new mercantile New England, in these words: "'If American employers are farsighted they will begin to put as much hard thinking into the problem of men as they have put into the problem of machinery, for, finally, that contentment of labor which is based upon a welfare that springs from justice and frank dealing is the only soil from which permanently prosperous business can spring. "'All of the initiative in solving the labor problem must not in the future come from the employees. If the employers of America do not solve the labor problems by business statesmanship, the employees of America will determine the outcome by force; and what labor cannot get in the future by the physical force of strikes, it may be able to get through the legal force of legislation and the income-taxing power.' "If our railroad employers, among others, will learn and apply the wisdom expressed in this excerpt, all will yet be well."--_Collier's Weekly._ [7] Already it has been followed by several other railroad and express systems--conspicuous among these, the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Erie, Wells Fargo & Co. Express, and the American Express Company. The Union Pacific's plan, embracing an expenditure of approximately $2,500,000 in bonus payments, differs from those of the other railroads, except the Erie, in that it does not make a distinction between the men who belong to the brotherhoods or other forms of union labor, and those who are not "contract labor." The Union Pacific's plan also embraces a scheme of group insurance, in the benefits of which its employes participate without cost to themselves. Insurance plans, of one sort or another, have recently become popular, and are being recognized as a logical outgrowth of the pension systems which have long since become part of the fiber and structure of the older and more conservative of our railroad and express companies.