their utterances where the private interest is in jeopardy. It is certain that as a body they are no longer relied upon for publicity in the new thought which is gaining hold upon the nation. Property looked upon as expression, or public service, the effect is to throw the roads into the hands of the Trans- portation Class, as having functional control — the body through which service is operative. The railroads thus come to be technically controlled by the majority vote of the Railroad Class. The proportionate share of the railroad chief is then one vote in the organization and control of the roads. The people come to say to Mr. V. , "You can have all that you have now — what you can ' ' use, not dissipate. The present meaning of the New ' ' York Central is that you use it for the people. What "would ownership of this railroad mean if you didn't run "trains on it for the public? Not that you always do "this to better purpose, but in the main you do it — so far "as disorganic conditions do not restrict you. The ad- "vance can only mean that you will do it something ' ' more perfectly, with less dissipation of force and with "the freedom of a growing order. You say the public "does not now control you, that you are free. But in so "far as the public does not control, you are controlled by "disorder, and are not free. You cannot throw off the "legislative rings that compel you to treat with them ; "you cannot throw off other restrictions of disorder. "You cannot to-day rise possessor in the drama of fares 63 THE ORGANIC STATE "at a cent. You cannot so promulgate. Some man "freer than you will sign this emancipation. To throw "off the plottings of private interest that pursue your "will, you have to organize the public interest against "them. True, as you say, you have a kind of freedom ' ' called independence of the public, in so far as State " control of you is limited by the notions of the private ' ' interest. But it is the semblance of freedom, the "shadow of independence. In essentials the people "control ; you would not think of running trains in any ' ' considerable opposition to them. The truth is that you ' ' prefer to run trains for the most part according to the "public need. As soon as discernment comes, you will "want to be still further controlled by the whole, will ' ' want to serve it still closer, because you thus better "serve yourself, its gain being your gain. In the end, "the entire public good will be your aim, since it en- "larges your freedom — since in all things it will pay " you better. You can then have more than you have "now, because you can use more: in the bent for em- " pire, there opens the road to Transportation General "of the Globe." There could be an accounting with Mr. V. , taking the farmer as an instance in division of labor with the rail- road magnate : Mr. V., would be charged, on the facts, with defrauding his partner, this man who is working in the field and trusting the railroad manager to a fair divi- sion of the joint product. The farmer, reduced to straits and finding his partner dining off gold plates, with a hundred servants, three palaces, domains, and a private ship, may be accounted as asking restitution of the plun- der. Should the public consciousness rise sufficiently high this principle would be the warrant for taking over to the Government the New York Central Railroad, Mr. V. being glad of enlightened treatment. But consideration of the functional money, under Ex- change, shows the ultimate comprehensive solution for overturning and bringing in the obstructive private inter- est. Anything tending toward the functional exchange TRANSPORTATION 63 medium, which we have seen is in the direction of the postage stamp, must remove property from the instinct to control it for purposes of private gain. If the exchange medium is moved up to the stamp, which is of necessity- destroyed in the using, there can be no hoarding. Con- sequently, the only value Mr. V. could ultimately get out of the New York Central would be simply the realization of operating it at cost, which would include his own salary. That is, under the stamp exchange he could have no incentive to charge more than cost. And he would no more do it without incentive than he would run his trains off the track. In the Chicago clash of '94, seen as the more violent checking of the circulation in the State, we have the immin- ence of the precipitation of the principle of the subjection of the individual by the whole, being the new concept of pro- perly as limiting the private control by the full public use. The convulsion of the State through the momentary clog- ging of its movement was most pronounced at the crowded centres. But the whole country took the ap- prehension, while the cities were within the strain of going hungry. The food supply of New York was ten days ahead at the end of the strike ; meat had advanced its price one third. Men realized the consequence of an un- felt pulse and fear looked out of faces. But for the demoralization of the strikers through the interference of the Federal "omnibus injunctions" it is stated that the strike was within two days of success. Had the engineers joined solidly against the managers, added to a neutral court, it is certain that nothing could have averted the subjection of the railroads by the strik- ers, and this with order and organization. Had the strike prevailed it would have compelled arbitration. This would have recovered as action in the State the prin- ciple of the control of the private interest by the fact, that is, by the truth regarding the public interest. If the question of working eighteen hours a day, or the question of discharge without cause, or the rate of wages to be paid, is to pass for decision to a committee of the 64 THE ORGANIC STATE State, if these questions come to be disposed of accord- ing- to the demand of operative conditions, then the ob- structive private interest has passed out of sociology and property comes to be read as use. The railroad manager on the one side and the employee on the other thus be- coming subject to the fact of public need, to be passed upon by a body of competent men, amounting to the in- dustrial adjudication on the public showing, we have at- tained to enlargement of the Trial by Jury — industrial arbitration. And we face the less violent revolution of the concept of property. It would be equivalent, under any name, to possession of property by the State and the decree of it as public function. Had the Chicago strike come through, it is clear, in view of these principles which must obtain, that the new Constitution would have been written in fact, as action in the State, abrogating the private ownership and asserting the public good as against the obstructive private control. The formal writ- ing of the new Constitution at Washington would be but the recognition of the fact, irrevocable in the logic of ac- tion. It would seem to be a question of not long when the ' railroad employees can organize themselves close enough to compel this. The growing public support of or- ganized labor stands as a factor. When the railroad em- ployees are compact enough to force arbitration, while sustained by the public voice, there can hardly be ques- tion