be absolute within the limits contained in the bond.  The employer should not have to keep on his pay-roll any man who in his opinion was not worth the money; but if any man was employed, he could not be obliged to work for less than for a certain sum.  On the other hand, in return for such a privileged position the unions would have to abandon a number of rules upon which they now insist.  Collective bargaining should establish the minimum amount of work and pay; but the maximum of work and pay should be left to individual arrangement.  An employer should be able to give a peculiarly able or energetic laborer as much more than the minimum wage as in his opinion the man was worth; and men might be permitted to work over-time, provided they were paid for the over-time one and one half or two times as much as they were paid for an ordinary working hour.  The agreement between the employers and the union should also provide for the terms upon which men would be admitted into the union.  The employer, if he employed only union men, should have a right to demand that the supply of labor should not be artificially restricted, and that he could depend upon procuring as much labor as the growth of his business might require.  Finally in all skilled trades there should obviously be some connection between the unions and the trade schools; and it might be in this respect that the union would enter into closest relations with the state.  The state would have a manifest interest in making the instruction in these schools of the very best, and in furnishing it free to as many apprentices as the trade agreement permitted.

In all probability the general policy roughly sketched above will please one side to the labor controversy as little as it does another.  Union leaders might compare the recognition received by the unions under the proposed conditions to the recognition which the bear accords to the man whom he hugs to death.  They would probably prefer for the time being their existing situation—­that of being on the high road to the conquest of almost unconditional submission.  On the other hand, the large employers believe with such fine heroism of conviction in the principle of competition among their employees that they dislike to surrender the advantages of industrial freedom to the oppressive exigencies of collective bargaining.  In assuming such an attitude both sides would be right from their own class points of view.  The plan is not intended to further the selfish interest of either the employer or the union.  Whatever merits it has consist in its possible ability to promote the national economic interest in a progressively improving general standard of living, in a higher standard of individual work, and in a general efficiency of labor.  The existing system has succeeded hitherto in effecting a progressive improvement in the standard of living, but the less said the better about its effects upon labor-quality and labor-efficiency.  In the long run it looks as if the improvement in the