tion of independence for the Philippines not as merely an insular matter. It is a matter of the broadest bearing on the ultimate adjustment to be wrought out between our civilization and that of the Orient under the probable leadership of Japan. Sincere Filipinos should mark carefully the history of Korea since Japan, with seeming disinterestedness, went to war with China to free Korea from her ancient suzerain-in order, ultimately, to absorb Korea as a dependent province of the Japanese Empire, a province not self-governed by its own elective legislature as are the Philippines, but governed by a Japanese military Governor General. And Americans should not be surprised if Japan most earnestly and intensely supports a movement ostensibly for the freedom of the Philippines; for it is not unlikely that Japan appears as playing a part toward them similar to that which the United States played toward Cuba under Spain-with a different intent.

Filipinos should realize that there is no real analogy between Cuba and the Philippines. Cuba geographically is under the very wing of the United States; and if any foreign Power were to attempt her subjugation, the whole American people would rush to the aid of Cuba-and to the defence of their own immediate security. But the Philippines are very remote and many Americans, sensing possible complications, in effect ask the question: How can we withdraw from the Philippines with a show of decency and let them fend for themselves, thus saving ourselves from Far Eastern embroilments? It is rarely that the man on the street has sufficient knowledge of strategy to realize that the ultimate security of the United States depends on the security of Australasia and on the stability of the Far East and that these, in turn, depend on the security of the Philippines.

Filipinos should realize that the one and single thing that would cause the American people as a whole to come to their aid is the fact that the American flag floats over them, protecting them while their capacity for self-government is being developed. Remove the flag—as the independista would do and the future of the Philippines will be a matter of practically no interest to the mass of Americans unconcerned with world affairs.

But perhaps the most profound factor in the future of the

Philippines is the test it may put upon the moral fibre of the American people. It is no sign of a strong sense of righteousness for a guardian to grant the demand of a wayward child that he permit it forthwith to have its own way in the world. A higher sense of duty is shown by willingness to make whatever efforts and sacrifices may be required to defend and develop a dependent, however wayward. And the cycle of civilization after civilization has shown that when a once great people become so selfish and ease-loving that they lose their sense of duty to defend and foster their dependents, that is a sure index of moral turpitude which ends in their being overthrown as a nation by others who have not lost their virility. The policy of the American people toward the Philippines may indeed be the determining index of the future of the Pacific and of our civilization.

WILLIAM HOWARD GARDINER.

THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC

BY JOHN CORBIN

STUDENTS of the advancing phenomena of our industrial life have observed, and often with disquietude, a tendency away from local self-government in the United States and toward national control. As early as 1906 Elihu Root gave a notable warning that if the States have any intention or hope of preserving their primal importance under the Constitution they must see to it that their functions are properly performed, and performed with regard to more than local advantage-with regard to the rights and welfare of neighbor States, and of the nation as a whole:

It is useless for the advocates of State rights to inveigh against the supremacy of the constitutional laws of the United States, or against the extension of national authority in the fields of necessary control, where the States themselves fail in the performance of their duty. The instinct of self-government among the people of the United States is too strong to permit them long to respect anyone's right to exercise a power which he fails to exercise. Sooner or later constructions of the Constitution will be found to vest the power where it will be exercised-in the national government.1

The warning is not hopeful in tone and it has not availed. Nor is it easy to see how it can avail. Very few of our multifarious activities are held within the bounds of a single State. The Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are constantly, inexorably, extending their authority to affairs once wholly local. Nor are matters of merely personal conduct exempt. If a youth in Jersey City takes a young woman to the metropolis for immoral purposes, or if a wife in Hoboken receives instruction in birth control through the mails from Manhattan, both become grist for the stately mills of the Federal courts. The calendars are constantly clogged; there is a cry for more and always more Federal judges. Is the result to be a

1 How to Preserve the Local Self-Government of the States. An Address at the dinner of the Pennsylvania Society of New York, December 12, 1906. Collected Works.

complete nationalization of our industrial and social life, the extinction of local self-government? If so, our institutions will be strangely, indeed tragically, transformed.

It is a fact not sufficiently recognized that, step by step with the decay of local autonomy in the territorial States, a new power has arisen, a new unit of the life of the nation, which feels the same desire for self-government, the same need of it, which the territorial States once felt. Viewing the State of Massachusetts in its present and actual rather than in its historic character, is it any more a "unit" of our life than the shoe industry or the textile industry, each of which, though it centres in Massachusetts, has a national extension? Is Pennsylvania in its territorial aspect one whit more an entity than the coal industry, the steel industry? New York calls itself, rather vaingloriously, the Empire State; but the empire of its port over the commerce of the nation is a thing very real and potent. The railways, narrowly local in their origin, have leaped over State lines as if they were abstractions and the several regional groups are now factors in the national life as distinct as any of the States at the time of the birth of our Constitution. The United States of the twentieth century are the great, vital organs of the body industrial. And to-day they are as jealous of Federal control as the territorial States once were, as eager to achieve autonomy as the States are now lax in defending it. The incessant resistance which our industries oppose to government by commission is an instinctive utterance of our racial instinct for self-government.

Is there hope of occupational autonomy? There is, at least, a fear. The theory of Guild Socialism is built on it, as is also the theory-not the practice of Bolshevism. In our own country, many unions-textile workers, garment workers, coal miners, and railway employés are increasingly conscious of the power of a self-governing industrial unit, and are bent on extending it, though the means to that end is a transformation of our Constitution. Once let them become a majority and, according to the doctrines of democracy, they have the right to rule the nation, not only politically but industrially. "Industrial Democracy," whether it spells progress or ruin, is a programme thoroughly feasible. But there is more than democracy in the wind that

blows to the future. Employers also have perceived this tendency toward the formation of industrial "States" and are already using it, though less intelligently, for the development of self-government on a basis that admits of private ownership, individual initiative. For a free people may live under a democracy or a republic as it wills.

In small local industries, employé representation has long been familiar, and for the most part successful. Toward the end of 1921, it was introduced into the Pennsylvania Railroad system and the "Big Five" group of packers-essentially national groups. In both cases old-time labor unionists fought the innovation, and in both cases ingloriously failed. The fact may well prove the opening of a new era in unionism as in organized industry, the beginning of republican self-government in the industrial group as a whole.

The modus operandi of employé representation is admirably autonomous, admirably effective. Thus, under the obvious necessity of deflating wages, employés of the packers were asked to take a reduction of approximately 10 per cent, though their wages had already been reduced some 17 per cent by a Federal arbitration. The decision was reached through a board equally composed of representatives of the men and representatives of the management. A clean breast was made of the condition of the industry and all members of the conference had access to the company books. The "representatives" agreed that a cut was warranted and the agreement was speedily accepted by the rank and file of the workers.

Only the outside trade union objected-officials who were not themselves workers, being professional organizers and labor leaders, and who saw no clear scope for their activities under a régime of employé representation and collective bargaining within the group. Though they deride the "company union", the "hand picked" union, they see in the industrial republic a potentiality to which those who have most reason to welcome it are strangely indifferent. They called a strike. The packers had discarded the machinery of arbitration set up in war-time under Judge Samuel Alschuler, a fact of which the pro-labor press made much. Technically they had a right to do this, the