that the railroad managers will amicably meet the inevitable. Touching the organic State as fact, it must be seen that we have -come to the parting of the ways. It can hardly be doubted that under the growth of con- ditions which are pressing, with the crisis rearing itself in the State, that some court will be pushed to recogni- tion of the decay of old forms. There is still the memory in jurisprudence of the English judge who was confronted by counsel with the statement that there was no law or precedent adequate to the correction of a wrong put upon the prisoner at the bar. "Then," said the judge, "if there is no precedent in English law for the correction of injustice to Her Majesty's subject, I will make one." TRANSPORTATION 65 When in the future some advocate of organized labor stands at the bar of the court and hears the reminder that there is no instrument in American law for adjudicating the public interest against the private usurpation, as working justice to American labor, this advocate may- turn to the judge with the rejoinder that industrial move- ment in the organization of labor discloses new organs in the State, which must be recognized. He will say that the Classes, as such organs, are organized and organizing. That without the recognition of the new organs, justice can no longer be administered to the subjects of democ- racy. It is at some juncture like this that we may ex- pect an American judge to read out the old concept of property and pass over to the public use. The warring manager and the warring employee are likely to take a common status as disturbers of the peace in the public eye and before the court. In commanding not one but both parties to the bar the judge will say, with the advo- cate of organized labor, that new organs of State have risen and that he can but recognize the statute of fact ; that pursuant to this warrant he advances adjudication in the State and orders a jury trial of the industrial dispute. If the case be in its nature technical, properly belonging to adjudication by the Class within itself, the judge will say that in recognizing the Class he will have to recog- nize its autonomy, its capability of controlling its own affairs subject only to interference, to injunction from the State, when such control infracts the wider interest. Ac- cordingly, if the dispute precipitating the crisis arises be- tween the railroad men and their managers, the judge will order a jury drawn promiscuously from the railway men as a Class. This jury will determine the question in dispute. And we arrive at the subjection of the heads of the Class by the Class. The nominal legislation, or statute, can but follow what is, or be directed by the struggling forces. In what degree of this advance the judge will first feel compelled to move remains to conjec- ture ; but evident it is that the habit of the logical mind must tend to go over to the full recognition of the Organ, 5 36 THE ORGANIC STATE as asserting the autonomy of the Class and providing the machinery of its adjudication. The signs of unrest in the State portend that this epigram of action in an American court cannot be far away. We watch for any possible shape that the out-move- ment may take. For instance, it may assume the form and be so simple as committing the management volun- tarily to the new Union in democracy, on the lines of the evolving public polity laid down. In any dispute be- tween the management and the organized employees, the latter could remain at their posts, in charge of the road, and ask a favorable court to receive and account for all money which is brought in. As a part of the proper uses of the money, and entering into legitimate accounting, the court could indorse for payment at its bank of deposit all drafts for the necessary conduct of the road, including repairs, supplies and the wages of the men. The court, representing the public, could look to the body of techni- cal service for efficient conduct of the road, in the practical logic that it turns for service to the integrate agency of service. The organized employees could go on with the running of the road as officered at the time they assumed its conduct, in this virtually electing such heads of service — simply through accepting them and working under their orders. Should any of the operating officials refuse to serve or be deemed incompetent, they may be replaced in election by the body of service, more simply through accepting such appointments as the judge would make on the advice of competent men. If the organized railroad body objected to any appointment of the judge it would, on formal vote of the service, be equivalent to a vacancy in the position, and the judge could appoint another man more acceptable — in the logic that the service must techni- cally control if it is to be held responsible for efficient action. The position of the court need go no further than as regulation, or control, of the roads on the grounds of general State policy, pending the settlement of a dis- pute jeopardizing the public welfare. It is left for the ' 'owners" of the roads to apply to the organized service for TRANSPORTATION 67 settlement of the differences. If the men seem indifferent to proffers, not being averse to letting things continue as they are, the ' ' ownership " can ask the court to erect machinery of arbitration, affecting the question at differ- ence. In other words, the obstructive private interest finds itself passed in the movement of the State, and to get any standing at all submits its case to a jury, thus voluntarily abdicating the claim of " ownership," or abso- lute control. In the intricacies and quandaries of the sit- uation into which the private claim is cast by the moving forces, it is glad to throw itself upon the good offices of the State, asking to be disposed of, and saved from its own dead and disordering concepts. Or we may have the unique situation of the manage- ment itself on open strike against an organized service and the public interest, and assuming the attitude of ob- structing the nominal and visible interstate commerce. For should the movement in the foregoing form precipi- tate itself before an integrate judiciary is at one with the principle, the railroad body erecting its receivership out- side of the court, for an accounting of moneys, the management would, under the old concepts, ask for wholesale injunctions and warrants against the men in their possession of the roads — thus moving the judicial machinery against the railway service for a technical theft devoid of basis in fact, being the farcical de- nouement of the slaveholding lesion. The latter would be left the negative of the movement through the organ- ized service passing over to the positive. We would find the management, through the court and sheriff, stopping service by dragging men from the stations and off the trains. Here would be the nominal and visible obstruc- tion of commerce by the private interest, in its employ- ment of the sheriff against the public need, and affording the strike of "property" against the operative railroad service. The position of the men is simply that, with the least inconvenience to the body of the State, they throw themselves upon the general sense, creating