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So we are in the midst of reading these decisions. I then will -- shall -- and this -- these decisions concern women. So in addition to the problem of the seaman, I have tried to show you that we have an -- whole other category of people--they seem to be quite numerous--women. And their treatment, simply as other individuals under the -- contract law, proved impossible in the long run. And against the will of the first array of suffragettes--I told you, from my own experience--the real issue -- the thing at issue is that a woman at work is in special conditions, much as a Ki- -- child at work is, or genius, a piano player would be in a special position if we wouldn't make him dig stones, and ruin his fingers, and ruin his hands as a future pianist. You conscribe a pianist, a -- or a violinist, you have to take into consideration that if he -- his hands are spoiled, his future is wrecked. If you take a stone mason and put him in the army and make him dig ditches, nothing happens to his future career.

So the consideration of what you do with people whose limbs are destroyed forever, if they do render a -- otherwise perfectly common service, also enters the problem of the treatment of women. And we saw that the -- at first for a long time--1923, first decided--the minimum-wage laws for women in industry was held unconstitutional. I think I gave you the chapter and verse on the decision of 1923, the famous Atkins case. And it is quite remarkable that the one dissenting voice in 1923--and perhaps you'll take this as a general leaf of political experience--the one dissenting voice was of Chief Justice Taft, former president of the United States. As a poli- -- man in politics and as a statesman, he had--against his legal thinking--simply experienced the pressures of our industrial development between giants and dwarves, between corporations and individuals.

And so in 1923 already, the chie- -- Taft dissented, as the only dissenter at that time, officially--I mean, he made his dissent heard, and it is also printed in these United States Reports, in 1923--and he said, "You are wrong, gentlemen. You try to treat women in the abstract under your ideas of labor as a commodity, sed- -- sold arou- -- across the counter."

I have here put these three slogans in. I have put "labor" between the signs for repetition in music, because I tried to -- show you that the laborer is here considered in his twofold capacity as a free person, and as a man who sells his own labor across the counter. And then suddenly you find him on the other side of the counter employed as labor. That's the wonderful fiction on which the bench in 1923 still insisted.

In 1935, the old guard was once more victorious, and when I read these names now--Reynolds and Butler--it is hard to believe that they are only -- these judges are only 20 years ago. They affect me as people of the Stone Age.

We were in the midst of reading these -- this decision, and now I'm giving you the dissenting voice of Justice Stone, later to be chief justice -- the successor on the -- as chief justice of -- Hughes, who at this moment in '35 is chief justice. And -- to remind you of the situation: Taft had been president; Hugh- -- Evan Hughes had been candidate for the Republican -- for the presidency in 19- --was it? who knows?--'20?

(Sixteen.)

Sixteen, yes. So also, a man experienced in the political life of the nation. A rather dry character, not much life, and -- and humanity; and still -- coming from him, when you read his -- always great restraint in his speeches, very much the legal mind. Yet he, too, in the dissent in 1935, said:

"The decision of '23 I shall not impugn, but in this case"--of this minimum-law wage in New York--"I find no reason to advocate the freedom of contract. The legislature"--of the state of New York--"find that the employment of women and minors in trade and industry in the state of New York at wages unreasonably low and not fairly commensurate with the value of the services rendered, is a matter of vital public concern, that many women and minors are not as a class upon a level of equality in bargaining with their employers in regard to minimum fair wage standards, and that freedom of contract"--now mark you well, that's after all said by the chief justice of the Supreme Court--"as applied to their relations with employers is illusory. That by reason of the necessity of seeking support for themselves and their dependents, they are forced to accept whatever wages are offered, and that judged by any reasonable standard, wages in many instances are fixed by chance and caprice."

This is a -- very important word. "They are fixed by chance and caprice." If you read economic textbooks, they never allow for chance and caprice. Everything is fixed by natural laws of economics. I have never found it so. I have always found--it's the same with unemployment--that everything that our statisticians -- economists tell us about laws is perfectly untrue. Just like the Darwinians' law of evolution, which has never been proved by any fact in natural science.

