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28 our own business. I wouldn't mind a bit if the rest of the world did the same." He thought a vigorous purge that should clean his city from the nausea of sociologists would be a good beginning. They were doubtless a nuisance, these sociologists, but they, too, were a sign of something serious. Their irritating curiosity was only a bit of writing on the wall. The State also came as at San Diego, then the general Government looked in upon the mill town. Men came, equipped by long experience for their work. They "stayed upon the job." Pitiless and uncolored, the facts concerning wages had to come out. Employers under criticism behave like the rest of us. They put the best foot forward, call attention to the highest wages, direct the visitor to best conditions, precisely, as upon the other side, labor points to every haggard fact upon the scene; wretched housing, indecencies and abuse of foremen; petty personal discriminations, and every item of lowest and most uncertain labor income.

From socialist papers reporting the Lawrence strike, I cut for weeks their assertions about the wage scale. Their understatement was much like the overstatement of the management, even further from the truth. But now between these two exaggerations, the agents of the Government, in twenty thousand classified cases, came to state the facts with neither fear nor bias. This is "political interference," most cordially detested by business that thinks itself a private affair. But this "interference" has come to stay. Its growth is continuous in every country. It was long ago said of a religious movement, "It is like a naked sword, its hilt in Rome and its point