actual issue and asking judgment on a principle. They need only to 68 THE ORGANIC STATE persist if they would compel judgment. And judgment is arbitration. The difficulty of the public withholding favorable verdict is that this position of the Class is its own position — that to-morrow any section or all of the opera- tive State may need a like judgment by the public. And the difficulties of overriding the Class under forms not fit- ting its complaint are the difficulties which Burke pointed out to the Parliament, relative to the similar strike posi- tive of the American Colonies. Burke's warning was : " You cannot indict a province." The idea was that a people must be met on the issue of the practical right of a question, and some ground of justice reached. Out- raged men cannot be put by in any persistent attitude they may assume, when impinging the public sense of justice and demanding adjustment on the lines of a grow- ing consciousness in the State. The men persisting in holding the railroad service for public regulation of a dis- order, could only be permanently ousted by permanently jailing them, for on release they would endeavor to return to the service of the public in the running of trains. And persistent jailing of the Transportation Class would mean its housing and food at the public expense. Unjust in- carceration has its own correction ; it becomes popular. As to the families, who were without independent sup- port, they could help themselves to any food in sight and be jailed as a consequence, and there housed and fed dur- ing the pleasure of the public. Or the families in stress could be supported by sympathetic organized labor in other fields. The public tiring of the extreme impact to which the movement had come, could compel arbit- ration of the dispute as the only outlet toward order. That is, on the final troublesome issue of differences in service, whatever particular form it assumes, we may say that the public would compel the abrogation of the ob- structive concepts — through arbitration going over to the public control. If, considering these portents, it is said that men will- ing to serve the common cause, in the only way left to them, and unarmed and submissive to arrest, will be fired TRANSPORTATION 69 upon by the muskets of democracy, the answer is that then we are at an end of sober procedure in the State and we invite the whirlwind. The reminder to the slave- holding oligarchy is of all perverse assault upon right, down to Sumter. Or, leaving the more disquieting views and looking be- yond to the rising consciousness, we may see the people, through the court as instrument, moving to appoint a re- ceivership of the roads in their failure to meet their obli- gations to the general public. Action would be taken under the primary contract of the State with the individ- ual, which guarantees the latter equality of conditions, now known to be attainable only on the basis of cost service. Under this quality of the primary writing, the railroads are in hopeless arrears. The Government could only appoint a receivership and take over the roads as what remained to it after years of exploiting and theft by its disproved trustee's, the railroad kings. In this event, the court would give the roads into the hands of the or- ganized transportation body and require an accounting under the terms of the latter's primary contract with the State, namely, efficient service at cost. The internal regulation of the Class conforms to the facts of service in the State. The formal relation of the Railroad Class to the public takes the shape of a contract, ex- pressed or implied ; and this is true of any Class. The organization of the Street Railway employees of Detroit now signs an annual contract with the companies. The latter, at this phase of the evolution of the State, stands in relation to the employees, or Class, as agent of the public in certain exactions of contract. The employees agree to serve for current wages. They agree to ample running of cars, observance of time-card, care of cars, collection of fares, comfort of passengers, etc. The rail- way manager, virtually on behalf of the public, agrees with the employees, virtually the Class, to pay the cur- rent wages and to conform to reasonable rules of service enacted, or endorsed, by the employees. The railway men have a labor ticket from -their " union. " It is agreed 70 THE ORGANIC STATE on the part of the company to employ no man who is without the union labor ticket. This is at once the guar- antee of skilled labor by the Class and its exaction by the public. Any employee violating the stipulations of the contract is suspended by the company, pending the action of the union as to the justness of the charge. The offending employee is put on trial by a jury of his Class, phase of the enlargement of the trial by jury, to determine what punishment should be recommended to the Company. In this case the manager in ordering dis- cipline, as endorsed by the Class, virtually acts as head of the Class. The punishment may be a fine of ten days' pay ; or, in more flagrant cases, trial and conviction would result in taking away the offender's ticket — where- upon he is debarred from the service and can no longer obtain employment at this business. There was a case of a Class trial of an employee who spoke offensively to a passenger ; another, of a motorman who violated the rules in leaving his car in the yards, short of the barn. The ethic of the organic Transportation has its interpre- tation in the measure of freedom it brings to men. We ask ourselves the significance of the spectacle of trains with large proportion of empty cars passing the potato fields of interior New York in the spring of '96 while the farm- ers burnt their potatoes to get rid of them, with Hester Street and the great East Side, in New York, going hun- gry. We also ask the reality of Mr. Depew, President of the New York Central, talking ethics at a Young Ladies' Seminary, while the above disorder over his own road was making its procession through the commonwealth. It is the difference between talking ethic, or the platitude of phrase, and the ethic of action — the ethic which is life. The rising state of the public ethic, or insight into the disorder, shows in the growing attitude among the peo- ple favorable to Government ownership of railroads and in the growth of expression favorable to the labor organi- zations. The New York fournal, a present exception among New York papers, has taken position favorable TRANSPORTATION 71 to organized labor and begins in its utterance to make reserved outleading for the people. Most of the provin- cial dailies supporting the Chicago platform incline to for- ward the advance in the public mind. Mr. Cowles' book, already referred to, indicates the growth of thought as toward order, and we see this also in the increase of pamphlets and leaflets on the public ownership of the transportation lines. 