"That by reason of the necessity of seeking support for themselves and their dependents, they are forced to accept whatever wages are offered, and that, judged by any reasonable standard, wages in many instances are fixed by chance and caprice."

I think you should incorporate into your vocabulary about thinking of economics this -- these two words, "chance" and "caprice." They may prevent you from believing all these superstitions of the sorcerers -- of Egypt. Whether it's dream interpretation by the psychoanalyst, or whether it's economic interpretation by the economic analyst, wherever you have today an analysis, you have pre-determination. All analysis starts -- seems to start from the ridiculous assumption that man is the result of causes, and that you are just like any chemical, or like any element in the world, the -- product of your environment--whatever that may mean, because nobody knows what the "environment" means. Usually it's the interest of somebody else who wants to exploit you. That's then called "environment."

I warn you, we live today in history in a -- the most superstitious age that has ever existed since the days that Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt. It has never been believed, as it is today in this allegedly free country, that the law of societies are anything else but manmade laws. They are all called today "natural" laws, or "scientific" laws. I warn you. As long as you believe this, you cannot understand anything about human progress, because human progress certainly is excluded by law of soc- -- if this is lawful order in economics, then there is no progress. Then the law is just operating.

And you -- live in a completely schizophrenic mentality, all of you, because on the one hand, you repeat this ridiculous phrase of "progress," "automatic progress." And on the other hand, you believe in the iron-clad laws of anal- -- analysis. You can't have it both ways. That's impossible. And that's why you all are in the higher -- on the higher floors, so to speak, of your consciousness, split. And that's why no creative idea has come from the mind of American writers for the last 30 years. Only -- only pessimism, stark -- dark pessimism. Must be. And that's why our lunatic asylums are filled with sensitive minds which have broken down under this stress of your duality.

As long as you carry the idea of law in this wanton, ridiculous way back into society, you overlook the simple fact that the experience of law is within society. We make laws. Then we have carried the idea of the law outside into nature, and said, "Perhaps they are also laws, analogous to human laws." But you all now succumb to this idea that back into society, these iron laws, which we have assumed would be -- work in nature in analogy of our laws, operate. And that's your superstition. First, you have established this bugaboo of -- bugbear of nature, and now you say, "We are all -- sub- -- submissive to nature." We are plastic. And it is our love, and our faith, and our hope that changes the world constantly.

But you must -- this is the whole, I think, meaning that I've been asked to deliver this course: to wake you up to the fact that if you are involved in a social history, that is, in a history of society, you have to -- just to make up your mind where laws belong.

First, people have married, and then they have bred cattle. Now you -- try to bring out the laws that {bring} cattle-breeding back into society, called "eugenics." The only voice that can really decide, of course, about the miscegenation of the human race--every marriage is a miscegenation, of course--is whether the heart of -- on both sides really speaks. The only criterion we have for marriage. Of course, not just the census, and not just the whim of the moment, but the real heart, the devotion which -- induces a -- a wife -- a woman to -- to leave her parents' home, and which induces a man to break with his mother and cleave to his wife of his choos- -- choosing. Today, where you underline laws, no bor- -- boy breaks away from his mother, and then he has a mistress, and he never gets married. Why? Because you believe in laws. You believe just in sex. That's not marriage. Marriage is an act of freedom, tremendous freedom of saying, "The past is gone and something utterly new, a new state of affairs begins." But sex is just a little addition to your former state of mind, just a little excrescence, you see, on the side.

So wherever you have this treatment of law in your own mind not clearly fixed, you will make such decisions, that you will say that the laws of the market place are iron laws, whereas here, and that is -- the great originality of the Honorable C. J. Hughes is that it's fixed by chance and caprice. And men can rise above chance and caprice.

