p QDaekbyQDee Observation ott AtaericanXjj as seen by COLLILIci ii ill I f/^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES NATIONAL FLOODMARKS N AT I O N A L FLOODMARKS Week by Week Observations on American Life AS SEEN BY COLLIER'S Edited by MARK SULLIVAN NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, By P. F. Collier & Son Copyright, 1915, By George H. Doran Company 0^ AC5 FOREWORD THE only rule there has ever been about the editorials in Collier's is that each should be the sincere expression of either v a conviction or a mood. They have never been written to order. At no time have we felt that the death of the Akhoond of Swat or the fiscal policy of Siam must, willy-nilly, be written about. China becomes a republic, or may become an em- " pire again; if the editorial writer is moved to ^ the expression of something worth while on this _ transition, we have an editorial on it; if not, we let China alone and print an editorial on holly- hocks or on some other subject that the writer does happen to have an idea about. The poet De Vigny said: "The press is a mouth forced to be | always open and always speaking. Hence it * says a thousand things more than it has to say, and often wanders and exaggerates. It would be the same if an orator, yes, even Demosthenes himself, had to speak without interruption all the year round." Probably De Vigny was think- ing about the daily press; anyway, Collier's theory has been, not to cover the world nor the week's news, but to print editorials on subjects M , - r - FOEEWOED concerning which the writer has or thinks he has something to say. Of course the convic- tions have not always been consistent nor the moods permanent for Collier's is human. Maee Sullivan. tvi] CONTENTS I. PEACE AND WAR pack To-Morrow's Valor ..... 3 Unnecessary Risks ...... 4 War Costs ....... 6 Delusions About Force ..... 6 Thirty-Five Years Victorious ... 7 Union 9 II. ON THE AMERICAN PLAN What Democracy Means . . . .11 The Day and The Flag . . . .11 A More United Country . . . .18 Treaties and Tolls and Moral Tests . . 14 Next! 15 Wanted: A Genius 16 Poetry About Panama 18 Colorado, Take Notice! .... 20 Bridge-Builders . . . . . .21 Resurgent Ohio ...... 22 To the Workmen op Hamilton ... 23 The Greatest Exposition .... 24 Supporting the Colleges .... 25 A Land of Snow 26 After Fifty Years . . . . .28 Who Are the Americans? .... 29 Up and Down East 80 Apples of Gold ...... 81 Their America and Ours .... 82 [vii] CONTENTS PAGE Plowing the Soul in Kansas ... 34 Nature at the Bat . . . . .36 Weeds and Literature ..... 37 We Take Stock 38 III. SOME HUMAN BEINGS Making Dreams Come True .... 41 Success ........ 42 "Just Call Me May" ..... 43 Colonel Nelson of the "Star" ... 44 The Death of Madero ..... 46 To Our Stenographer ..... 48 A King of Men ...... 49 The Ways of Atropos ..... 50 The Man Who Wrote "Colonel Carter of Cartersville" 51 Big Tim 52 A Miner of Good Metal .... 54 Friendship ....... 55 John o' the Mountains 57 Jacob Riis ....... 58 Eternal Youth ...... 59 Gunckel's Way ...... 60 The Great Heart of Ireland ... 62 They Didn't Like His First Name . . 62 IV. A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE W. W.'8 Conviction 65 One New Jersey Home .... 65 Just an Impression ...... 66 Rotten Eggs 67 Two Years of Wilson 68 At Home and Abroad 70 Head-On 71 Iviii] CONTENTS PAGE A United People .... . 75 A Man at His Highest Point . 77 V. YOUTH AND AGE This Is Philosophy . . . 79 On Keeping Young ... . 79 Fullness of Years . . . . 80 Tempora Mutantur . . . . 82 The Eternal Surprise . . 83 VI. THE BOOKS WE READ The Critic's Function 85 Culture ........ 85 Looking Forward . . . . . .86 One Woman's Wit ...... 87 More About Jane Austen . . . .88 Which? 90 Do You Read Poetry? ..... 91 Another Literary Referendum ... 93 The New Laureate .... 95 The Reader as Dramatis Persona . . 96 Kentucky's Poet ...... 97 The Poet's Way 98 The National Laundry . . . .100 The Sparrow and the Spout .... 101 American Balladry . . . . .102 The Great Divide . . . . . .104 Geography . . . . . . .105 Poetry They Couldn't Write and Did . 