HE amount of unemployment among trade union members, which considerably increased during August, 1914, shows a remarkable decrease during the months of September and October. Trade unions with a membership of 1,347,222 reported 10.9 per cent of their members as unemployed at the end of October, 1914, compared with 15.7 per cent at the end of September and 22.2 per cent at the end of August. The decrease of unemployment is to a large extent due to the fact that large numbers of union men have been called to serve under the colours. There are no statistics available which would indicate as to whether the volume of employment increased or decreased during the first three months of war. Probably there was a slight increase owing to the increasing demand for military supplies.

Reports received from public employment offices show that the state of the labor market is moderately improving. During the months of August, September and October the number of employment offices reporting, as well as the number of unemployed work-people registered, the number of vacancies notified and the number of vacancies filled were as follows:

When war was declared many of us hoped that the carnage would be ended within a comparatively short period. But even that hope proved to be delusive. War with all its horrors still continues and it will not be ended this year. In the course of time, prices are increasing-slowly but surely and the standard of living of the non-combatant population is decreasing in the same measure. The Imperial Government has already fixed maximum wholesale prices for cereals and potatoes, but the only effect of this measure seems to be that farmers and traders hold back their supplies. It is expected that maximum prices of meat will be officially fixed shortly.

On December 2, 1914, the Imperial Parliament met in order to deliver important business. The most important business was to provide the necessary mans for carrying on the war, and the Government's proposal to raise another war loan of 5,000 million marks ($1,191,000,000) was adopted with only one dissenting vote, that of the Socialist Doctor Carl Liebknecht; it is said that in consequence of this vote Doctor Liebknecht will be expelled from the German Social-Democratic Party, but this is not probable. Yet it is true that the large majority of the Socialist leaders are assisting the Government; they are in favor of continuing the war until the German forces have achieved complete victory. I am sure that this attitude of our labor leaders surprised you most of all. However, it is a fact. In some American newspapers I read that most Americans are of the opinion that this war was made by the rulers of the people, while the people themselves show no understanding for the purposes of the war, and will-less carry out the commands of their masters. not believe such statements, they are not true; I assure you, I never saw such an enthusiasm as that which the common people of this country are exhibiting for this Almost everybody tells you that he is convinced that this war has been necessary and that it must be fought to a successful end.

war.

Do

Anti-militarists and pacifists, as Dr. Liebknecht, are rare exceptions among this people. Owing to this fact, German labor leaders have been severely blamed by prominent labor men of neutral countries. After that, representatives of the German Social-Democratic Party and the German

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Trade Unions tried to oppose the criticisms of the foreign comrades, but, apparently, with little success.

What will become of the German labor movement after the war cannot be foreseen. One thing only is certain: that passionate conflicts will arise between the followers and the opponents of militarism. At present the latter form a small minority.

The trade unions have, for the time of war, either reduced their benefit payments or abolished benefits altogether. The membership of the unions is still decreasing, but the amount of such decrease is much less than it was in August and September. It seems that all the unions will survive the war, and it is hoped that afterwards they will again become useful instruments for the improvement of labor conditions.

KARL LIEBKNECHT'S DECLARATION.

An Uncompromising, Courageous and Logical Statement.

Here follows the full text of the declaration made by Dr. Karl Liebknecht on the occasion of his vote against the supplementary War Credit in the German Reichstag, referred to in the above letter from our German correspondent. Dr. Liebknecht did not have an opportunity to speak, so he handed a written explanation to the President to be included in the official report. The president ruled the declaration out of order, however, and it has not, therféore, been printed in the parliamentary report, nor has it been allowed to appear in the Press of Germany. Dr. Liebknecht's statement reads as follows:

My vote against the War Credit Bill of today is based on the following considerations:

This war was desired by none of the peoples involved, nor is it being waged for the well-being of the German or any other people. It is an imperialist war, a war for the rule of the world market, for political domination over important territories of exploitation for industrial capitalists and financiers. From the standpoint of the competition in the armaments of war, it is a war provoked by the war parties of Germany and Austria jointly, in the darkness of semifeudalism and secret diplomacy, to gain an

advantage over their opponents. At the same time the war is a Bonapartist effort to disnerve and to split the growing movement of the working class which, despite remorse. less and unsparing attempts to increase confusion in its ranks, has developed greatly of late.