(This law of nature that we're { } now is a new position of the human mind in order to understand or -- or the laws created by an attempt to understand the workings of nature, possibly some external force. Earlier in the course there was a -- a sense of --of future determination, that we come from the past towards a -- a future which is essentially open to us, and yet limited by our past action, forward. In your terms, how can this be reconciled? Where -- where is your personal understanding of an external force that -- that in some way guards or -- or manipulates man?)

May I wait to answer this the next week? The whole next week will be devoted to this. Let me first finish these very specific items. You are quite right with your question, and I'm not going to dodge it.

I only want here -- this moment draw your attention to the poetry of these decisions. In the words "chance and caprice," you have here -- and it's interesting, from a Republican high judge, you see, the admission that there are no iron,

economic laws. And this is I think the first thing you should consider now. We have before this country the problem of productivity, of its iron laws, that in -- down to the -- that the Second World War had to break out before we reached our capacity in production again, that all the '30s we didn't dare to break the spell of underproduction, that we produced at 55 percent of capacity in steel, you will have to decide today whether in a race between -- in productivity between Russia and us, we simply do not have to produce steel at the -- at extreme capacity, whether we can afford to leave this to the alleged iron laws of -- of economics, whether we have 60 percent of capacity exploited, or hundred percent. This will plague you for the next hundred years. The same is of course true with our relations to our allies. I -- I cannot repeat this often enough. If people are so lazy not to know that after two wars fought side by side with other people, and destroying their political -- structure completely by our overweight, that we are not now responsible for their future, then God help you.

This -- these are the -- the -- the future, Sir--this will be my answer next week, you see--is what beckons us. Not the past, you see. We have to reach a common goal, because we are already started on this journey to a common destiny. The future has always already started. Can you deny a child to learn to speak? You cannot. Why? Because thousands of years, more ingenious people than you and I had the great spirit of beginning to speak, to name people, and to address them as their beloved, as their children. And will you deprive a child today of this power to speak? But you do with all your doggerels and your comic strips. They no longer learn to speak. They are not allowed to le- -- read the Bible. They are not allowed to learn anything by heart. They are not allowed to sing hymns. They are not allowed that in other words the exercise of speech -- free speech. Because what you -- the idea of teaching these children is all beneath the dignity of human beings, these -- these children's books, written for children. Children have only -- have the privilege to read all the books of the adults. That's -- we have to introduce to them. Abolish all this children's literature. The only good childr- -- child's book I know is Alice in Wonderland, because all the grown-ups read it. And that's the test of a good book, that all ages can read it.

Burn all these books which you buy your children, because you deny them the privilege of entering this good hallway of history in which real speech, committal speech was promised every -- man born from a woman by --. And this is all denied in this country, because the future, you see, has already started 7,000 years ago, and you obstruct the future. The whole living generation obstructs the future. It lies just across the path of history, because you think you -- it's all for you. It is not for you. It's not even for your children. It's for the whole future of the human race. And woe to us if we -- we mi- -- we block this road.

Good people have started this long before you were born. Speech is such

an example. In this country, it has rapidly disappeared. Any Navajo Indian has more speech today than a child that goes to high school, because it can -- they can express great truth in their songs. And these children cannot. No great truth involved in any of their statements. The only thing they are allowed to say is that 2 and 2 is 4. And that's very doubtful.

(It is true, the 18th century could say that law -- law and nature are reasonable. Are you saying that law is a creation of man, and what we're doing to law is extending our notion of reason to nature, which is fallacious? This is precisely what they do. Now the question arises --.)

In which, by the way, all great scientists of our -- our day agree with me, you see. All the leading physicists have come to the conclusion that that's -- this is just so; that's our law that we write into nature, not nature's law.

(But in order to raise the question, you see, of the reasonableness then of life, or the reasonableness of man -- by what justification--more clearly--by what justification can we say that there is some purpose to life? You see, it is possible to say from the 18th century, that because nature is reasonable, it's legal; and man is a part of nature --.)

