forty years that have elapsed, Massachusetts has held aloft the beacon light which, without flickering or wavering, has pointed the way for all the states of the Union.

It is impossible to exaggerate the influence which President Wright's sagacious foresight has exerted in this field. Thirtyfour states have followed the example of Massachusetts in establishing labor bureaus. Not always were they established for work along the lines he marked out; not always have they been free in their management from the propaganda he avoided. Sometimes they have been officered by politicians, sometimes by men without scientific training or experience, with no knowledge of the statistical method and its limitations, and with selfish ulterior motives and ambitions but slightly veiled. The sum of their contributions to our statistical literature has been much greater in bulk than in value, and there are occasionally reports which are sadly out of joint with the economic facts.

But whatever of good there is in the reports of these thirtyfour state bureaus, whatever of good there is to come from these bureaus in the future, is primarily due to the influence and the example of Colonel Wright. It is just to add that the pace and the precedent he set, at the very beginning of his work, have never yet been fully equalled in any one of these thirty-four states, after an interval of forty years.

President Wright recognized the dangers that threatened these state bureaus under the conditions I have named, and he conceived a plan to minimize the possibilities of evil and to increase their practical usefulness. He planned and organized a National Association of Labor Bureau Chiefs, which this year celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. He was elected its president in 1885, and re-elected until his retirement from office in 1905. He was rarely absent from its meetings. Here, by wise and good-humored advice and suggestion, and by leading his fellow-commissioners into the critical discussion of their own work, he impressed his personality, his methods, and his ideals upon the whole body. They felt, and were glad to feel, that they were sitting at the feet of their Gamaliel.

In 1884, near the close of President Arthur's administration, the National Bureau of Labor was established by Congress. The name of President Wright was naturally first in the mind of the President as the one man best qualified to organize this bureau, as the first Commissioner of Labor. But it seemed neither fair to him nor to Massachusetts that he should be asked to vacate his state office for a possible service of but two or three months in the national field, when, in accordance with the old-fashioned methods, the commissionership must be tendered to some aspirant bearing the badge of a political party flushed with its first national victory since the Civil War. The perplexity of the President became known to Mr. Cleveland, who sent word that, if Colonel Wright was appointed, he would continue him in the office, as he did. I recall this authenticated incident because it demonstrates the assured position of master in this special field which Colonel Wright had already reached, and, what is quite as important, Grover Cleveland's recognition of the duty of the President to the public. Eight Republican and two Democratic governors in Massachusetts, and four Republican Presidents, and one Democratic President serving two terms, retaining Colonel Wright continuously in the public service, against great pressure for a post towards which ambitious politicians cast covetous eyes. It is a record unique in our history.

Again, with the creation of the National Bureau, there was protest, apprehension, and indignation that the nation should venture to intrude itself into this sacred field of the laissezfaire,-to question the right of the business man to handle his hired help in his own way, guided solely by the law of supply and demand. Again, Colonel Wright disarmed criticism by his sane and conservative methods. The critics were not among the manufacturers alone; they included some of the more radical and aggressive of the labor leaders. They argued that the new bureau had been established at the behest and in the interest of labor, to fight its battles openly and constantly. President Wright did not so interpret its functions or his duty. He sought sedulously to avoid controversy, al

though in the nature of things he lived constantly in its atmosphere. He once told me that it was an unbroken rule of his life never to reply to personal attacks upon himself or his work. Avoiding the polemics of the labor question, President Wright directed the energies of the National Bureau into the investigation of the economic conditions surrounding labor and the study of methods for promoting the welfare and uplift of the working classes. The reports of the bureau during the twenty years of his administration are a mine of information on such subjects as the conditions of workingmen and working-women, the slums of the cities, co-operative production and distribution, building and loan associations, trade and industrial education, railroad labor, convict labor, industrial depressions, compulsory insurance, the unemployed, wages and hours of labor, the housing of the working people, regulation and restriction of output, together with the annual reports he organized on the costs of productions, strikes and lockouts, wholesale prices, divorce, and the cost of living.