72 THE ORGANIC STATE CHAPTER IV Farming : Distribution : Manufactures If we give attention to the movement of commerce we find that the product of the soil, from gardening up through grain, fibre, stock-raising, and fruit-growing, divides into two important channels. One is the food industry and its distribution ; and the other the textile. A boy by the country road will say that a load of apples passing is going to the dryer at the village — that it is going to the food manufacturer. And we gather that the dryer is going to send it to the stores in town to be sold; this is the further movement of food — its dis- tribution. We have in this followed the whole move- ment of food from the farm to the consumer : the farmer is done with it in its crude state, his is the office of the production of the raw material ; the manufacturer is done with it in the finished state, when he hands it over to the storekeeper for distribution. Again, we may learn that the countryman's load of wool is going to the Boston buyer at the village. In other words, it is going to the manufacturer at Boston or Lowell or elsewhere. And the boy will let us know that he bought his woolen stockings in the village after this wool had been spun and knitted in some factory and sent out. The store is the movement of the textile after it has left the manufacturer on its distribution. And the farmer's relation to the process of the textile in this instance is seen to be the supply of the crude product in the general movement to the consumer. The manufacturer's work is to supply the finished product to the counter. Looking over the ground as a whole, corresponding to the instances given, we have in the food channel all the different crude products in their movement on to the food FARMING 73 counter, as culminating phase of Food. And in the other channel we have all the different raw textile products and their movement on to the dress-goods and other counter, as culminating phase of the Textile. Various phases of the food manufacture, intermediate, or short of the kitchen as culminating phase, are enumer- ated in the industry of drying and canning fruits and vegetables, in the drying and canning of meats in the packing houses ; and the starch factory, the glucose fac- tory and other phases of the sugar works; candy factory, wine and beer industry, whiskey distilleries, tobacco • manfacturing, flouring mills, etc. We see a more direct movement to the kitchen in the green vegetables and fruit, including potatoes, rice in the kernel, and all other products that do not need to pass through inter- mediate manufacture. This is simply the direct move- ment of the farm product to the cook without the inter- vening factory. Various phases of the textile manufac- ture, intermediate, and short of the made-up dress as culminating phase, are told in the tanning of leather, spinning and dyeing, and in the weaving of cloths, tapes- tries, carpets, etc. As to fishing, we perhaps have to see it as a crude food production distinct in its methods from the crude farm production of food. Fishing, the going down to sea in boats, is so peculiarly technical in itself that it would not seem to have affiliation with the farming in- dustry. Still, there remains a question about this ; the farming of oysters or fish is after all not so technically separate from the growing of other animal life, like chick- ens or calves. Along the Chesapeake there are men who farm both oysters and potatoes. If we take the first view, the crude fish product is regarded as entering the food current from another source than the farming indus- try. Looked at thus, it would be a tributary stream to the food movement, but by itself technical. The development of Food and Textiles is toward organi- sation in their several phases, through to distribution of the manufactured product, organisation effecting quality and 74 THE ORGANIC STATE uniformity. The rise of organization, we should be re- minded, is the growth toward division of labor and its consequent specialization and development of skill. It is but a few decades ago that both food and textiles had their intermediate manufacture to a great extent upon the farm. And it was the necessity of the farmer to largely distribute his own product. The movement has been away from this to specialization in shop and factory and trade. We know that when our fathers and mothers were children that wool was carded, spun and wove .upon the farm. At the same time all the cheese and butter was made in the farmer's house. Some farmers spun a little more cloth than they needed and this they carried to a neighbor in some trade, or to the store and gave it for sugar or flour or molasses, or they traded it for shoes and boots to the shoemaker. And, similarly they took their butter or their cheese or their wheat or potatoes to the neighbor or village and got any article which belonged to the barter and trade of the time. In this narrow movement the farmer was his own manu- facturer and his own distributor. The growth of things is but now obliterating the last vestiges ot this. When we were children the development in textiles had got so far along that the spinning wheel was becoming a curiosity. And the commercial drummer, the distributing agent, bringing the advance in product, began to make his appearance with his bag upon the village street. One of his novelties is called to this day ' ' factory " cloth. And division of labor, or specialization, in both manufac- ture and distribution had in this degree found its develop- ment. The organization in manufacture had grown into the looms at Lowell, and the organization of distribution had developed centralization in the wholesale merchant and his agent upon the road. We see the result of this organization in the cheapening of the product and the raising of its quality. There came in the several grades of the plain " factory " cotton, from coarse to fine un- bleached, and coarse to fine bleached, or muslin. Different grades were numbered and became stable in FARMING 75 their weight and quality. And similarly the calicoes began to uniformly grade themselves and to rise in quality and coloring effect. Finally the silks and cashmeres began to appear in the stores. And the ingrain carpets, graded in weights and quality, had displaced the old rag carpet. Then came the cotton and woolen stockings and the knitted hoods and gloves. The knitting needle had passed to the knitting factory and its multiplied and graded goods. Then followed the more complete phase of organization in manufacture, the made-up articles of every kind. Even in country stores a man, woman, or child can buy complete clothing ; and there can be had pillows, pillow cases, bedding, window hangings, por- tieres, cushions, etc. The needle and the sewing machine in the house have fallen much into disuse. It is more recent that the advance has become marked in the organization of the food product. When we were children it was still the custom to find a great mixture in sizes, quality and coloring of cheeses at the groceries. This was because every farmer who had sufficient milk made his own cheese. He would save the milk up for two or three da)^, if the weather was not too warm, and get so large a batch as he could, sufficient to make a cheese "big enough to sell." These cheeses, little and big, would be found ranged along on the hanging shelf of the farmer's cellar. They were subject to all vicissitudes; the weather was too warm and too cold in curing, and in the summer time, owing to lack of ice