John Quincy Adams has answered your question very beautifully in 19- -- 18- -- in the '30s of the -- this century, he was a member of Congress for Quincy, Massachusetts, his hometown. And in the name of reason, he was asked to omit the petitions for the fate of the slaves. And he says, "It may not be reasonable, but it's the inher- -- inborn right of every human being to ask his neighbor for help."

Now your -- the decision comes right here, at this little point. If it is not reasonable to ask your brother for help, then to hell with reason. If it is reasonable that any human being has a -- the right to ask for assistance, then you have the duty to listen to him, Your notion of 18th-century reason is out, because the reason which you invoke has nothing to do with brotherhood. And therefore, prayer to your ne- -- the next of -- to your neighbor, you see, is either the real explanation of what you call reason. The whole quibbling isn't the word "reason." You have a nice reason, you see, because you think geometr- -- geometry is reason. I have another reason, Sir. And there is reason against reason. And this is just inside the term "reason" that all the abominations at this moment occur. You just call "reason" what can be reduced to figures. And I call anything that can be reduced to figures not worth anything, because it can only explain dead matter. Numerals are only applicable to dead things, you see. You and I are not figures. You are a unique being, I take it; and I am, certainly.

And -- and therefore, we have to treat each other as absolutely irreplace-

able. And we can never be expressed by numbers. And nothing what can be expressed by numbers seems to come under your notion of reason. And therefore, Sir, since your reason only applies to things, and my reason applies to people, there is no compromise possible.

(I'm raising -- I'm raising is the -- greater -- and I hope it's the greater question. I'm raising the question then of not just the mechanical rationalism of life, but I'm saying there must be a context in which you'd say -- which you will conclude that life tends to be orderly or harmonious. And forgetting about the mechanical beast, and -- behind what you say about the future, about man moving on towards some path -- in some path towards some goal, there must be a sense of order, a sense of balance. But there -- the way we are going is -- I like to use the word in an orderly, methodical way, that we are not -- we have a kind of obligation. I'm saying now from whence does come your notion that life becomes -- becomes now harmonious?)

It doesn't become harmonious, but life becomes explicit. You see, love, when it reaches a certain stage of maturity, has to be declared. Order, when it becomes conscious, has to be made into law. Our process is one of articulation, as I tried to s- -- tell you: it is incarnation. The more and more life goes on, the more it wants to become explicit. Peace has to be concluded. Love has to be declared. Laws have to be stated. And since all rationalists omit this whole process of becoming explicit, and think that's just looking at things, in an analysis, because things do not hear what we say about them, but you see, I have to speak to this audience in such a way that you understand that I'm speaking to you, that you can accept this, more or less, even -- under protest, because you feel that I'm -- at the same time that I'm trying to be explicit or -- over the truth, trying to speak to you. No rationalist has any explanation what it means to speak to people. He's -- thinks he -- puts some equation on the blackboard and then everybody, you see, is under this equation, is -- contained. I'm not interested in this kind of thinking. That's all only good for chemicals.

(Here -- here is the question. I can see it very clearly now. The question -- I'm sorry, a part of reason. If you say we are in -- we have some degree of right, of freedom to choose either evil or good, that this is our position when we face the future, either -- either to meet it or to shy away from it and walk back into the forest. The question is now, by what -- by what philosophy, mode of thought do you conclude that is in the nature of man or is the duty of man to choose the good. And from whence comes the notion -- your notion of good?)

I never use the term "good."

(But a man is --.)

I have never asked you to say anything is good or anything is evil.

(Man is free -- then man is fr- -- -oo- -- free to choose an evil world, and build an evil world, and we have no basis -- basis by which to -- .)

