ments made with employers, this is no reason for rejecting incorporation. On the contrary, if the unions disapprove of lawlessness and breach of contract, if they have no desire to terrorize nonunionists and violate agreements, they should have no fear of the legal responsibility that would be imposed by incorporation. The refusal to accept legal responsibility raises a suspicion that they wish to be left free to commit lawless acts and break contracts.

It may be conceded that incorporation with absolutely unrestricted financial liability might work hardship for the unions by laying their funds open to suits maliciously instituted by unscrupulous employers or disgruntled members. But this objection does not hold against incorporation provided the amount collected in damages be definitely limited. To such incorporation with limited liability no valid objection can be raised. Indeed, it would be positively beneficial for the trade unions. It would enable labor organizations more readily to secure recognition from employers, secure for them stronger support by public opinion, bring relief from frequent injunction proceedings, confer power to sue employers for violations of contract, and give the unions more definite control over their members. In every respect the status of organized labor would be immensely improved through incorporation.

GOVERNOR CUMMINS AND HIS

FAD.

[Chicago Inter-Ocean.]

The speech of Governor Cummins at the recent Detroit convention of the National Reciprocity League is widely and heatedly discussed in the Republican press of Iowa. While the Republicans of the rest of the country are generally agreed that this is not an opportune time for tariff revision, Governor Cummins would appear resolved to make revision an immediate issue.

"I believe some changes," said Governor Cummins at Detroit, "are de

manded now without respect to a modification of the duties levied by any other country upon our exports." He was speaking in ostensible advocacy of reciprocity, but he certainly showed a very queer and unusual understanding of the meaning of reciprocity. What most people understand by reciprocity is some such bargain as traders make daily. One makes a concession to the other in return for a concession from the other. Yet Governor Cummins says, in effect, that we can do nothing by reciprocity without at once revising our tariff.

ar

The chief argument of Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Bryant for tariff revision is that it would curb the trusts. That would appear to be Governor Cummins's gument also. But he is peculiarly unfortunate in his citation of iron and steel duties as those that "ought to be reduced, not years hence, but now," as a means toward control of the trusts. Every one knows that of all the so-called trusts the steel trust is most indifferent whether the tariff stays up or goes down. Its leading managers have said publicly that they care nothing about the tariff. It is their smaller competitors who see in tariff revision great trouble and probable ruin.

Republicans generally have turned away from tariff revision at this time because they see that it offers no sure remedy for trust abuses, and that the control of the trusts is the most important problem of the day. They have turned away from tariff revision also because they see that control of the trusts is quite large enough a task, without complicating the financial readjustment which trust control involves with the business uncertainty which tariff revision would cause and without adding the troubles of the further industrial readjustment which enactment of reduced tariffs would compel.

We hear from Iowa, however, that Governor Cummins and his friends are determined to draw lines within the party on the tariff issue. We also find Governor Cummins hailed in Democratic tariff-revision quarters, and by such avowed trust organs as Harper's Weekly, as the new Moses who is to lead the

Republican party out of high-tariff bondage and win for himself at least a Presidential nomination.

It may amuse Governor Cummins to magnify himself as a Republican leader in Iowa by forcing his party up to an issue for which it is not ready, for which the times are inopportune, and which it has put aside to attend to a more important question, and by so doing to try for the chance of becoming his party's national leader. But it is a dangerous amusement for the Republican party and for the country, and it may prove in the end an amusement destructive to the legitimate political aspirations of Governor Cummins.

WOOL SUBSTITUTES.

LARGE EXTENT TO WHICH THEY ARE EMPLOYED HERE.

[The Manufacturer.]

In an instructive paper on wool substitutes, read at a recent meeting of sheep owners by Mr. A. Mansell of Shrewsbury, England, it was pointed out that the decline in the demand for and the value of wool has been one of the most striking features in an eventful period of agricultural changes, and to the ordinary farmer the reason for this unfortunate movement has been incomprehensible and obscure. The common theory has innocently assigned the cause to an abnormal growth in the supplies received from abroad and to an excess in the general production over the requirements. Mr. Mansell's contention is that the wool market has been destroyed to the producer simply by the extent to which it has been superseded in the manufacture of so-called woolen goods by other raw materials of less value. The ingenuity and industry employed in perfecting the processes that enable manufacturers to dispense with a large proportion of the genuine raw material would have been worthy of a higher purpose, but no doubt they have

"INDEPENDENT WORKMEN "

An Albany (New York) despatch says: The Rev. F. M. Fairchild of Albany, who has been called into consultation by

the workmen interested in the formation of the National League of Independent Workmen of America, said to a reporter:

"It is proposed to put a national organizer in the field and to organize local branches all over the country, and demand that employers run their shops as 'open shops,' in which union and league men can have an equal and fair chance for employment.

"The league will be strictly a laboring man's affair, but it will be incorporated, so as to command the confidence of employers and the general public."

Among the objects for which the independent workmen propose to organize are:

"To compel officers of the government to enforce the laws," "to compel labor unions to observe the laws," and "to protect members against unjust treatment from employers by due process of

law."

We have somehow struggled along for nearly one hundred and thirty years without any Columbus Day and we ought to be able to do it for a while longer. We have set up quite a lot of monuments to the discoverer of our country, named an exposition for him and in a million other ways done honor to his memory. He was a great worker in his day, and we don't believe he took much stock in holidays. But he is a good deal of a "dead one" now, and we haven't so much room and time for holidays as we used to have, either. There are only 313 secular days in the year any way; and what with Christmas, New Year's, Fourth of July, Lincoln Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Fast Day, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, and a lot of other old days, not to mention days off, it is much to be feared that the calendar will become a total wreck if this sort of thing keeps on.

If

we are going to continue making legal holidays as fast as in the recent past, the time may come when business will have to be done in the night-time or else stretch the calendar out beyond all recognition.- New York Commercial.

THE manufacturer who is considering

prices for goods to come out of the looms must in justice to himself and to his buyer carefully consider every phase of the labor question, for never before in the history of the country has the labor question been so prominent and obtrusive. It seems as though a crisis were near at hand, one that would settle for a long time the question of the proper relation between capital and labor. cannot be taken from this that there will be any serious disturbance, but that a recognition of each other's position and equities must be had. - Textile Manufacturers' Journal.

It

WITHIN the past six months I have visited all the New England States and all of the states as far west as Colorado and north of the Ohio River, meeting many merchants and men of affairs, not one of whom was in favor of tariff revision. All want the tariff to be left religiously alone. No man possessed of the power to reason correctly desires to disturb the present prosperity by any experiments calculated to create a want of confidence. If the tariff is to be revised let it be upward, not downward.-W. S. Manning in American Economist.

FREE traders know that they cannot carry out their wishes to the full. They will only be too glad to break the ranks of their opponents, to conquer by dividing. This is the only hope they have of gaining a victory for their un-American They do not insist on their opponents becoming pronounced free traders; they are satisfied to have them renounce protection in whole or in part, but they want them to stay "dissatisfied."--American Economist.