facilities for milk, the cheese was often bitter and hard. Certain farmers developed skill over their neighbors in the man- ufacture of cheese and obtained better prices. Those hav- ing the inferior facilities and skill began to take their milk to the others to make up for them in the one batch. From this it passed easily to the cheese factory at the cross-roads or in the village, and the higher and more uniform product. And instead of the farmer arranging to sell a cheese here and there, in trade for groceries or blacksmithing or shoemaking or with the painter or wagon-maker, the product now moved from the factory 76 THE ORGANIC STATE to the wholesale distribution at the large cities. The wholesale or commission grocer to-day has standing con- tracts for all a given factory can make. The advance in butter has proceeded more slowly, owing to the less need in the earlier day of giving it over to the specialist, partly because butter can be made from a small quantity of milk. Many country stores, even within twenty miles of New York, still get some portion of their butter direct from the farmer, who sells it to them and takes groceries home. But where the farmers have any large amount of milk they go on the advantage of giving butter-making over to the "creameries," or factories. In place of the tub of butter on the counter, in rolls of all colors and sizes, most of the butter now comes from the manufacturer or the wholesale distributor in the uniform package and color of the creameries. This butter, save for faults in the care of it by grocers, comes to the table well-nigh uniform and as sweet as when lifted from the churn. And growth in order has tended to specialize the production to regions having good meadow land and water facilities for cattle, thus improving quality. Looking at the sugar industry, we find the same growth through specialization in production, manufacture and distribution. In the earlier days the consumer obtained most of his sweets in the form of black New Orleans molasses or its coarse, brown crystalization. First the farmer dealt directly with the local buyers. Distribution began to move out through selling to the boatmen on the coast and interior waterways. Following this, the crude sugar began to pass to the more central point of the region. Now the crude sugar goes to the great sugar re- fineries of the American Sugar Company ; and we find high quality and uniformity of grading, up to cut-loaf sugar, a marvelous example of the product. Cut-loaf sugar, and A., B., and C. sugars and pulverized loaf have reached the precision of mathematics. And the distri- bution of the product has built up parallel with the rise in manufacture, through the medium of the wholesale grocers, as more central phase. FARMING 77 In another direction in the food industry we see the same advance. This is the drying and canning, and the present high manufacture of cereals in the pre- pared oats, wheat, hominy, etc. They have all grown from commonplace of production and short movement to high grade with full distribution. On the side of the movement in the meat product we see great progress. The farmer used to kill a beef or a pig and dicker with the country grocer and meat-market or peddle to the consumer. This was less than twenty- five years ago. In the preserved output, which came from the farmer or local butcher or grocer, there was lack of uniformity ; much of it was over-salted or under- salted, some of the ham sugar-cured and some not, some barely smoked and some smoked black. The prepara- tion of the product gradually began to pass to the larger packers of the nearest city, with quality rising. The organization then went over to the large packing houses seen in the Armour and Swift Companies at Chicago. In part, the main organ of distribution, the grocer, moves the product from the manufacturer and in other ways the movement of meats has organized itself entirely out of the farmers' hands. Even the village meat-market now gets its few quarters of beef by daily or weekly distribu- tion from the Armour or Swift refrigerator cars passing up and down the railway lines and landing the quantity of beef that has been ordered. The distinctions, or specific character, of the three phases of Food and Textiles — production, manufacture and distri- bution — take shape as related action from the demand by the consumer reaching down through distribution and manu- facture to the soil. The wholesale grocer, in central phase of distribution, finds through his relations with the re- tailer, or food counter, that there is a certain demand for old, or sharp cheese, and a certain demand for mild cheese. Another form of the wholesaler, the commission merchant, finds that one kind of apple is more in demand in a certain region. Shippers will tell us that Cincinnati is the great point for the Bellfiower apple. Again, the 78 THE ORGANIC STATE wholesale grocer finds that pears put up without sugar have a certain demand over pears canned in a sweet liquor. They retain their natural flavor better and are counted higher grade. And the wholesaler finds, through the counter reacting the demand, that people want their products uniform in grade. If the people order a black molasses for some special reason, for flavor or other, they don't want the grade which is called light-drip. They wish to know what they are buying ; it is a saving of trouble. In short, they want what they want. Again, it is found that the public taste varies. If for a time the people take a liking for more cheese than usual they are put out if they don't get it. Or demand may run to a novelty like the Club-House cheese, lately put upon the market, and consumers neglect old brands, leaving them to burden the market if the output has not been re- stricted accordingly. In course, the manufacturer seeks to know through the distributor what is going to be the probable demand on canned fruit, or dried fruit. And the manufacturer of prepared oats and other cereals seeks knowledge of the demand in his line so that the market will not be overstocked and clog. The central merchant supplies them this knowledge ; he responds on one side to the direct demand of consumption and on the other side he reacts this demand upon the manufacturer. From this the movement works down to the producer, the farmer, through the manufacturer reacting the de- mand which has reached him from the wholesaler. If there is a lessened demand for dried apples or pears the manufacturer will advise the farmer to cull closer and not bring in so many of the second quality, which go into the dried fruit, thus working them back into cider or food for stock. And in another year, when there is scarcity of fruit and the demand rises, the farmer will be told to bring everything to the canner and drier. Where there is great scarcity he will be instructed to increase his acreage of tomatoes and melons, as going to help out the want in the fruit line. On the dairy side, if the demand rises for sweet cream and correspondingly falls away on butter FARMING 79 and cheese, the manufacturer will react this upon the producer by lessening his make in cheese and butter, throwing more milk back, which must then take the course of the market toward sweet cream and