We don't build. We are created, Sir. We are in the process of being created. And we have just to either be wiped out from the surface -- off from the surface of the world, or entering into this process of creation that our maker is in process of completing through, and with, and in us. And your whole attitude, you see, of good, and evil, and so, is quite foreign to my thinking. I'm not a moralist. I'm an historian, who thinks that history is the -- the continuation of the history of creation, and that we ourselves are constantly created, that the being today, as we sit here, is an exact continuation of the last 7,000 years of the history of creation; and we therefore have already our goal, the solidarity of the human race, revealed to us long before you and I have been born. You have no -- you can -- you can destroy this, or you can { }. That's your freedom.

(Isn't that now a mechanism, a process, a thing to be -- to be sent down the road, and he just runs as -- a kind of {machine}.)

Well, perhaps you read the first chapter of -- chap- -- Gospel of St. John, when you will see that the entering thing that you always omit is the living word. You can listen. You can obey. You can give orders. You can declare. And this is the trem- -- the third thing which you never take into consideration: the -- the peace between past and future is made by man's translation of the word into the necessities of the hour. We speak. And all naturalists, all rationalists omit this very simple fact that they speak to each other. Like John Quincy Adams' neighbor, who hears the other man speak to him, and implores him. And he must be -- would be -- have to be a stone or an electron, if he then wouldn't come to his rescue. And we move through mutual charity and understanding by listening to each other. So a father mends his ways because he sees the need of his son, and drops all his own plans. God re- -- -creates the world always in the sight of these -- the infamies we -- he commit, and He says, "Well I give them a new lease of life, because they are my children."

(You've precluded freedom in this -- this -- in your basis, I think.)

Now, listen. At this moment, these books have to go back to the library. I have to read. Pardon me. This is not my free will. This has to be done today.

The greatest argument in this case of '35, as I told you, was not only the dissenting voice of the -- chief justice, but also of Justice Stone. And I'd like to read you a few eloquent lines from him. He says about the -- not upholding the

minimum-wage law for women:

"There is grim irony, in speaking of the freedom of contract, of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their services for less than is needful to keep body and soul together. It is difficult to imagine"--and now he speaks to his companion judges very drastically--"it is difficult to imagine any grounds, other than our own personal economic predilections, for saying that the contract for employment is any the less inappropriate subject for legislation than our scores of others in dealing with which this court has held that legislatures may curtail individual freedom in the public interest.

"In the years which have intervened since the Atkins case"--of 1923--"we have had opportunity to learn that a wage is not always the result of free bargaining between employers and employees, that it may be one forced upon employees by the economic necessities, and upon employers by the most ruthless of their competitors. We have had opportunity to -- to perceive more clearly that a wage insufficient to support the worker does not visit its consequences upon him alone."

Now will you kindly hear -- listen? That's the central sentence of the conversion process we are in the midst of in the United States.

"We have had opportunity to perceive more clearly that a wage insufficient to support the worker does not visit its consequences upon him alone, that it may affect profoundly the entire economic structure of society, and that it casts on every taxpayer and on government itself the burden of solving the problems of poverty, subsistence, health, and morals of large numbers in the community. Because of their nature and extent, these are public problems. A generation ago, they were for the individual to solve. Today they are the burden of the nation. I can perceive no more objection on constitutional grounds -- their solution by requiring industry to bear the subsistence cost upon -- of the labor which it employs, than to the imposition upon it of the costs of its industrial accidents."

That's a very good comparison, you see. What we are entering here, at -- by these few words is the recognition that when our sisters, daughters, mothers left the home, and instead of making the clothes, and the -- food at home, enter now offices and businesses where frozen food is produced, or whatever else, clothes, et cetera; that at this very moment, the world at large has become a household. Just translate the word "economy" into "household," and you see the real struggle that is going -- on at this moment. The -- household ec- -- id- -- idea of economy in the 19th century limited itself to ex- -- expl- -- exclusively to the sale of goods on a market place. But the very word "household" in English of course has wide -- much wider implications, because in a household, there are

services rendered, there is patience, there is good cheer, there is peace. The word "household," in addition to the word "economics," means also a peaceful society.

