Homer Ferguson, President of the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, calls himself a 'plain hired man,' owning no part of the property he manages; he has elaborated the reasons why that aloofness from ownership strengthens him in his work. He may earn less money in his present job than he would earn running a business of his own; on the other hand, he has more prestige, greater opportunity. Judge Gary dominates United States Steel, not by stock-ownership or stockjobbing, but by the power of a wise and courageous mind. In his case, too, the chief reward lies in doing a big work and winning the applause of the public, not in his salary check. You cannot picture either man, or any industrial leader worthy of rank alongside them, as quitting his job in the face of a salary-cut, or as higgling over the price of his preferment in the first instance.

In the future, industrial leaders will tend more and more to be picked men, not owners in any important sense. Their salaries will depend upon the number of qualified men in the market, and the existing demand for their services. The lure of such positions and the determined efforts being made to educate for business leadership are sure to increase the number of qualified candidates. The demand is, of course, uncertain; but the chances are that it will not maintain itself relatively to supply, now that education, both pub

lic and private, has set itself to increase the supply. In that case, the present high level of executive salaries cannot be maintained. All indications point to the executives of the future carrying their loads of responsibility less because of the money reward and more because of personal pride and public spirit. Business leadership seems likely to become a profession, with professional standards and standing, as well as professional limitations as to its pay.

The learned professions, so called for tradition's sake, are easier to dispose of because, in each case, the leveling tendency is reinforced by an established professional ethic. Teachers, preachers, writers, and artists generally, for centuries have regarded their wages, not as pay, but as their living, their real rewards being service to their ideals and humanity, established social position, and the regard of their fellow men. These non-economic lures attract human nature so strongly that the rewards in these lines sometimes fall below those of unskilled labor. Poets have starved in garrets; ministers are notoriously underpaid, and of late years comparison of the pinched professor and the silk-shirted yokel has led to 'Feed the Prof.' campaigns. Law and medicine, because they work more directly upon life, have been more affected by the industrial swirl; but they, too, are bound to swim out of the commercial current to the high ethical shore. Even now, though physicians may talk about their business, they respond to many humanitarian demands; and there exist some lawyers, if not many, who put the eternal cry for justice ahead of fees. So the leveling influences of automatic machinery are bound to be reinforced and strengthened by the example of professional men, no less than by the teaching of those among them who see service as the high goal of human endeavor.

IV

Thus far we have considered the leveling of labor, as dictated by the automatic tool, solely from the standpoint of production. That is its direct action. Automatic machinery works indirectly toward the same end, however, through the market-through consumption. As the total cost of the product is the total cost of the brainand hand-labor involved, an immediate effect of production through automatic machines is to reduce the cost of the units produced. The economic advantage of such machinery is so manifest that there can be no stopping its progress short of the point where productive power will so far outrange the world's market ability to consume, that further multiplication of man-power will not be worth while. No one can foresee whether that point is centuries removed or merely decades. Theoretically, the capacity of the human race to consume goods is infinite; but actually it is at all times in competition with the universal human demand for leisure. No matter how cheap goods become, there is a point of accumulation beyond which some men will say, 'Let's knock off and have some fun." The ranks of labor developed plenty of such cases in 1919.

Short of that point, however, the market repays intensive cultivation. The cheaper goods become, the more of them can be sold, provided the purchasing power does not drop coincidentally with prices. It follows that, with increasing automatization in production, competition among sellers of goods on the one hand and buyers of labor-time on the other must push prices and wages toward a point where maximum production and maximum consumption tend to concur. Such is the diversity of human nature and the insistence of human desire that they

may never reach absolute concurrence; but the prospects are that they will approach one another with lessening fluctuations. In this country, mass-buying makes the market for most commodities. A broad division of the proceeds of industry stimulates buying far more than a narrow one; hence, influences flowing from the sales-end of industry will tend to strengthen that leveling of labor which is predetermined by competition among buyers of labor-power for use on automatic machines.

