Victor L. Berger, the first Socialist to be elected to Congress; Bird S. Coler, former comptroller of the City of New York.
Woman Suffrage—
Anna Howard Shaw, president National American Woman Suffrage Association; Mrs. A. J. George, organization secretary of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage.
The Open Shop versus the Unionized Shop—
John Kirby, president National Association of Manufacturers, and Joseph W. Bryce, president of the Trades and Workers’ Association of America; James O’Connell, president Metal Trades Department and vice-president American Federation of Labor, and C. G. Norman, ex-chairman Board of Governors of the Building Trades Employers’ Association.
The meetings seem to have reached the results sought in more than one way. They have been well attended both by students and public, although comparatively few students have registered and done the reading required and passed the examination in order to secure university credit. For those students, however, who entered upon the work seriously the course has been as severe both in the quantity of reading required, in the reports upon that reading and in the examination as the regular university courses, and students have expressed their appreciation of the interest as well as the value of the course. Similar expressions have come from citizens in numerous instances. There have been regular attendants from Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Yonkers and also from New Jersey. Requests have been made for an extension of the forum to other boroughs and the matter is under consideration for the coming year. Inquiries have come from as far west as Kansas and Calgary in western Canada regarding the methods employed; and numerous requests for printed reports of the addresses and discussions have been received.[3]
The audiences in one respect at any rate seem to have lacked somewhat the university spirit of inquiry, having retained rather the normal human spirit of liking to hear views that agree with one’s own. It was noticeable, for example, that the people who came to hear the Socialist speaker were the Socialists coming to be flattered, and not the anti-Socialists coming to learn. Likewise, the anti-Socialist speaker was not listened to by so many Socialists as by those of his own opinion. Perhaps equally noticeable was this tendency to listen to speakers of their own side in the case of the discussion on woman’s suffrage. Surely it is to be hoped that in another year the academic spirit will have increased sufficiently so that each group will be equally anxious to hear their opponents, because it is, after all, primarily from those who differ from us that we learn, rather than from those with whom we agree.
THE ST. LOUIS PEACE CONGRESS
CHARLES E. BEALS
Secretary Chicago Peace Society
The biennial gathering of the pacifist clans in the Fourth American Peace Congress at St. Louis, May 1-3, enabled those who attended the previous congresses (at New York in 1907, at Chicago in 1909 and at Baltimore in 1911) to gauge the direction and speed of the movement.