276 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



(io not mean to disparage imagination constructively used or to dis- 

 courage any man's genuine efforts to make the world better, but I 

 do object to half-baked propaganda that sees only one set of facts, 

 and I feel that reformers, like business men, ought to go carefully 

 and hunt for all essentials. I am thinking now especially of wage 

 labor, and how it fits men, or most of them. The majority of men 

 want an assured job. Beyond certain limits security is of more con- 

 sequence than the amount of the compensation. Risk, organization, 

 iiivention, are out of their line. On the other hand, these elements 

 in industrial life when supplied by others render their labor more 

 jjroductive, and they share in the benefit. Now, on the other hand, 

 there are men who are only at ease, and who are most fruitful, when 

 they are furnishing the above elements. In fact, their energy might 

 be dangerous if it hadn't such outlet. 



This is out of the main line of all of us and I am going to cut it 

 off with reference to just two things that come to me from recent 

 experience. 



First. We talk about fortunes too great for the good of their 

 possessors and of society. I think that not so long ago I saw a class 

 of wage workers that, judged by the same standards, was paid too 

 high wages. 



Second. Organized labor having been beaten in the shingle busi- 

 ness in the Northwest some months ago, turned to cooperative manu- 

 facture and planned, through allied unions in the East, to build up a 

 market for the product. This looked like' a splendid, progressive plan, 

 ci chance for labor to get what it has sometimes claimed as its due, 

 all there is in an industry — ;and conditions in that industry seemed 

 favorable. A good deal could be brought out here, but I will refer 

 to but one aspect of the matter. That is, that upon inquiry it developed 

 that the union's purpose was, when it had got the scheme going and 

 had built up a market, to give up the cooperative feature of it and 

 use the advantage gained in a trade for union conditions with the 

 old employers. That was a disappointment to me, l)ut the fact is 

 there, and it is certainly significant. 



It brings this matter of labor a step further, where we shall want 

 it later, if I mention here a thing that greatly pleased me in the 

 recent presentation of the lumber industry before the Federal Trade 

 Commission. At the Chicago hearing in July, Mr. Goodman of Wis- 

 consin stepped aside from the main lines of the hearing, showed the 



