Knowledge that Transforms

It is probably no overstatement to say that modern industrial problems and the part played by the trade-union movement have not been thoroughly understood or accurately examined and interpreted by a large number of our economists and sociologists. In the past too much attention has apparently been given to the study and application of previously conceived theory to industrial conditions and not enough to truly scientific investigation for the purpose of discovering and analyzing the facts. During recent years an evident change has taken place in the academic understanding and viewpoint; less time has been devoted to weighing every industrial or trade-union activity or policy in the scales of sociological or economic theory, and a greater effort has been made to discover and interpret the underlying causes which furnish the very foundation of the human problems arising from modern industry. If we are to discover the facts, and if these are to be intelligently interpreted, it is necessary to separate and analyze all of the factors in the problem, and to have at our disposal well-defined scientific methods by the assistance of which dependable investigations may be made and intelligent interpretation given. Perhaps in no field of the industrial problem has there been less extensive scientific study than in the one occupied by the tradeunion movement. There has been some sympathetic examination by a few men of exceptional training and ability. It is true that the aims and policies of the trade-union movement have not been without a measure of intelligent understanding in the academic world, but it is unfortunately the fact that the trade-union movement in its true significance has had but few competent interpreters in the scientific group. Within recent times, a few scientifically trained investigators and educators have carried out in the field of trade-unionism most valuable research work, which has supplied us with a wealth of historical data and in addition has greatly increased our knowledge

An immigration bill which contains, first, a codification of existing immigration laws, second, provision for the literacy test, and third, certain other additions to our present statutes regulating immigration, was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 29, i9i6, by Congressman Burnett. On March 30 the bill, which is known as the Burnett Immigration bill, passed the House by a vote of 308 to 87. It is now pending before the Senate. This bill represents another attempt to enact into law practically the same measure which was vetoed in 19I3 after it had passed both houses of Congress. At that time it failed by a scant margin to muster the two-thirds vote in the Senate which would have made it a law in spite of the President's veto. In his veto of the bill of I913, President Wilson apparently regarded the literacy test as the overshadowing issue presented by the bill, and he based his objections to the entire measure chiefly upon his objections to the literacy test. Similarly, in the debates in Congress and in popular discussion throughout the country the other features of the proposed legislation of I913 attracted scarcely a passing comment. The present bill is considered in the same light. A literacy clause similar to that of I9I3, with the added provision that the literacy requirement shall not apply to aliens who are seeking admission to the United States to avoid religious persecution, is the storm center of the present Burnett bill. The problem of the further regulation of European immigration to this country has been a political question for at least twenty-five years, and throughout the greater part of that period it has been commonly discussed in connection with one single method of solution, the literacy test. Since the enactment of laws, in i882 and the decade following, barring aliens who were undesirable because of certain physical, mental, or moral defects, no important

The panic of I907 is rapidly dropping out of sight as an event clearly remembered, and is becoming more and more to be regarded merely as one of a number of chapters in past economic history. Nevertheless, before the panic shall have quite lost distinctness of recollection, there may be some profit in considering one of the most striking incidents of that period, and in endeavoring to derive certain general principles from such a consideration. The incident in question is the failure of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company during the sharpest moments of the crisis, and the utter unconformity between the condition of this concern and that of its strongest rival-the General Electric Company. The conclusions deducible from the study have to do with the policies to be followed in the financial operations of industrial corporations. As is true in all financial crises, the panic of I907 subjected to severe strain the great industrial concerns of the country, among them, the two electrical supply corporations here being considered. The Westinghouse company was forced into a receivership, while the General Electric Company underwent the test apparently unshaken. This divergence in the records of the two corporations must have resulted from one of two sets of circumstances: either the General Electric Company enjoyed advantages which its competitor did not; or, while operating on the same basis as its rival, it had been pursuing financial policies different in kind and in outcome. The discussion following will undertake to show that the latter was the case; that is, that the companies met the same conditions in diverging ways, and that these diverging ways of treating fundamentally similar situations gave rise to the incongruity in their subsequent behavior. In the establishment of this case the discussion must be divided into two portions. The first has to do with a general comparison