106 "Little Women" 108 The Poet 109 The Critics 110 On Seeing Poetry Ill M CONTENTS VII. TARIFF TALK ** The Foundation Stone . . . . .113 What "Protection" Means . . . .114 Twenty Years From Now . . . .119 VIII. OUR TOWN The Olympian 121 Holmes in Blue . . . . . .123 Profits and Decency . . . . .125 The Passing of the Pale . , . . .126 The Minimum Wage 128 The Thing As It Is 130 The Case of Becker . . . . .131 Passover ........ 132 Breaking In 133 The Slag Spot 134 In the Railway Station . . . .136 The Elements 138 IX. POLITICAL PERSONALITIES The Aftermath 140 Light from History 141 Gaynor ........ 143 Mythology . . . . . . .145 The Movies at Albany . . . .146 Some Language . . . . . .148 Brother Amos . . . . . .149 Texas Lion-Heart . . . . . .150 Lodge and Codfish . . . . . .152 The Failure of Success . . .154 Poetry 156 Outdoors and Indoors 158 X. THE PRESS For Us Scribes 160 "Independence" and Journalism . . . 160 w CONTEN TS PAGE A Nebraska Journalist Speaks . . 161 What Does a Newspaper Mean? . . . 162 Tainted News . . . . . .163 Good Hunting .164 Responsibility . . . . . .165 The Bible As a Newspaper Serial . .167 A Victim op Circumstance . . . .168 Splash! 169 But Why Should Hoosiers Die? . . .170 Fact Fictions 172 A Kentucky Metaphor 174 That Personal Note 175 Religious Papers 176 Uncommercial Advertising . . . .177 Playing on the Public 179 A Globe Trotter ...... 181 English as She Is Wrote . . . .181 For the Farmer 182 Fair Play 183 Wanted: A Miracle 183 The Reporter . . . . . . .184 XI. WE GO TO THE COUNTRY The Coming op Spring . 186 The Ancient Call 187 Birds We Haven't Known 188 The Hen of To-Day 190 Green Things Growing 191 Patter of Rain 192 Mowing Time . 193 The "Value" of Corn . . 194 The Old-Time Garden . . 196 In Praise op Weeds . 197 [xi] CONTENTS PAGE The Country Boy's Creed . . . .198 Autumn 199 October ........ 201 Southward Again 202 XII. WE RELAX Vacation Time 204 Laughter ....... 206 Terpsichorean ...... 207 Breaking Loose ...... 208 We're Off! 208 A Bit of Coney Island 210 Across the Table from Marse Henry . .212 For the Game's Ache . . . . .213 Romance on the Links . . . . .214 Leading vs. Driving 215 Sportsmanship . . . . . .216 Work and Play 217 XIII. WE STOP AND THINK Routine 218 Dreamers and Sleepers 218 The Samaritan Religion . . . .219 The Soul New-Found 221 Resurrection ....... 222 Death the Adventure ..... 223 Members One of Another .... 225 The World Is Young Again .... 226 Greed ........ 227 Winds of Doctrine 229 Destiny 231 Time 232 Worry 233 H CONTENTS XIV. THE LAND WE LIVE BY PAGE One American Farmer . . 235 Wheat Prices and Bread . 237 Don't Lean Against the Breeching . 239 The Best Place to Be Poor . . 240 Will $1,000 Do It? . 241 Do You Believe in Farming? . 243 Think op a $25,000 Cow! . 244 Woman's "New Freedom" . 248 The Connecting Link . . 254 XV. MONEY TALKS The Tactics of Thomas . . . . 255 Don't Buy! ...... . 256 National and State Finance . 258 The Next Step .... 259 Any Cure for Tax Eating? . . 261 Where the Money Goes . 262 A Fine Thing .... . 263 These Altered Times . 264 The Basis of Business . . 266 Our Own Walt Masonry . 266 Tight-Wad Lawmakers . . 268 What Unemployment Means . 269 Mobilizing for Foreign Trade? . . 271 XVI. WHAT ABOUT BOOZE? [xiii] CONTENTS PAOE Cauoht 274 Times Do Change ! 275 Helps to College Temperance . . . 276 Decadent Drinkers ..... 277 Dropping a Partner ..... 278 Poetic Justice ...... 280 The Whole Story 281 Railroads and Rum 281 The Story of One Town .... 282 The Man Who Made Money Out of It . 283 XVII. SHOP TALK On Breaking Into Collier's 285 Collier's Is Unjust 287 On Spelling As You Please . 288 Oh, Shucks! . . 290 A Friend Who Sticks 291 From the Morning's Mail . 292 The Omniscient One . 294 Our Most Faithful Reader . 295 The Best . 297 XVIII. HERE ARE LADIES Matching the Men 298 The Golden Hour 298 On Going Courting 299 A Plea for Stew . . . . . .801 What Women Expect 302 The Militants and "Sex Antagonism" . 303 The Certainty of Suffrage .... 306 Science and Love ...... 