And the -- wherever you have today the insight -- that for example, the underpayment of a worker is a harm to the household of the nation--because it may deteriorate the race--you have a conquest, a winning back of the limitations of the meaning of "economics," which was only con- -- considering the market place, to its original meaning. Only that we have instead of 170 households -- 100 million households today, we have one household, and it's a worldwide household, and it outruns today the border- -- borders of individual nations and states.

And the more this word "household" comes to contain teaching, invention, the arts, politics, morals, publicity, speech, literature, the more you will see that it is only the application of our experience of a private household to the world at large. And it is I think a -- an important document, volume 298 of the United States Report. It stands -- that it is here suddenly expressed that the -- the community has a right to interfere, because the work of every individual has become a problem -- public problem.

I have always held -- I have published the first book on this 40 -- in 1921--that's a long time ago, after all--in which I submitted a balance sheet for a factory which had all its people, its workers commute over large distances, of -- from 15 to 20 miles, with all the accidents involved, all the crime involved; and I showed that if they would decentralize and delegate powers, it would be much cheaper for them, because they had to pay for the -- for the sickness, for the crime, for the education, for the playgrounds of all these people, forcefully contracted, so to speak, in -- in centralized business. And if they would bring their turbines and their electro-motors out into the -- into the villages, into the -- small communities, they would -- instead of paying high taxes, would have low taxes.

I could prove this by figures, but the last 150 years, as you know, has kept people's reason--Sir, by the way, that's also a part of reason--that bigger is better than small. And that's a fascination in this country which has of course to do with our problem of the unconquered territory, unorganized territories. It has always been held that bigger is better than small.

I once bought for a school an old place with a factory chimney on it. And we asked the -- the seller if he could take down this. And he argued, and he said, "You can't do this," and "Leave it, please."

And we said, "Why?"

He said, "In 1840, my grandfather built this chimney to show that he was a

rich man. It has never been used."

But it only goes to show you that the fascination of bigness, this huge chimney, you see, has existed outside this country as well as here, to show off -- to have something big to show was in itself meritorious. It was a stroke of success.

In all times, people have obstructed this. The Quakers, as you know, in the days of the English castles and -- and -- and -- and big mansions, built quite low on the ground. And if you go to an old Quaker house of the 18th century in England, you barely see it, above ground. Because they were rich, but they didn't want to show it. And they thought, the smaller the better.

I -- I think that with the entering of the women and children into -- under your consideration, you will see that our whole society will have to learn that small is better than big. And I only feel therefore great solemnity in reading you this decision, because here it was discovered for the first time that society may be more interested in protecting one woman than in having the United -- Un- -- -nited Ste- -- States Steel Company do profitable {selling}.

The -- the last decision accepts this. The minority there has become only one year later, in 1936--in Volume 300, and perhaps you take this down: United States Reports 300--has become the majority vote. The same chief justice presiding has the satisfaction that one judge has come over to his side. And now--in '35 it was five, you see, destroying the minimum-wage law, and four up- -- trying to defend it--now it's the other way around: five upholding the minimum-wage law this time, of the state of Washington, and four still dissenting heartily, and defending the old order.

And let me read here the decisive last page, 399:

"There is an additional and compelling consideration which real economic experience has brought into a strong light. The exploitation of a class of workers, who are in an unequal position with respect to bargaining power and are thus relatively defenseless against the denial of a living wage, is not only detrimental to their health and well-being, but casts a direct burden for their support upon the community."

You can imagine how the dissenting Mr. Hughes was satisfied when he could write this now into the majority opinion.

"What these workers lose in wages, the taxpayers -- are called upon to pay. The bare cost of living must be met. We may take judicial notice of the unparalleled demands for relief which

arose during the recent period of depression, and still continue to an alarming extent, despite the degree of economic recovery which has been achieved. It is unnecessary to cite official statistics to establish what is of common knowledge through the length and breadth of the land. While in the instant case, no factual brief has been presented, there is no reason to doubt that the state of Washington has encountered the same social problem that is present elsewhere."