It must be borne in mind that, under competition, some degree of wage-variation always will exist, from causes lying within the individual, as, for example, the varying wages of operatives under piece rates. For while the automatic tool works within a fixed cycle, it is not the precise counterpart of the ancient treadmill.' Within narrow and unimportant limits, its productiveness varies somewhat with variations of personal energy and attentiveness. Likewise, there are sure to be variations in different parts of the country, due largely to uneven supply of labor-power resulting from differing local birth-rates and non-economic hindrances to economic shifts of base. Home and family ties, love of one's native environment, stock-ownership by employees, and personal loyalties in work-relations, probably always will influence human beings considerably, and deter them from following the main chance absolutely. Barometric pressure always tends to uniformity, yet is never uniform. The wind blowing where it listeth has its counterpart in the now fluid movement of labor in search of employment, higher pay, or, perhaps, escape from monotony.' Enough men and women can be depended upon to follow the main chance to effect a fairly even displacement of labor-power, and to enforce by economic law a fairly even wage-scale over the entire country.

Not the least interesting part of this leveling tendency is that it runs directly toward that socialist dream-equality of income. Yet it proceeds without any assistance from the Socialists, solely as the result of capitalists installing automatic machinery. The tendency itself is strictly economic, and conceivably might work out to its ultimate conclusion without calling forth political action, amending the institution of private property, or changing the present relations between employer and employee. Nothing so simple is to be expected; not so easily does humanity accept revolutionary changes in its methods of sustaining life. Farmerlabor parties in the United States and Canada, recently formed, may be taken as evidence of belated appreciation of the economic solidarity of town and country labor under the new conditions of industry. Woman suffrage gained influence in direct proportion as women became engaged in industrial production. The automatic tool will be the force back of most of our legislation for the next fifty years, just as it will be the mainspring of our educational programme, once its significance is understood by educators still fumbling for the key to modern life. To lads who come as beardless boys into their greatest purchasing power, something must be taught, other than has been taught, if they are ever to use their leisure and their economic power aright. The army of homeless, wifeless men and footloose women is growing; the automatic tool has cut marriage-knots as well as steel bands. Let all who think in terms of public recreation, domestic relations,

charity, religion, morals, child-welfare, and social science ponder those reactions of the automatic tool that daily proceed under their eyes.

In other parts of the world classes are wrestling bloodily for the control of machinery. They are of breeds to whom compromise is difficult. It is our boast that we, as inheritors of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, can settle peaceably clashes of interest over which other humans fight. But we shall never be able to settle peaceably and creditably all the problems arising out of the common use of the automatic tool in industrial production unless we grasp the social and political possibilities of its evolution. America gave the automatic tool its chance. Its blessings are evident; but unless controlled by social conscience, it may develop curses equally potent. America's high duty is to guide the continuing evolution of the Iron Man intelligently. For the economic forces which he releases are of such intense reality and abundant vitality that they will break governments which blindly oppose them just as quickly as they will undermine societies which yield too supinely to machine dictation. Governments now stake their existences upon controlling men; in the dawning age, the acid test of sovereignty may be control of machines. Through such control the leveling tendency, inherent in automatic production and reinforced by popular education, may be directed toward the goal of true democracy; whereas, undirected, it may push the human race into a new slavery, or stampede it into a new anarchy.

FOR that is what it really was. But away back in another century, when Patricia was eight and I was six, I didn't know what made her different from the rest of us, and I wondered how she walked safely over pitfalls that engulfed me.

There was the disgraceful episode of the kiss, to take one small instance. How did she know the right thing to do, in time? I knew well enough afterward. Oh yes, often enough, afterward, I lived through the scene in imagination, and acted my part in it as it should have been acted. One could n't turn the clock back by any agony of wishing; one could only provide against catastrophe ahead. To find a rule that would fit every possible emergency? The formula at last arrived at had nothing in it about 'a decided and proud choice,' or 'repelling interference.' It was, simply, Watch Patricia and do as she does.

that seemed to ask an unkind universe why they too might not have a glimpse of the gods at play; but Robin continued to shorten the stirrups of the saddle on his rocking-horse, and envied nobody.

