SOCIAL ECONOMICS AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION.

BY N. P. GILMAN.

Among the national sections in the Social Economy Palace at the recent Universal International Exposition in Paris, that of the United States stood in the foremost rank. It was interesting to the student of social economics because of the amount of matter of solid worth which it contained, and was attractive to the general visitor because of the variety of the exhibits and the manner in which they were displayed. The comparatively limited space available (27 by 27 feet) was utilized, for instance, by the ingenious wing frames for showing a large number of photographs in one case, the actual amount of wall space taken being represented by the size of one frame only. Not only was the section arranged with taste, giving the impression of an abundance and variety of material to draw from, but the record of social economics in America was presented in a manner unique among the national exhibits. The Department of Education and Social Economy for the United States Commission to the Exposition arranged for two series of monographs, one for each of its two important subjects. The series of monographs on American social economics was edited by Prof. Herbert B. Adams, of Johns Hopkins University. There were 20 of these monographs, the work of 13 different writers, and they were printed in excellent form. Though the cost of publishing them was defrayed from different sources and the printing was done by several American presses, care was taken to secure uniformity of type and page and paper, so that the series could be bound together. (a) As

a Mention should be made of the generosity of the State of Massachusetts, which assumed the expense of publishing ten or more of the monographs; of the League for Social Service, of New York, which contributed four, and of the State of New York. The monographs vary in size from 8 to 102 pages. The following list gives the subjects and authors:

I. The Social Economy Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900, by Richard Waterman, jr., of the Department of Education and Social Economy.

II. The Country and the People, by Edward D. Jones, instructor [now professor] in economics and statistics in the University of Wisconsin.

III. Resources and Industries, by Edward D. Jones.

IV. Commercial Institutions, by Wilfred H. Schoff, chief of the foreign department in the Philadelphia Commercial Museum.

V. Bureaus of Labor Statistics, by William Franklin Willoughby, expert in the Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

these pamphlets were written some months before the opening of the Exposition, it was out of the question for most of the writers to refer to particular exhibits in the section as illustrating their remarks. In future expositions it would be desirable to have such concert between the writers of monographs and the exhibitors that the writers could refer to the exhibits and the exhibits be marked with references to the monographs.

INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL BETTERMENT.

A close accord between writer and exhibit was attained in the interesting display of photographs made by the recently formed League for Social Service of New York City. Several cases of photographs were arranged by the league, which acted as special agent for the Department of Social Economy, to illustrate "industrial betterment," and the secretary of the league, W. H. Tolman, contributed the monograph with the same title. While reference was not made from one source of information to the other, an employer of labor or a student of sociology interested in the subject and willing to devote some hours to a study of it would have found the pamphlet, which was illustrated with eight pages of photographs, and the wing-frame views of the industrial establishments admirable supplements to each other. This portion of the United States section might be called the most strictly "missionary" in its intention of provoking imitation of the good works of numerous American employers, and this fact justifies a particular enumeration of the league's exhibit in this direction. The photographs

VI. Employment Bureaus, by William Franklin Willoughby.

VII. Inspection of Factories and Workshops, by William Franklin Willoughby. VIII. Inspection of Mines, by William Franklin Willoughby.

IX. Regulation of the Sweating System, by William Franklin Willoughby.

X. Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation, by William Franklin Willoughby.

XI. Building and Loan Associations, by William Franklin Willoughby.

XII. Cooperation and Profit Sharing, by N. P. Gilman, Meadville, Pa.

XIII. The Housing Problem, by Lawrence Veiller, secretary of the TenementHouse Committee, Charity Organization Society, New York City.

XIV. Religious Movements for Social Betterment, by Josiah Strong, president of the League for Social Service, New York City.

XV. Municipal Movements and Social Progress, by Frederick W. Spiers, instructor in history and economics in the Northeast Manual Training High School, Philadelphia, Pa.

XVI. Industrial Betterment, by William Howe Tolman, secretary of the League for Social Service, New York City.

XVII. Young Men's Christian Associations, by H. S. Ninde, secretary of the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations, New York City.

XVIII. Trend of Social Economic Legislation, by Robert H. Whitten, sociology librarian in the New York State Library, Albany, N. Y.

XIX. The Past and Present Condition of Public Hygiene and State Medicine in the United States, by Samuel W. Abbott, secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, Boston.

XX. The Social Relief Work of the Salvation Army in the United States, by Booth Tucker, commander, New York City.

represented the works and the various institutions for the benefit of employees, of which the following is a list:

INSTITUTIONS FOR BENEFIT OF EMPLOYEES AT VARIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Besides these more or less developed systems of betterment of industrial conditions, the league also pictured a few other establishments where the general conditions of the workman's lot are excellent-cases in which a company, without establishing, as yet, special institutions for the benefit of the employees, has given them the advantages of healthful, spacious, or picturesque surroundings in the country. Such are the Apollo Iron and Steel Company at Vandergrift, Pa.; the Briarcliff farm, at Briarcliff Manor, N. Y., with its school, church, and men's boarding house; the General Electric Company, with its decoration of its grounds at Schenectady, N. Y., and its projected village for its upper employees; and the Westinghouse Company at Wilmerding, Pa., with its library in the office building, and its housing system. The J. H. Williams Company, of Brooklyn, N. Y., especially protects its men from dangerous machinery, besides furnishing to its workmen a system of baths; while the Worcester (Mass.) Corset Company, the George Frost Manufacturing Company, of Boston, Mass., and C. F. Hathaway & Co. were pictured as manufacturing under conditions fully approved by the National Consumers' League.

