poses within the past two years several pamphlets and leaflets, including "A Social Service Programme for the Parish"; "Social Service for Diocesan Commissions"; "A Model Canon for Diocesan Social Service Commissions"; and "Social Service and the Episcopal Church." Of these nearly 20,000 copies have already been distributed. The triennial report to the General Convention in New York in October, 1913, has also been printed by the Commission.

For the purpose of furthering its educational propaganda the Commission arranged in connection with the General Convention of 1913, a social service week, including a series of four conferences on various phases of the Church's relation to social welfare; visits to social institutions and agencies in New York City and vicinity; special sermons on social service in the local churches by visiting clergy, mostly members of the various diocesan social service commissions; and an exhibit showing the work of the Joint Commission, diocesan commissions, parish agencies, and one or two other coöperating organizations. The proceedings of this social service week have been issued in pamphlet

form. The field secretary is Rev. F. M. Crouch, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York.

Other Denominations.-The Methodist Federation for Social Service maintains a bureau of information, speakers' bureau, and reading and study courses; Rev. Harry F. Ward, 2512 Park Place, Evanston, Ill., is the secretary. The Baptist Department of Social Service and Brotherhood is a sub-division of the American Baptist Publication Society organized to suggest ways whereby Christian men may become socially effective, and cooperate with similar bodies; Rev. S. Z. Batten, 1701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, is secretary. The Congregational social service agency is the Congregational Brotherhood of America, Henry A. Atkinson, secretary, 19 S. La Salle Street, Chicago. Presbyterian social service is administered by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. A Department of Church and Country Life is in charge of Rev. Warren H. Wilson, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. The Unitarian Social service is carried on through a depart. ment of the American Unitarian Association, of which Elmer S. Forbes, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, is secretary.

STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS The Strike Record. The year 1913 was marked by an increase in number of strikes and lockouts. Figures for the entire country to demonstrate the truth of this are lacking, but one fragment of statistical evidence available at the time of writing, coupled with the indications of newspaper reports, are clearly of that import.

This evidence consists only of the returns for New York State, published in the quarterly Bulletin of the State Department of Labor. New York is, however, the leading industrial state of the country. Figures for only the first six months of the year are available; those for 1913 in comparison with the four preceding years are as follows:

country as a whole, but a comparison of the records in the Federal reports on strikes and lockouts for the 25 years 1881 to 1905 (no report has been issued since that for 1905) shows that the changes from year to year (increase or decrease) have for the most part been the same for the entire country as for New York State.

a

The greater frequency of strikes and lockouts in 1913 is not to be interpreted, however, as marking the year as abnormal in respect to labor disputes. On the contrary, such increase may be said to represent the normal, or at least the usual, accompaniment of a year characterized by active business conditions (although in the last few months of the year a considerable slackening of business activity was evident), and hence with a good demand for labor and rising cost of living (see this topic, infra), the latter furnishing naturally the stimulus and the former the favorable opportunity for wage earners to seek better terms of employment. In noting that the greater number of disputes involving suspension of work cannot be chronicled as extraordinary in view of general conditions, it is implied that there was nothing extraordinary in the character of the great mass of the year's controversies. The more notable points in this part of the year's labor history, therefore, are to be found rather in certain individual disputes or particular features, either novel or exceptional, in such episodes. Leading all other controversies of the year in such features, perhaps, was the strike of silk workers at Paterson, N. J.

Strike of Silk Workers in Paterson, N. J.-A general strike of workers in

poses within the past two years several pamphlets and leaflets, including "A Social Service Programme for the Parish"; "Social Service for Diocesan Commissions"; "A Model Canon for Diocesan Social Service Commissions"; and "Social Service and the Episcopal Church." Of these nearly 20,000 copies have already been distributed. The triennial report to the General Convention in New York in October, 1913, has also been printed by the Commission.