We stood hand in hand at the door of the long drawing-room and looked in. The sight was different from anything one could find anywhere in the world to-day. So were the sounds. If we had been greeted by the clack of tongues that you will hear at your next afternoon tea, I do believe we should have turned and fled. Patricia and I had never heard anything so unlovely. Fortunate ears of the sixties-spared so many of the stridencies to come! Can one imagine now a city with no harsher birdnote than the twitter of the purple martens in the marten-house above the brewery? Not a city sparrow in all the length and breadth of the land; not a motor-horn! Little wonder if the voices in that drawing-room were soft and low-pitched.

I tugged at Patricia's hand to hold her back. It was so very beautiful — I wanted time to look. The game was over. The balls lay quiet at the end of the room where a visiting-card was pinned to the carpet; the players were standing about in groups, 'having conversation,' as I whispered to Patricia a different matter from plain talking. There was a delightful variety of bright, pretty colors; as the groups broke up and formed new groups, it was like looking into a big kaleidoscope. The ladies were in low neck and short sleeves,' like ourselves. The thermometer out

doors probably stood somewhere about zero at the time, and the big house was heated solely by wood stoves; drawingroom and library, with folding doors between, depended for warmth upon what was called a dumb stove, a kind of enlargement of the stovepipe from my father's office below. Sometimes, when we sat at our lessons in the library, - low-necked and short-sleeved even then, I would hear my mother on the other side of the folding doors tapping on the dumb stove with her thimble as a signal for more fire; then, studying my arms with interested curiosity, I would discover myself the proud possessor of goose-flesh. Yet that night the bare arms, as I remember them, were warmly smooth and white against the gay dresses. Not mere wisps of color, these, like the evening dresses of to-day, but satisfying, cushiony eyefuls.

I saw nothing amiss with the setting of the scene. The carpet with its big geometrical pattern, the black horsehair furniture, the what-not of seashells, the shade of wax flowers-it was all as inevitable and right as the blue of the sky and the green of the grass. It had always been there. Just now it was softened by candlelight, and glorified by those radiant beings floating about in pink and blue and corncolor and mauve and Nile green.

One in the new color, magenta, was rolling a ball to illustrate some question that had been raised about the game just over. Her stiff silk skirt made a fine 'cheese' as she stooped. By whirling very fast and then squatting, a little girl could make a cheese, but not one like this and not with that fine air of unconcern. When I was grown up, I would wear skirts that ballooned of their own accord. I saw myself in half a dozen situations that called for stooping. Most alluring of the visions was one of my grown-up self at the pantry table, now on a level with my chin, busy

oh, happy me!-at the now forbidden task of skimming the cream from a pan of milk. A bouquet in its silver holder dangled from my wrist. I spoke in the fascinating manner of the young lady in magenta, barely opening my lips.

Patricia let go of my hand and we entered the room. That is to say, Patricia entered. Even at eight she entered a room the whole of her; no astral half left dragging along uncertainly behind. Yes, Patricia was different from other children. Something in the way she was greeted as she passed from group to group a quick look of interest and admiration - confirmed me in the belief. I followed her, pleasurably excited, but with the gone feeling about the pit of the stomach that came always with that letting go of the hand. In proportion as Patricia's clasp was an assurance that all was right with the world, the loosing of it abandoned one to a path of lonely peril.

A little fuss was made over both of us. Here were the friends and acquaintances of every day, some of them nursery intimates, but all changed, somehow, by being at a party; our own mother looked not so approachable as when in 'high neck and long sleeves.' Here was even our doctor. Being a favorite with him, I had to wait to be taken upon his knee and have my cheeks rubbed into rosiness, and in this way I got behind Patricia in our progress around the

room.

When I caught up to her, I saw at once that something had happened.

There she stood, that little maiden of the sixties, the unmoved centre of a teacup tempest. I can see her yet, — her slimness, her straightness, her pretty color, her willfully curved lips,

above all, her evident indifference to the exclamations that were pelting her from every side like a flurry of soft March snow.