The monograph by Dr. Tolman contains 80 pages describing the institutions for industrial betterment operated by most of the firms just mentioned and by some fifteen or sixteen others. The descriptions are arranged, for the most part, under subject headings such as hygiene.

fire protection, prizes, schools, recreation, vacations, factory publications, restaurants, baths and lavatories, parks, club houses, thrift, libraries, improved homes, and the like. There are full accounts of the work of several companies, such as those at Ludlow, Mass., Wilmerding, Pa., and Providence, R. I. Of all the American monographs on social economics Dr. Tolman's had the most directly practical purpose. The pamphlet has been electrotyped and is being used by the League for Social Service in its efforts in behalf of the working people.

A special section of the French exhibit illustrated "patronal institutions," all those "welfare institutions," as the Germans call them, which employers support, mainly or entirely at their own expense, for the benefit of their work people. France has a great variety of such institutions, and the section made no distinction between those which are maintained without profit sharing and those which accompany a profit-sharing agreement. Often the latter institution has followed upon a considerable development of the patronal institutions proper, and in no essential manner does it modify them; so that if it should be given up they would still continue. The great French railway systems-those of the East, the West, the North, and the South, the Lyons, the Orleans, and the State itself are favorably distinguished for the interest they take in the housing, health, education, and recreations of their many thousands of workers. Similar measures are taken by Solvay et Cie., the great soda manufacturers; the Grand Magazin du Louvre, the great Parisian department store; the Dock and Storage Company of Marseilles; the Compagnie Général des Voitures of Paris; Garnier-Thiébaut Frères of Kichompré, Vosges; the Société J. and A. Pavin de Lafarge, lime and cement makers of Viviers, Ardèche; J. Thiriez, père et fils, cotton manufacturers of Lille and Loos, and Waddington Sons and Company in the same industry at Saint Remy-sur-Avre.

The patronal institutions of Belgium are noted for their number and variety. At the head, in point of size, stand those of the great zinc works, La Vieille Montagne. This company in the exhibit of its products in the Champ de Mars building called attention to its institutions for its workers at Moresnel, Couité, Bray, Angleur, Penchot, and other places, and this kind of reference was common with all the firms and companies possessing such institutions who made exhibits. A large atlas of statistics, reports, and photographs showed the work done by the Society for Popular Instruction of Morlanwelz, in the Province of Hainaut. The activities of this society, founded in 1877, for Morlanwelz and the neighboring communes, embrace all kinds of schools from the crèche to the gardienne. Some 500 boys and girls attend the primary schools, and there are 70 pupils in the industrial and housekeeping departments; the Belgian Government subsidizes

the latter kind of instruction. Under the 15 sections of the society's institutions, besides more common entries, were Les Francs Mineurs, the union of coal miners for promoting their moral and material interests; the Conference St. Vincent de Paul, intended to relieve needy families and to prevent free and illicit union of the sexes; the Cercle d'Agréments, which provides games and sports on Sundays; the Cercle Dramatique; a cheap fuel organization, and a library of 1,500 volumes. The paternal interest of the Russian Government in the welfare of workingmen has not had the effect of extinguishing individual initiative in Russia. On the contrary, there were in the Russian section the reports and exhibits of a considerable number of companies and firms which have done much to render the condition of their employees more comfortable. The Woolen Manufacturing Company of DagoKertell (C. & E. Ungern-Sternberg), for instance, showed models of the convenient cottages it has erected, to the number of 173, for its 600 workmen, of which 138 are fully paid for. These houses have abundant garden space and outbuildings, including a bath house. The workman is helped to build only on condition that he shall not sell his house except to another workman. Artesian wells furnish pure water, and no epidemic disease is known at Dago-Kertell. The sea gives opportunity for sport and for fishing. Two cooperative stores, three schools, a hospital, and other institutions are evidence of the continued efforts which have resulted in greatly raising the level of the workman's life, and have kept industrial peace for fifty-six years. Of the other Russian establishments which practice the principles of industrial betterment on a large scale, the cotton mills of the Société de la Grande Manufacture at Yaroslav are perhaps the most conspicuous. Yaroslav has been a seat of this industry for many years, and the company now employs nearly 9,000 persons, of whom 4,000 are women. It manufactures chiefly cheap goods for the popular market. A third of the volume describing the works is devoted to the institutions-religious, educational, sanitary, and recreative-which the company supports, in whole or in part, for the common life of the 17,000 people who depend for subsistence upon the main factory. The cotton mills at Tver are almost, if not quite, as large as those at Yaroslav. The company here maintains a school with commercial and superior sections, numbering, in 1899-1900, 1,140 pupils; a hospital with 102 beds; a maternity hospital; an asylum for aged work people; an orphanage and a crèche; a library, with an annual expenditure of 2,500 rubles ($1,287.50), and a theater seating 1,200 persons. All these institutions are free to the work people. Other companies of a similar tendency represented at Paris were the Russian-American Rubber Company, of St. Petersburg; the B. P. and A. Yassuninsky Company (textiles), of Kokhma, Vladimir department; the Cloth Company Popof, Moscow department; La Société Émile Zundel, Moscow; the glassworks of