milk. If there is a surplus all round, the milk makes food for stock, or fine concentrated manufacture, like cream cheese. If we follow the detail of movement on the fabric side we find it taking logically the same course as food. The wholesale drygoods merchant reacts upon the manufac- turer the changing demand for fabrics, and the manufac- turer in filling this demand reacts it upon the producer of textiles, the farmer. Each phase of this movement has its examples, which anyone can fill in through the parallel with food. We thus find the specific office of the organized distri- bution reacting the demand of the consumer upon the manufacturer ; and we find the specific office of the manu- facturer reacting this demand upon the producer ; and the distinct office of the producer answering the demand of the manufacturer with the crude food product. Here we come to the inquiry concerning the several centralized movements of Food and Textiles — distribution, manufac- ture and farming — or the centralized organization of each in its own distinct field. We may first follow the centra- lized distribution. The central distribution of Food and the central distribu- tion of Textiles have their action as particular phases of the central distribution of all articles of consumption or de- mand of whatever kind. The department stores now be- coming common in every large city represent the ten- dency of distribution to centralize under one general national head and under sub-heads. The stores of the Siegel-Cooper Company in Chicago and New York, and the stores of Mr. Wanamaker in Philadelphia and New York, represent the larger and more advanced of these. These stores undertake to supply everything that is an ar- ticle of commerce. Their counters carry nearly every- thing, and should the demand come to them for anything not in stock, no matter how unusual, they say that they 80 THE ORGANIC STATE will undertake to supply it. Their agents and buyers would on request deliver a locomotive or an elephant. In addition to the usual counters common to the grocery and drygoods stores, we find such counters as the post- office branch for sale of stamps and cards, railroad ticket counter, steamship tickets, advice at law, doctor, dentist, real estate, intelligence office, photography, coal and other fuel, drugs, furniture, meat and fish market, news- stand, bookstore, etc. In New York alone there are six of these stores, including Wanamaker's and Siegel-Cooper's. And there are a dozen measurably approaching them in extent. Whenever a store of the kind has started up in New York wonder has been expressed that a new one could live. But so far each one has secured trade and apparently without very much cutting into the busi- ness of the others. A small drygoods store in Third Avenue explains the phenomenon by the fact that the small stores have material falling off in trade in propor- tion as the department stores push their enterprise. This particular shop-keeper said it was getting difficult for him to make a living, that he worked for bare wages. He stated that his case was one of many with which he was acquainted. The department store of Abraham & Straus of Brooklyn, New York East, now reaches all of Long Island with its delivery wagons. The territory is divided into divisions with a man an,d his wagon for each division. This man takes orders when going the round of delivery. The orders are sent out to him by freight, with a delay of a day or two. Other department stores do the same in Westchester County. In portions of the region thus cov- ered, the small shop-keeper is drying up in degree like the shop-keeper in Third Avenue. The fierce contention among the department stores in the city must tend ultimately to drive them together into some alliance, making for centralization under one man- agement. If it should not come in this way, it may come through one firm overshadowing the others and extending itself in branches over the city. Favoring this, we have a grocery firm lately pushing itself into upwards of forty FARMING 81 branches, or stores, throughout New York, touching the extreme suburbs. An article on sale at one branch is on sale at all. The firm's advertisements announcing bar- gains or new things apply to all stores, or branches — showing the tendency to bring the remoi e region under the favorable conditions of central distribution. With the recognition that the growth of the depart- ment store must go on, we can anticipate the extension of its branches to the smaller towns and villages. In fact, in many sections of the country the growth toward cen- tralizing distribution in the small towns and villages is already well under way. In towns of 2,000 to 5,000 in- habitants it is in general not uncommon to find a large store modelled on the lead of the department store. These stores carry drygoods, fresh meat and fish, bakery, ice cream, furniture, hardware, boots and shoes, and all the things in limited quantity that supply the village. As a result, shopkeepers handling single lines are getting in the same condition as the shopkeepers in relation to the department stores of the city. And in small villages the large general store is rising to displace the lesser dealer. In places of 1,000 or 1,500 people in various sections of the country it is common to find dealers who have given up their own business unable to exist, and have gone to clerk in the large general store in part centralizing the business of the village. But regardless of the extent toward which this central- ization has gone, either in the city or small town, the in- evitable tendency must be seen as in this direction. And we see in it the ultimate complete absorption of all the retailers by the department stores, their former pro- prietors coming to handle a counter or department in these stores, corresponding to their technical knowledge or former line of business. On that side of the more centralized distribution which is the wholesale and commission business we may ob- serve the same tendency toward the one centralized or- ganization represented in the retail stores. It is a com- mon thing now to read in the advertisements of the big 6 82 THE ORGANIC STATE department stores that a given line on which they are offering inducements was brought direct from the manu- facturer. So marked is this movement of the department store to go by the wholesaler and deal direct with the manufacturer, that the wholesalers are beginning to at- tribute to it a stringency in their business. Former buy- ers and managers of departments in the wholesale houses have become buyers and managers for departments in the large retail stores. Where some of these men form- erly represented wholesalers and importers as buyers of canned goods throughout the country, or buyers of fab- rics from the domestic mills, or buyers of silk at Lyons, they now represent department stores in the same capac- ity. Though the movement has now gone far in the em- barrassment of the wholesaler, the tendency must be still farther, and toward complete absorption of the whole- saler by the department. store, if the latter is to continue to grow. The organization of the present stage of the Centralized Distribution, seen in the department stores, indicates