The German watchword "Against Tsarism" is proclaimed for the purpose-just as the present British and French watchwords are proclaimed-to exploit the noblest inclinations and the revolutionary traditions and ideals of the people in stirring up hatred of other peoples. Germany, the accomplice of Tsarism, the model of political reaction until this very day, has no standing as the liberator of the peoples. The liberation of both the Russian and German people must be their own work.

The war is no German war of defence. Its historical basis and its course at the start make the pretension of our Capitalist Government that the purpose for which it demands credits is the defence of the country unacceptable.

The early conclusion of a peace without conquests must be urged, and all efforts to this end must be supported. Only by strengthening, jointly and continuously, the currents in all the belligerent countries which have such a peace as their object can this bloody slaughter be brought to an end before the entire exhaustion of the peoples has occurred. Only a peace based on the ground of the international solidarity of the working class and the freedom of all peoples can be lasting. Therefore, it is the duty of the proletariat of all countries to carry through during the war a Socialistic work in favor of peace.

common

I support the relief credits with the reserve that the sum demanded appears to me far from sufficient. No less willingly I vote for everything which may relieve the hard fate of our brothers on the battlefield as well as that of the wounded and diseased, for whom I feel the deepest compassion. But as a protest against the war, against those who have caused it, against the Capitalist purposes for which it is being used, against the annexation schemes, against the violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, against the unlimited rule of martial law, against the neglect of the social and

SO

OMEWHERE in Henry George's writing the original suggestion is made that Jesus opposed riches not much in themselves as in the almost necessary method of acquiring them. The idea is that He saw how riches were not earned but came by methods in which the rights of the people were ignored. Woe to those that joined field to field had been spoken as long ago as Isaiah and doubtless the evil had continued. If this process could flourish in England within modern times, who can say that it was not in past ages? The history that speaks against the classes and for the masses is exceedingly meager. It was true in the days of Jesus as in other days that the destruction of the poor was their poverty, and He must have seen the various methods in which this proverb was true. It is altogether likely that the anathema of the Son of Man was directed primarily against the spirit and method of the rich.

So in our own day it seems to me that the hatred and envy toward the rich, of which the poor, and especially the leaders of the poor, are accused, is directed against unearned riches. There is a spirit of fairness in human nature. What a man really deserves we do not object to. Objection and envy arise when we see some one unjustly rewarded, when we see honor go where it is not deserved but is gained by chicanery or fawning, when we see riches got not by personal labor but by some means whereby the labor of others is appropriated. Such hatred, or call it envy if you please, ought to be. How shall those that love the right not hate the thing that is evil?

I do not believe that there would exist any hatred or envy toward the rich, should there be any rich, if people felt that riches were honestly earned. If you hear workingmen speak out, the commonest expressions will be, "How did he get it?" or "Did he earn it?" or "No man can get to

He

be a millionaire by just working." knows that the millions are unearned millions, hence his discontent and his hatred.

If the rich men of Palestine had honestly earned their riches, can we conceive of Jesus saying of them that it would be harder for them to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle? If the rich men of our day had honestly earned their riches, can we believe that any of us would begrudge what had been squarely and fairly got? I do not think so. I believe that the whole strain and stress of the relations between rich and poor, now and always, is and has been based on the conviction that great riches do not come by honest labor, but by methods of sharpness and selfishness and law, through which the rewards of labor are diverted from the laborer to the lord and master.

How this division mainly occurs, how the man on top is enabled to turn the earning his way, is the great question which the modern world is face to face with and must solve. Until this is done there can be no peace in the economic world, and hatred and envy will continue. Until this is done all civic leagues, all talk of harmony between capital and labor, will be as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

Among the Monday morning culprits haled before an Indianapolis magistrate was a darky with no visible means of support. "What occupation have you here in Indianapolis?" asked his honor.