Now perhaps you take down this sentence, which I -- think is important.

"The community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers."

This is a good sentence: "The community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers."

And now comes -- and only if you are a little bit judicially minded, you can realize the -- the emotion and the -- the depth of this sentence, the last sentence, reads simply--you remember that it was the Atkins case in '23 which had set the precedent:

"Our conclusion is that the case of Atkins vs. Children's Hospital, should be and it is overruled."

That is the jubilate of the Supreme Court when he overrules his own former act only 13 years later, you see.

Let's go to the children. We have -- you have all read of Horatio Alger. And Horatio Alger is the hero of the boys of America. And he himself was eternally a boy. He was, by his father's influence, not allowed to marry his sweetheart, and he remained a bachelor. And he published--let me read this strange book--the following books in his life. There are a hundred or more, were all very successful:

Tony, the Tramp; Helping Himself; Making His Way; Try and Trust; Only an Irish Boy; Jed, the Poorhouse Boy; {Grit}, the Young Boatman of {Pine Point}; Joe's Luck; From Farmboy to Senator; The Young Outlaw; Jack's Ward; In a New World; Both Sides of the Continent; The Store Boy; Walter Sherwood's Probation--which is perhaps one of the eldes- -- oldest words for probation, by the way, in the sense our juvenile courts now -- use here -- our criminal courts use the word "probation." At that time, no probation existed in court. That's the discovery, in connection with the children's courts, you see, that you have to put a man on probation.

From Canal Boy to President; The Erie Train Boy; Paul, the Peddler; The Young Miner; Charlie {Courtman's} Truce; The Young Explorer; The Errand Boy; {Rank} and Fearless; Adrift in the City; Tom Thatcher's Fortune; Tom Turner's Legacy; Dan, the Newsboy; The New York Boy; Brave and Bold; The Young Adventurer; Julius, the Street Boy; Adrift in New York; Struggling Upward; The Adventures of a New York Telegraph Boy; The Young Acrobat; Do and Dare; Tom, the Bootblack; Risen fron the Ranks; Shifting for Himself; Wait and Hope; {Sam's} Chance; Striving for Fortune.

Oh, I can't read it all. Sink or Swim; The Backwoods Boy; Ben, the Luggage Boy; Rupert, the Hired Boy; Howard, the Match Boy; The Young Book Agent; Jerry, the Backwoods Boy; From Farm to Fortune; Strong and Steady; Joe, the Hotel Boy; The Train Boy; The Cash Boy; The Young Soldier; Towards the Top; and the last: The Making of a Man.

Now the man of these innumerable stories lived in a boarding house in a settlement of newsboys in New York for many years. And that's this -- I mean, the -- I think the redeeming grace, that he shared the life of these boys for a long time. But now comes his greater story. He made -- ma- -- of course, a tr- -- considerable fortune in writing these books. Now comes the text of his biography. Perhaps you -- it's worth mentioning this. Alger, it's called: A-l-g-e-r, A Biography without a Hero by Herbert R. Mayes. It's really very much -- to be recommended, because there is a certain type of big boy, American as you all meet him, who never becomes anything more. And Alger had this character of an eternal boy.

"Not all slaves have worn black skins, nor have the free states of the North been always free. In cities like New York, and Boston, and Chicago, there was extant for many years a form of bondage not less pernicious--often more so--than was rooted deep in the soil of Dixie, that it flourished unmolested over several decades while "Way Down East" was burning powder below the Potomac, is a serio-comic phenomenon, which this biographer will not discourse upon. It is sufficient here to observe that the padrone system is no more, that Horatio Alger perceived its despicable depredations, hated with every last crevice of his soul its grinding tyranny, and was chief among those who forced it gradually to vanish before a slowly angering public. Let it also be observed that this hammering and hacking away, and pulling out, and tearing down, which Alger did, was of all his 67 years of doing things, the most constructive.

