by environment. Among these the most conspicuous is the sentiment of justice, or fair play. However warped or stultified that sentiment may be, however degraded in the service of a cause in itself unjust, however varying its rules, there still remains, as between man and man, a distinct recognition of certain obligations in the conduct of all transactions the infraction of which involves certain outlawry. Under the American rules of fair play, it is required that the strong shall give to, rather than take from, the weak. In obedience to this rule, we invariably find the trade-unions giving the advantage to their opponents wherever there is any danger that injustice may result from a strict enforcement of their own powers.

In the growth of organization among the workers, and in the development of a spirit of amity, rather than of enmity, in the organizations of the employers, lie the only reasonable hope that the strike may ultimately be abolished, except in so far as it may be a necessity in particular circumstances. To this end, public opinion and legislation may lend valuable assistance, provided they are directed with the view of encouraging those factors necessary to the attainment of the object sought. Any movement that tends to hinder or destroy the development of these factors can only retard the final settlement.

After all, there is something gained in the experience that teaches the futility of any proposed step. Next to knowing what to do, it is important to know what not to do. This common observation applies with particular force to everything savoring of the cure-all in industrial affairs. The literature of sociology and the statute-books of the country are crowded with suggestions and plans for the redress of this and that defect in existing conditions. Under the pressure of these allurements, even the trade-unions, in some cases, have surrendered their judgment to their desires. And yet many of the most important of these measures, when put in operation, have been proved not only valueless, but positively harmful. Such, at least, has been the experience of the workers under interState commerce and anti-trust laws, designed, in part, to benefit labor by restraining the aggressiveness of large employers.

Some readers may say that in compulsory arbitration there can be no real danger of involuntary servitude, in the face of the Constitutional inhibition. But it should be remembered that the Constitution is largely a matter of construction; that it has always been

construed in the light of precedent facts, never in anticipation of future conditions. As an instance of this, it may be of interest to note the construction placed upon the Thirteenth Amendment by the United States Supreme Court only three years ago. In the "Arago case,' it was claimed by the appellants that the then existing statute of the maritime law, under which seamen might be held to service until the expiration of their contract, was in contravention of the Thirteenth Amendment. The majority decision of the court held otherwise, and declared that the Thirteenth Amendment was not intended to introduce any novel doctrine of law, but was limited in its application to the negro, the Chinese coolie, and the Mexican peon. The significance of this ruling was very clearly set forth in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan, who took the ground that under the majority decision the States could legislate to enforce involuntary servitude upon any class of citizens. Thus, it appears that the only real inhibition of involuntary servitude consists in the public opinion against that institution.

That public opinion must be alert to the danger of sanctioning, if only by silence, any measure which would in the slightest degree affect the right of personal liberty must be apparent to any one who notes the tendency of the legislatures to enact loose laws, and of the judiciary to enlarge its powers beyond all safe and reasonable bounds. In the present formative period of our national existence, when national principles and ideals are being tested in the heat of new conditions, it is encouraging to know that in the trade-union movement there is at least one element of public opinion that may be depended upon to remain faithful to the basic principle of all true progress. Personal liberty must be preserved!

W. MACARTHUR.

"Robert Robertson et als. vs. Barry Baldwin (165 U. S. Reporter)."

THE DARK IN LITERATURE.

THOSE who are sensitive to literature at all turn to it for various reasons; for rest, pleasure, comfort, instruction, uplift. To forget its power to make this manifold appeal were sadly to restrict its influence. Literature follows the gospel injunction: it is many things to many men. This, indeed, is only a roundabout way of saying that it is a great force in the world; for how otherwise could it get a wide hearing ?

Nevertheless, I am persuaded that the larger number of readers still look, as they have always looked, to poem and essay, play and story to belles lettres, in short for what may be called pleasure. Of old, this was overwhelmingly true; it is somewhat less apparent now, when both author and reader have come to take their literature seriously, and duty at times crowds delight to the wall. However, the wayfaring man continues to insist, in good set terms, on an agreeable time when he opens a book; and if you are fain to instruct him you must do it cautiously without overmuch announcement of your laudable purpose. Unless the pill be sugar-coated he will have none of it; homoeopathy is the school he favors.

