From Washington, D.C., he wrote:  “This city is one mad mess of men, desolate, and hunting for folks they should see, overcharged by hotels, and away from their wives.”  The red-letter event of Washington was when he was taken for tea to Justice Brandeis’s.  “We talked I.W.W., unemployment, etc., and he was oh, so grand!” A few days later, two days before Christmas, Mrs. Brandeis telephoned and asked him for Christmas dinner!  That was a great event in the Parker annals—­Justice Brandeis having been a hero among us for some years.  Carl wrote:  “He is all he is supposed to be and more.”  He in turn wrote me after Carl’s death:  “Our country shares with you the great loss.  Your husband was among the very few Americans who possessed the character, knowledge, and insight which are indispensable in dealing effectively with our labor-problem.  Appreciation of his value was coming rapidly, and events were enforcing his teachings.  His journey to the East brought inspiration to many; and I seek comfort in the thought that, among the students at the University, there will be some at least who are eager to carry forward his work.”

There were sessions with Gompers, Meyer Bloomfield, Secretary Baker, Secretary Daniels, the Shipping Board, and many others.

Then, at Philadelphia, came the most telling single event of our economic lives—­Carl’s paper before the Economic Association on “Motives in Economic Life.”  At the risk of repeating to some extent the ideas quoted from previous papers, I shall record here a few statements from this one, as it gives the last views he held on his field of work.

“Our conventional economics to-day analyzes no phase of industrialism or the wage-relationship, or citizenship in pecuniary society, in a manner to offer a key to such distressing and complex problems as this.  Human nature riots to-day through our economic structure, with ridicule and destruction; and we economists look on helpless and aghast.  The menace of the war does not seem potent to quiet revolt or still class cries.  The anxiety and apprehension of the economist should not be produced by this cracking of his economic system, but by the poverty of the criticism of industrialism which his science offers.  Why are economists mute in the presence of a most obvious crisis in our industrial society?  Why have our criticisms of industrialism no sturdy warnings about this unhappy evolution?  Why does an agitated officialdom search to-day in vain among our writings, for scientific advice touching labor-inefficiency or industrial disloyalty, for prophecies and plans about the rise in our industrialism of economic classes unharmonious and hostile?