"Well, jedge," said the darky, "I ain't doin' much at present-jest circulatin' round, suh."

His honor turned to the clerk of the court and said:

"Please enter the fact that this gentleman has been retired from circulation for sixty days."

fice themselves for a higher civilization. Every step upward, every move onward for freedom has cost the lives and blood of the workers of the world. Homestead, Calumet and Ludlow and their heroes will be the theme of the future poet who will write verses and dedicate them to industrial freedom, as political freedom has been the theme of poets who now sing the praises of Lexington, Concord and Valley Forge. And they shall loom up in the horizon of recognition and holidays shall be set apart to their anniversaries. Flowers shall be strewn upon their graves, and just as we now in memorial unite the blue and the gray and look back to the time of chattel slavery, so shall we unite the worker and the capitalist of today in our memorials of the future and look back to the time of the present capitalistic inequality.

These were the visions and visions a thousand times more, too numerous to take up your time in unfolding, that seized me like apparitions from all times when I stood on the plains of Waterloo in the outskirts of Brussels, Belgium. I saw Napoleon and Wellington, Blucher and William of Holland. I saw them all, and went with them to their seats of triumph and their isles of exile, but in all of my marches with them, whether to the trumpet's sound of victory, or the dirge of retreat, I never for one moment forgot the thousands upon thousands of workers who were sacrificed at the altar of war and rapine and vainglory. and I went with them in spirit to their deserted benches in the empty shops and to the vacant firesides and broken homes, and I saw the weeping widows and helpless orphans, and I thought of the time when the workers of Sweden dared to say and did say to the workers of Norway:

"You and we are brothers, children of one God, Norsemen of one region. We have no grievances against each other, but those who have, let them fight."

And since kings and generals who stay in the background out of reach of the fire of guns and who value their lives more than they do those of their soldiers, would have had to engage in personal encounter, there was no fight.

I thought of the "good old times." but I did not think that they were good, old times.*

Now, right about face! In this period of making new, of being prepared for the new times, we are leaving behind-that is

some of us-yes, most of us, that certain quality of conservatism, that certain spirit of saving in home and dress, and we are all of us-yes, all of us, and that includes the worker-becoming extravagant in our desire for amusement. The love of amusement has seized modern man, the same as it did the ancient Roman. The conquests of the Caesars were justified by the Tribunes because it meant more circuses and more entertainment for the Romans, but it all forbode ill for Rome. Let us hope that modern civilization will not suffer likewise. I am not sorry that Rome went down, but I do not like the dark ages in the interim, and if all this extravagance of amusement spells decay for the present system, I weep not over it, but I should hate to think that between this and the next phase of society, we shall be obliged to go through the dark age era.

But it is a fact, a fact which we cannot hide, a fact as plain and as patent and present as that the twenty-first day of June is the longest in the year, we are extravagant. The worker, too, is extravagant. We have become obsessed with the automobile mania, and when you see workmen shove their savings into a gasoline wagon and its complex difficulties and deplete their resources for its upkeep and pay tribute to Rockefeller for the use of his damn smelly stuff at a compound rate of waste-when you see tango styles of dress changing with the rapidity that a politician changes his platform promises to suit each constituent, and when you see grandmother in the same dress that she wore for thirty years and grandfather don every Sunday the same dress suit he wore on his wedding day, we may be licensed to think of the "good old times" when men were less extravagant.

Of course, people, the common people, in the "good old times" were restrained by physical and governmental interference from changing clothes in such extravagant manner. That was all left to the upper spending gentry. To use Shylock's speech: "Has not a workman eyes, dimensions, etc."? And when he or his wife sees other people dressed up and spending away, shall they not try and do likewise? We who are anxious to see our children play with the best neighbors' children do it in the interest of the children, though the children of the best neighbors are not always the best children or the purest.

So it is with woman. The neighbor on

nevertheless they give you a clear insight into that great event-one with much philsophy, psychology and discernment, "Les Miserables," by Victor Hugo, and the other, particularly where it gives the social, gay side of war, and most paticularly where it describes the ball room scene, is "Vanity Fair" by Thackary.