Critics who overlook this natural human tendency are letting themselves get professional and out of touch with their fellow mortals. I believe that, while our conception of the use of literature may well be a broader one, this pathetic desire of average humanity to be pleased is a wholesome notification to critic and creator, to special student and him of the inner circle, that the main business of letters is to furnish joy to the children of men. Especially is this thought pertinent to-day, when the other obligations of literature are underscored.

It is as well to remember that unhappiness is not an end in itself. The assumption, by the way, that a book must either please or instruct, as if the two demands were mutually exclusive, is absurd— an example of false logic. Rather may it be said, as Stevenson has it, that "to please is to serve; and so far from its being difficult to

instruct while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly without the other."

But no honest person can go far in the fruitful study of the masterpieces of thought and expression without coming face to face with the need of extending this pleasure-giving concept of literature, or, at any rate, of using the word pleasure in a fuller significance. He finds that it is very much with literature as it is with the weather. All sorts are encountered, the stormy with the bland; and even in the presumably serene climate of the so-called immortals, halcyon days by no means run the year round. He is confronted, sooner or later, with the questions: How broad may I make my definition of this elusive term pleasure? What is the proper proportion of light and shade in these pictures of life painted with words instead of colors? Has the dark-meaning thereby the sombre and sad, the terrible, brutal, and abnormal elements of life reflected in books any justification, and where are the bounds to be set? Upon the answers depend the whole attitude toward literature and the amount of substantive enrichment received from it. I know of no more important moment in personal literary culture than this; and it was with a sense of this importance that my theme was chosen. Few even of those who are unfriendly to the dark in literature, will deny that the sad has some right there, or that pleasure may co-exist with sadness. To shut out the imaginative presentation of the tragic would result in a woful weakening and crippling of literature would, indeed, decapitate masterpiece after masterpiece. From the time that Aristotle pointed out the noble function of tragedy in purging our souls through terror and pity, the major creators in literature have steadily illustrated his position. And, in truth, long before the great Greek critic, the Hebrew rhapsodists shook their time, and after-time, with the very thunders of Sinai. It might also be said that the precious places, the mighty effects, in world-literature, are just those where the grave things of life are set before us surcharged with passion, but touched with beauty, set to consoling music, and illumined by imperishable hopes. Job, superbly alone and afflicted on his ash-heap; Antigone, going smiling to her tomb; Chaucer's Griselda, patient and amazed at her ill treatment, and exclaiming, as the thought of her husband's earlier love for her overwhelmed her mind:

"Oh, God, how kind and good was his visage
The day that makèd was our marriage!"

Lear appealing to the stormy heavens, since they were old like him; Dante listening to Francesca's piteous tale of love, strong though in hell; Gretchen in the Garden, conscious of her guilt, yet crying with that infinitely pathetic child-cry :

"Yet, everything that led me here
Was oh, so good, was oh, so dear;"

Beatrice Cenci, talking of her hair just before she goes out to the block; Mildred, in Browning's "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," with those wonderful girlish words of hers:

"I-I was so young!

Beside, I loved him, Thorold-and I had
No mother; God forgot me: so I fell".

these, I say, are the scenes that to the lover of literature rise up in memory like southern stars in the night heavens, stars whose sombre setting is the very condition of the splendor of their shining. Give us this kind of sadness, by all means, for by it our souls grow and we are made to feel the sacred majesty of humankind. It is not so much sadness, strictly speaking, that we experience in looking at these moving life dramas, as a sort of sober joy. Our sense of homo sapiens is enlarged as to his essential dignity and worth. This is sadness, not for its own sake, but for humanity's.

Nor should we forget that, besides this proper acceptance of what I may term the legitimate and wholesome sad in literature, many folk have a morbid love of sadness for its own sake. There is no hypochondriac like your young person in the storm and stress period of his or her career. Fears are his food and tears his daily portion. In youth we like to take our pleasures sadly; while in the years that bring the philosophic mind we try to take our pains with a smiling mouth. A type of spinster exists which affects funerals as the chief of worldly joys. This pleasure in the lugubrious is certainly a trait to be found at least sporadically in the world. Perhaps it existed in the past more frequently than it does now-I hope so. Judge Sewall has this entry in his diary: "Spent the morning in the vault rearranging the family coffins. It was a pleasant but awful treat." This zest for the melancholy is quite another thing, of course, from the response to that beautiful, close harmony, which, though it sound like a discord, is yet so suggestive of the perfect harmony (the ideal) as to make us tremble with delight. I only wish to make the point that there is in human nature some response to a