For the purpose of furthering its educational propaganda the Commission arranged in connection with the General Convention of 1913, a social service week, including a series of four conferences on various phases of the Church's relation to social welfare; visits to social institutions and agencies in New York City and vicinity; special sermons on social service in the local churches by visiting clergy, mostly members of the various diocesan social service commissions; and an exhibit showing the work of the Joint Commission, diocesan commissions, parish agencies, and one or two other coöperating organizations. The proceedings of this social service week have been issued in pamphlet

form. The field secretary is Rev. F. M. Crouch, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York.

men

Other Denominations.-The Methodist Federation for Social Service maintains a bureau of information, speakers' bureau, and reading and study courses; Rev. Harry F. Ward, 2512 Park Place, Evanston, Ill., is the secretary. The Baptist Department of Social Service and Brotherhood is a sub-division of the American Baptist Publication Society organized to suggest ways whereby Christian may become socially effective, and cooperate with similar bodies; Rev. S. Z. Batten, 1701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, is secretary. The Congregational social service agency is the Congregational Brotherhood of America, Henry A. Atkinson, secretary, 19 S. La Salle Street, Chicago. Presbyterian social service is administered by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. A Department of Church and Country Life is in charge of Rev. Warren H. Wilson, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. The Unitarian Social service is carried on through a depart. ment of the American Unitarian Association, of which Elmer S. Forbes, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, is secretary.

the broad-silk mills of Paterson began on Feb. 25. Prior to this a strike in one mill had occurred late in January in opposition to the introduction of the so-called four-loom system, and it is from this earlier strike that the beginning of the dispute may properly be dated. Shortly after Feb. 25 the strike extended to the ribbon factories and then to the dye shops. The number of establishments involved was reported as 293 and the number of employees has been given as 25,000 to 27,000, the entire silk industry of Paterson being involved.

The demands formulated by the strikers several days after the general strike began included the abolition or non-introduction of the three- and four-loom system in place of the exist ing one- or two-loom systems and an increase of wages for the broad-silk workers, an increase of wages for the ribbon weavers, a minimum wage and better sanitary conditions for the dyeshop hands, and a general eight-hour day. The central issue, both in its significance for the industry and the workers and because it concerned the largest number of the latter, was the three- and four-loom system. Mechanically, these systems involved the tending by each worker of three or four looms instead of one or two as before, together with an increase in automatic devices on the machines. But the significance of the change for both industry and worker was deeper than this alone would indicate. The threeor four-loom system is used for the production of cheaper grades of silk. Previously the Paterson industry had confined itself almost entirely to the higher grades using other systems. But the newer three- and four-loom system had been successfully developed and used in other localities, notably in Pennsylvania, where a much cheaper grade of labor was employed than in the higher-grade mills in Paterson, and where, with this combination of more highly developed machinery and cheaper labor, a greater prosperity had fallen to the industry than in Paterson. The introduction of the new system in Paterson, therefore, really marked the entrance of the Paterson employers into the field of cheaper silk production and competition with these other localities in

that field. Hence to the workers the change seemed to bear the menace not only of displacement of workers by machinery, and possibly severer strain of work at equal pay in tending more machines, but the more serious and far-reaching menace of employment of cheaper labor and general lowering of wages.

Upon this central issue was joined a struggle which for stubbornness has rarely been equaled, lasting as it did till the close of July, a period of five months, during most of which the entire industry in Paterson remained idle. Repeated efforts to bring about a settlement, made by both public authorities and private agencies in the city, proved wholly unavailing, and the struggle finally ended by the virtual exhaustion and surrender of the strikers by return to work. According to the most reliable press reports, the strikers lost above $5,000,000 in wages, with probably an equal loss to employers, besides heavy losses to other business interests in Paterson.

What gave the dispute widest notoriety, and its most significant as well as novel aspect, was the kind of organization and leadership which appeared among the strikers. This was the organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World. It was charged that this organization, coming in from outside, was the real instigator of the strike, but the statements of impartial investigators indicate that this was not the case, and that it was not until the strike was already imminent or actually begun that the I. W. W. became an important factor in it. In other words, so far from creating the strike, it stepped in to seize an opportunity for its propaganda presented by the conditions above described, which had created a situation between employers and employees already strained to the breaking point. In any case, the conspicuous fact is that the leadership of the strike was assumed by the I. W. W., that all the strikers joined that body, and that the latter succeeded in holding the entire body of strikers solidly together month after month during the dispute. The solidarity of the strikers in their allegiance to this organization during the dispute is especially attested by the fact that