LEADERS IN THE MONTH’S MAGAZINES
Why Children Work. By Helen M. Todd. McClure’s. The answers of eight hundred of the little workers who were questioned by Miss Todd as factory inspector in Chicago. A little less than half the Chicago children gave their father’s illness or death by industrial accident or disease as the reason. An almost equal number said they liked work better than school, and their reasons, as given by Miss Todd, constitute a pretty serious criticism of our educational system.
Safety by Sanction. By John Anson Ford. Technical World Magazine. Tells of the “safety first” campaign set on foot by R. C. Richards, claim agent of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, which, in less than two years, has resulted in saving the life of one trainman out of every two who under former conditions would have been killed under the cars; saving similarly one out of every three of the trackmen formerly doomed to death in the performance of duty; reducing the accident toll among passengers by 152 more passengers saved from death and almost 5,000 more spared from injury than the year before.
This novel and enlightened effort to reduce claims by preventing accidents has now spread to forty-six railroads operating 60 per cent of the railroad mileage in the United States.
The Fire Insurance Trap. By William B. Ellison. Pearson’s. As the expert chosen by Governor Sulzer to frame a new form of the insurance policy for New York, Mr. Ellison tells of the sixteen “teeth” by which policy-holders can be caught at the present time. These teeth are clauses in the policy by which the companies can escape from their liability.
A University That Runs a State, by Frank Parker Stockbridge, and
What I am Trying To Do, by Adolph O. Eberhardt. Both in the World’s Work. In Wisconsin, the university “writes many of its laws, directs much of its public service, increases its crops, makes better farmers and housekeepers, conducts correspondence schools, and carries a college education to the door of every citizen who wants it.” In Minnesota a governor who writes of his own plans, is trying to keep farmers on their farms, by using a generous state educational fund, with further grants by the Legislature, to make the country school houses centers for social intercourse for recreation and for practical instruction in agriculture and household economics.
Consumers’ Co-operation, by Albert Sonnichsen, and Co-operation in Wisconsin, by Robert A. Campbell. Both in the Review of Reviews. A résumé by the secretary of the co-operative league of the progress of the co-operative movement in Europe and America, supplemented by the intensive study of one state by an official of the State Board of Public Affairs, created last year with instruction, to make a special study of the state experience in this field.
Industrial Peace and War. By Everett P. Wheeler. Atlantic Monthly. A plea for a compulsory arbitral tribunal, which would substitute continual peace for recurrent warfare in the relations of labor and capital. Mr. Wheeler does not believe such a method of settling labor disputes would be impracticable or unsuited to American conditions or that the compulsory powers of such a tribunal should be any more repugnant to our ideas of liberty than is the power of our courts to decide disputes between individuals.