the or- ganization of the Centralized Distribution as a whole in its ultimate groivth. In the general outlook we have become aware that the distinction, or line of action, we call dis- tribution has its technical character in knowledge of the demand in the State, and as the machine responding to this demand. In short, the specific character of distribu- tion is that it knows what the demand is and how to fill it. In doing this its organization comprehends on one side the counter, or office, for reaching the people and de- livering the goods, and on the other side it comprehends the office seen in the buyer for the store, the agency that is in touch with manufacture or other form of output and knows how and where and when to draw for its sup- plies to fill its warehouses and shelves. The general head has his office, on the one side, in organizing the ser- vice at the counter, and, on the other side, the service which draws upon the sources of supply. This is the movement of the general department store to-day, with its counters and its army of clerks and heads of de- FARMINa 83 partments, and its buyers in the field using their know- ledge to supply these. The heads of branches and depart- ments in these stores make the advising lieutenants, with the proprietor as organizing head. The latter in his most advanced phase corresponds to the Distributor General of the organized distribution. Looking upon the department store as in line with the culminating growth, we see the natural head of distribution, the Distributor General, in one man like Mr. Wanamaker or the Messrs. Siegel and Cooper. The men now handling their branch stores and men handling the other department stores throughout the country would represent their heads of divisions, making their lieutenants or advising cabinet. Some portion of the big wholesalers also represent the type of men making either the Distributor General or heads of divisions. In relation to the movement of distribution and subject to these managing heads, there are the men we have noted as in touch with manufacture and who have full knowledge of its movement in some particular feature : as, one man is familiar with the manufacturing output of a phase of the canned goods of the world ; another man is familiar with some part of furniture manufacture ; others with hardware, clear through to an engine or an iron girder. These men were formerly the buyers or managers for the big wholesale or commission houses and their place in distribution represents the absorption of the wholesaler. The present clerks or small proprie- tors in the retail trade have their place at the various counters in the department store as standing for the station of a locality. And with this we indicate in the organism the whole mercantile industry of whatever kind in the aspect of the centralized distribution, two phases of this being the distribution of Food and of Fabrics. The further absorption of the movement of distribution by the one central organization on lines beyond the present growth, as seen in the department store, must have its indi- cations in economic possibilities. We have seen how the department store, in going by the wholesaler to the man- Hi THE ORGANIC! STATE ufacturcr in textiles, groceries, etc., haft begun to organ- ize and absorb the distribution as direct from the manu- facturer to the counter in these lines of goods, making economic advance. It is along the line of all these econ- omic invasions in the merchant business that we look for the ultimate total taking-over of distribution by the one general arm in the State. The inquiry here arises as to the relation of distribution to direct delivery to the retailer which certain of the manufacturers have built up. We know, for instance, that the Standard Oil delivers to the retailer through its own direct agency. And we have referred to the move- ment of Mr. Armour's cars up and down the country, throwing out meat at any station on orders from the re- tailer. We ask whether these cases show a tendency for each line of manufacture in food and textiles to organize its own distribution and how far it is going to take over the general machinery of distribution seen in the whole- sale grocer or the wholesale drygoods store ; or whether this tendency to break away from the general machine will return to it ; Or we may sec this direct movement to the retailer not as a breaking away from the general ma- chine in these lines, but as economic advance whereby a portion of the product is sent direct from the manufact- urer to the retailer under the management of a central bureau of distribution. We see indications that the whole- sale business has its direct phase from the manufacturer to the retailer, as well as the phase by way of the store- house. The wholesalers now in many cases contract for car-loads of soap from the soap manufacturer and then give him orders to send a number of boxes to this dealer and a number to that one. This shows in a single partic- ular how the phase of direct distribution has already become a part of the one general machine. And there are similar instances in almost every line of trade. 'I he department store, standing for the development, must give the indications of growth. In one instance we may take the meat counters and meat storage rooms of the Sicgel-Cooper Company. These now replenish them- FARMING 85 selves direct from the depots of the big packers on the order of the store. The department store extended so that it invades the whole area of consumption, the entire meat movement must come under its order. The refrig- erator cars of the packing-houses, which now move up and down the country in the delivery of meat, would thus ultimately have their movement directed by the gen- eral organization. And in so far as the manufacturer of meats has now organized his distribution we see that it would be given over to the one general organization. Again, the Siegel-Cooper Company gets its cloth, furni- ture, etc., direct from a manufacturer. The reality is that these goods move on the orders of Distribution so far as the latter is at present developed. Extend the department store to cover all consumption, and these goods, like the meat, move from the manufacturer in every instance on the orders of the Centralized Distribution. And so far as the wholesaler or commission man has organized the distri- bution of these things, it would be absorbed by the one counter. The economies of the thing lean to this outlook. For instance, a distribution superintendent of division in or- ganizing the supplies to a given region of distributive stations, or department stores, could replenish them periodically as a whole. He would know that the de- mand is once a week for so many sides of beef and other meats and so much cloth of specific kinds and so much hardware material, so many potatoes. And this period- ical supply of a region, covering a longer or shorter time, as the need showed, would move in general supply trains. Instead of a fragmentary invoice put out at a town or station, a train with cars covering all ade- quate supplies would stop, the one general movement going on under a supply superintendent of the train. Op- posed to this, we have the apparently wasteful alternative