He developed a bureau of economic research, devoted to the study of all movements for the improvement of the conditions of labor. He scrupulously avoided propaganda in the interest of the labor union crusade; and by this wise and conservative course he not only strengthened his bureau and enlarged its sphere and influence, but immensely advanced the material interests of labor, both organized and unorganized.

While his attitude towards the trade-union was always distinctly friendly and sympathetic, he deprecated the excesses that have sometimes distinguished its methods. He became a potent personal factor in the movement for the gradual elimination of the methods of savagery from the strike and the lockout. His annual reports on the latter subjects were an impartial presentation of the statistical facts revealing the actual results of these trade warfares, accompanied by certain conclusions which his investigations justified. "As a rule, tradesunions oppose strikes," was one of these conclusions. "They are growing more and more conservative in their attitude. towards these questions," was another. His influence among

union labor men was uniformly in the direction of moderation; and it steadily pushed forward the advance of organized labor to the position it is destined to occupy in this country. This I know from the words of labor men. President Wright gradually won the deep respect and the profound regard of their ablest and most useful leaders.

From the beginning of his study of this great human question, President Wright foresaw, as through a mental telescope, the position which organized labor was destined to hold in the great drama of industrial life. He had studied the labor question in all phases of its evolution, in all the ages that have gone before. He realized that it was interlocked with the whole future of civilization. He understood that it must pass through its several stages,-stages of injustice, of intrigue, of riot, even of bloodshed. But he foresaw the ultimate outcome, never faltering in his conviction that the time will come when the employer and the employee will settle their grievances face to face, man to man, with open books, each with careful regard for the rights of the other. His faith has carried us a long way towards the realization of that dream.

To his persistent advocacy may be attributed the wide recognition which the principle of collective bargaining, and incidentally of the sliding scale method of wage adjustment, has already secured. He taught employers that it is better "to deal with well-organized and administered trade-unions as the medium through which to adjust questions of wages and other conditions of employment, rather than subject themselves to the chaotic and unreliable results which follow when workmen act as individuals."

The direct moral influence of Colonel Wright's personality and work was much greater than organized labor itself yet realizes, and it is an influence destined to continue and increase.

It was quite as potent with the manufacturer. He compelled the respectful attention of the employers of labor throughout the country; he was a frequent and honored guest and speaker at their gatherings. He held and fearlessly enunciated a doctrine regarding their duty and their opportunity which

lifted the manufacturer above the category of the mere fabricator of goods and wares, the mere purveyor to physical wants, the mere seeker after dollars. I will illustrate this by a single quotation from his writings, which embodies the highest conception of the responsibility of the entrepreneur, a conception which not so many generations back would have been regarded as preposterous, but which to-day, while not always, perhaps not generally, accepted, is no longer openly disputed:"The weal or woe of the operative population depends largely upon the temper in which the employers carry the responsibility intrusted to them. I know of no trust more sacred than that given into the hands of the captains of industry, for they deal with human beings in close relations; not through the media of speech or exhortation, but of positive association, and by this they can make or mar. Granted that the material is often poor, the intellects often dull, then all the more sacred the trust and all the greater the responsibility. The rich and powerful manufacturer, with the adjuncts of education and good business training, holds in his hand something more than the means of subsistence for those he employs: he holds their moral well-being in his keeping, in so far as it is in his power to mould their morals. He is something more than a producer: he is an instrument of God for the upbuilding of the

race.

"This may sound like sentiment: I am willing to call it sentiment; but I know it means the best material prosperity, and that every employer who has been guided by such sentiments has been rewarded twofold,-first, in witnessing the wonderful improvement of his people; and, second, in seeing his dividends increase and the wages of the operatives increase with his dividends. The factory system of the future will be run on this basis. The instances of such are multiplying now, and, whenever it occurs, the system outstrips the pulpit in the actual work of the gospel; that is, in the work of humanity. It needs no' gift of prophecy to foretell the future of a system which has in it more possibilities for good for the masses who