"The padrone system had many ramifications. The United States Department of Labor, which at that time had only the right to write reports, and no other way of administering justice,"--it was simply nothing but a collection of data; which was called the Department of Labor, it was really truly departmentalized, I assure

you--"referred to it as that vicious and detestable method of manipulating Italian immigration labor through the agency of unscrupulous bosses. The Ford Committee made an investigation, and -- according to a statement, the padrone changed in the wake of this investigation, its mann- -- his manner of doing business. He became ostensibly an Italian banker, and now conducts his affairs secretly through agents of { } --it was thus both in Italy and the United States, the padrone, however, with whom we are concerned--was a man who imported from his native country, Italy, boys, whom he taught to play harps -- on harps or fiddles, compelling when they had learned to ply their art on street corners, and in yards, and in back of homes. Such money as they collected was turned over to the master, the padrone, who in a majority of cases stipulated a sum below which they dared not fall under penalty of fierce beating.

"Most of the little Italian musicians -- Horatio Alger wrote, in 1871"--and perhaps this date is quite remarkable; it's six years after the end of the Civil War after all and of -- allegedly of slavery--"Most of the little Italian musicians to be found on our streets are brought from Calabria, the southern portion of Italy, where they are purchased from their parents for a fixed sum, or a rate of annual payment. Even where the contract is for a limited term of years, the boys in five cases out of 10 are not returned at the appointed time. A part, unable to bear the hardships and privations of the life upon which they enter, are swept off by death; while of those that survive, a part are weaned from their homes or are not permitted to go back.

"The little Italian musician must remain in the street till after midnight, and then after a long and fatiguing day he is liable to be beaten, and sent to bed without his supper, unless he brings home a satisfactory sum of money. These boys are wont to regard the padrone as above the law. His power seems to them absolute."--And you may call them then "children of the street" as much as the seamen have been children of the ship.--"His power seems to them absolute. And they never dream of any interference. And indeed there is some reason for their cherishing this opinion.

"However brutal his treatment, I know of no case where the law has stepped in to rescue the young victim. And this white slavery, for it merits no better name, is permitted by the law of two great nations. Italy is in fault in suffering this traffic in her children of tender years; and America is guilty as well in not interfering as she might, at all events, to abridge the long hours of labor required of these boys, and forcing their cruel guardians at least to give them some instruction. Of 100 Italian children who are sold by their parents into this white slavery, but 20 ever return home; 30 grow up and adopt various occupations abroad; and 50 succumb to maladies produced by privation and expo- -- -posure."

That's by and large the percentage of the Negroes dying on the -- on the slave ship from Africa.

"For initiating the expos‚"--pardon me. Now I go into the details; it is not necessary. Let it only be enough to say that -- the Children's Aid Society first declined to have anything to do with this. "Oh, this is something special. The Children's Aid Society were for native Americans," and they shut their eyes to this. And this has happened in all these movements, strangely enough, when the vote for women, you see, the -- the -- Susan Anthony's amendment was taken to the Congress--and Wilson finally and this Congress { } it--it was done against the will of the suffragette association, who soft-pedaled the whole issue, and there had to be a more radical -- organization got underway. In 50 years, the society women had lost, so to speak, their energy, and didn't want to have anything to -- to do with political maneuvering. And a very strange story. That is, that when the women's vote came, it was done against the intentions and the plans of the leaders of the women movement -- rights movement.

The same is true about the Children's Aid Society. I think that's very important for you and me to know, that very often the -- the name of an organization which makes you feel safe, that they are bound to do something about an issue, you see, quite misleading. I told you about the small businessman's committee, you see, which is in Congress established to destroy small business. And here you have the Children's Aid Society which says, "Not our concern. Outside, you see. Italian children, we don't care."

We'll have to see next time then: what is the overall experience with seamen, women, and children by which we can understand why society -- today needs masses, and why masses cannot be treated as persons.