of the canned goods' manufacturers sending out supplies on hit and miss orders; or the boot and shoe men, or the dairy men; and so extending to the whole field of distri- bution. This improbable and confused spectacle is of 86 THE ORGANIC STATE course the reverse of centralization, out of which the present tendency is working. In the organized movement of supplies to the distribu- tion stations we can reckon the less frequent period for moving staples that are not perishable, like clothes, can- ned goods and hardware. These could be moved each month or each quarter. And for the perishable goods like meats and dairy products we can reckon the lesser space of periodical distribution at weekly, tri-weekly or every day. In the movement of fresh vegetables or milk and cream, the period would be so short as daily, or the half-day, as now. Perishable fruits or meats could not well leave the hands of the producer or manufacturer ex- cept for immediate distribution. Fresh meats, under this view, would leave the hands of the manufacturer when requisition was made on him for the immediate moving of a periodical distribution train or for any emergency re- quirements. The fresh meats, leaving the slaughter houses only on demand for immediate distribution, would seem to come into the control of the agents of distribution at delivery by the packing houses on board the refrigerator cars properly stocked with ice for the run. Similarly, perishable fruits only leave the producer on the demand for immediate distribution, the storage and technical care of the fruit up to this delivery belonging to the fruit men. And in some of these cases, requiring technical care in transportation, the product would have the atten- tion of a storage man delegated for the purpose. And it is a general proposition of distribution that no article, perishable or otherwise, leaves the manufacturers' hands and his technical care of it except on demand for carrying it direct to the counter of delivery, that is, to the large department store and its attached storerooms. The periodical distribution trains would receive in car lots from the manufacturers, through the centers, and proceed to distribute over any given division. The modification of this rule, worked out under its development, requires to have certain reserves at centers for supplying cases of exceptional need. These central warehouses would have FARMING 87 accumulation sufficient to meet telegraphic orders for ex- tra barrels of sugar, crates of eggs, or boxes of raisins, sides of beef or any othe- supplies that some distribution station might need to carry it over to the arrival of the periodical movement. These, of course, would come down from the center by the regular express trains. Agreeing with this, we see that in the distribution of kerosene oil the product will be in charge of the oil pro- ducer up to the point where it is delivered on board the tank cars or other vehicle. The present distributive machinery of the Standard Oil Company this side of the refinery could pass under the control of the organized distribution. The storage tanks of the different towns and the tank wagons for delivery from house to house are at- tachments of the various distributive stations. They would deliver oil to the consumer under the best conditions for handling it, as they would sugar or butter. The coal movement, after its delivery on board cars, would belong to distribution. It would move in slow trains, accommodating convenience, like other non-perish- able and bulky products. We see reserves of coal moved up during the summer, in anticipation of winter con- sumption. There are apparently conflicting questions which arise under the assertion of the total absorption of delivery by the organized distribution. One of these is whether this would mean the handling of mail matter. But we have to see that the delivery of mail is a technical busi- ness in itself, corresponding to production or manufacture. Its creative action, its peculiar technical doing, is that distinct phase of the State which we have seen as the circu- lation of intelligence. It only fulfills its function, only completes its action, with the full delivery of the letter, telegram or other message entrusted to it. The sending of a written letter, a telegraph letter or printed matter is the manufacture of a product peculiar to the mails ; the finished product of this manufactory is the action which drops the telegram, or other carriage of intelligence, at the door of its destination. But we may see that this 88 THE ORGANIC STATE manufactured product should properly be on sale at the distribution station. We should be able to buy stamps there for telegraph letters or other form of intelligence carriage. And we should be able to file a telegram at such a counter. As to the main telegraph office being at this counter we see that it need not be, any more than a boot and shoe factory need locate along with the sales counter for boots and shoes. But the telegram may be received, as it now is at the hotel telegraph station, and forwarded by tube or short wire to the central telegraph office of the region or city, belonging to the manufactory of mail carriage for that section. Though the practice is growing of selling stamps and receiving letters and mes- sages at the doors of people's homes, still a central coun- ter for these things apparently has its place. Any such counter may be thought to locate in the central distribu- tion station of each locality. On the question of the delivery of gas or heat by pipes we have to see, for instance, that the gas main or hot- water main and their branches are a part of the technical business of heating or lighting that has not fulfilled itself until the consumer can directly turn on his light or his heat. And the same thing applies to the distribution of electricity as fuel or power. Distribution of water through pipes must be seen as subject to the same description as lighting and heating in the character of its delivery. Similarly, as seemingly incongruous with central distribu- tion, we have the delivery of food in the dining-room of a hotel. In this last case we may regard distribution as meeting the demand by putting its clerk at the dining- room. Though he is not located at a counter in the store strictly, he is still at a counter of the central distribution, as phase of its organization and under its direction. This delivery of table food can well be under the rules of the general merchant ; it may be apprehended as phase of distribution direct from maker to consumer, but super- vised and ordered by the central movement. And touch- ing the distribution of light, heat, and electricity as raised, they may be seen as passing through the central station FARMING 89 if we regard the reality of delivery as the transaction be- tween the clerk and the consumer. People do not now go to the gas factory to order or pay for their light, or to the boiler house to order heat, or to the reservoir to order the water turned on. They go to the more central office in town. Transference of these offices, as lighting and heating counters, to the central distribution station is but a parallel to the real estate counters which we already find there. The business