46 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 471. 



meeting should be essentially an affiliation 

 of scientific societies, but they should when 

 convenient confine their special programs 

 to the mornings, leaving the afternoons to 

 the sections of the association, two or three 

 of which should arrange for each afternoon 

 programs of general interest to scientific 

 men, uniting in many cases the common 

 fields of several sciences. This convoca- 

 tion week meeting must be held in a large 

 city and its work must be largely technical. 

 But there appears to be ample room for 

 smaller and less formal meetings in the 

 summer, held in a university town or sum- 

 mer resort, where those who liked— and 

 many teachers and others whose work in 

 science is somewhat that of the amateur 

 would appreciate the opportunity— could 

 come together. Out-of-door life and scien- 

 tific excursions would there be possible, 

 pleasant and profitable. 



A full discussion of the whole problem 

 of scientific organization would be oppor- 

 tune and iiseful at the present time. This 

 journal will be glad to give space to those 

 who are willing to express their views on 

 the sub.ject, and we hope that it will be dis- 

 cussed from different standpoints. 



SOME RECENT PHASES OF THE LABOR 

 PROBLEM* 



OLD PROBLEMS, BUT NEW CONDITIONS. 



In the rapid development of modern in- 

 dustry old problems are ever assuming new 

 and perplexing phases, but intrinsically 

 new ones rarely develop. Each age is 

 quick to imagine that its difficulties exceed 

 those which were conquered by its prede- 

 cessors, and to fancy the latter as free 



* Address by the vice-president and chairman 

 of Section I, Economics and Social Science, St. 

 Louis meeting, December, 1903. 



from the obstacles in overcoming which 

 the courage and genius of its own leaders 

 are subjected to their supremest tests. But 

 this is the superficial view only. Just as 

 the principle upon which the most complex 

 mechanism performs its marvelously spe- 

 cialized functions is to be found in the 

 crudest labor-saving devices of the earliest 

 dawn of culture, so the most primitive in- 

 dustrial organization, when subjected to 

 minute scrutiny, is sure to present traces 

 of those elements of friction, which, one 

 after another in different stages of prog- 

 ress, become the particular and absorbing 

 problems of generations to which each in 

 turn seems the sole serious impediment to 

 the realization of perfect conditions. 



The labor problem is no exception. It is 

 the struggle between different factors in 

 production over the relative shares of each, 

 and its origin lies deep in fundamental 

 conditions which have existed as long as 

 men have known the wisdom of saving 

 labor by the use of tools and of conserving 

 productive resources by the device of pri- 

 vate property. It will persist, in one or 

 another of its protean forms, until by some 

 unlooked-for alchemy man learns to satisfy 

 all human wants without requiring from 

 any individual more labor or abstinence 

 than he will voluntarily undertake. In 

 every historic era this unceasing struggle 

 has left indelible traces upon the record of 

 man's progress, and rarely has it yielded 

 the place of primary importance in the 

 minds of men to anything less compelling 

 than religious zeal. 



A PERSISTENT INQUIRY. 



How shall the comfort of satisfied eco- 

 nomic wants be divided between those who 

 contemporaneously endure the physical 

 discomforts of toil and those who control 

 the other factors in production? This is 

 the everlasting question which, in various 

 forms, has been asked and answered, re- 