307 Women's Work 309 Guarding the Girls 309 [riv] CONTENTS PAGE Leadership 311 The Overpaid Girl 312 The World Moves and Women Help to Move It ...... . 313 Suffrage Heroes . . . . . .314 Babies and "Help" . . . . . .314 Cooking Schools and Bridge . . .317 XIX. MATTERS OF BUSINESS Room at the Top . A Lesson from Below The Highroad A Railway That Knows How The Basic Service of Railroading What Do We Want? Steel Cars and Slaughter The New Haven Mess Monopoly and Empire Regulation and Taxes Industrial Justice . Nothing in It Our Demoralized Courts The Discouragement of Thrift Real Currency Reform How Much Pay? . "Sheer Weight of Money" . Prices Still Will Soar . The Greatest Question gompers and personal rlghts The Curse of Small Business A War of Our Own "The Hound of Heaven" Getting Rid of Toil . . w 319 319 321 321 323 324 325 326 328 329 331 332 333 334 336 337 338 339 340 341 343 344 346 847 CONTENTS XX. FORWARD ! page Looking Ahead ...... 348 Brimstone Uplifters 348 "Fallen on Evil Days" 350 Insurance and a Sonnet .... 350 Finding Out 853 ' An Interlocking Boss and the Directors . 354 Milestones ....... 355 Headway 356 Dayton Asks Goethals to Be City Manager 357 A Landmark 357 Watch Oregon 858 Lux 359 XXI. HOME MATTERS Is That So? 860 Children 360 Are You Cheerful To-day? .... 362 Matters of Taste 363 j Union Hours for the Wife .... 364 Mothers As Teachers ..... 365 Santa Claus and Others .... 367 How About Sex? ...... 368 Hospitality ....... 369 A Few of Him Would Make a Muckle . . 870 XXII. THE PLAY-ACTORS A Forecast 373 The New Generation 375 A Missionary ....... 376 Sarah 377 Here's Hoping 378 [xvi] CONTENTS PAGE The Wild West 879 What Is Immoral? 880 We See "Hamlet" 882 XXIII. THAT MARRIED STATE A Certain Human Relation .... 884 Along Toward June 885 Adolescence and Colic ..... 886 Fatherhood and Motherhood . . . 887 Of Loving and Telling 889 [xvii] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS I PEACE AND WAR TO-MORROW'S VALOR WE are neither dreamers nor Utopians. The roar of the ultra-modern city is all about ; the rumble of the presses fills our ears. Yet, ever and again, amid the current talk of wars, of armament and disarmament, comes up a vision dear to the late William James, whose ideas, by the way, are far more familiar in France and in England than in his own country. When James set forth his vision of "armies of peace," the natural query was: But what about armies for police purposes? James did not, nor do we, deny such a need at present. But surely the phi- losopher was right in regarding as preposterous the idea that what is called courage or martial valor can be fostered only by a careful training in killing and destruction. Who is in love with war? So long as the Balkan peoples were fight- ing the Turk for a principle, for Christianity, as they said, the world was moderately interested. When they started cutting each other to pieces in a spirit of greedy quarreling, most of us turned [3] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS away in horrified disgust. James foresaw a time when our young men indeed, all our able-bodied men would render national service in the work of construction instead of destruction, in build- ing up the land instead of burning and devastat- ing. Then, too, without the aid of guns or shrap- nel, would be taught the power of endurance, the salient blessing of self-sacrifice. Why not? We denied being Utopians, but we all of us are just that, in a measure. For Utopia, as has been brilliantly said, is the one country at which hu- manity is always landing. UNNECESSARY RISKS VARIOUS individuals have disparaged the motives of the men fighting in Europe against the Kaisers and the Turk, and one loose thinker has called this war of nationalism against the would-be world conqueror "the causeless war." This same politician has cautioned his fel- low countrymen against taking "unnecessary risks." Now, it is hard for us to be patient when we read such rubbish in the press. Without "un- necessary risks" history would be the record of life among the invertebrates. Without "unneces- sary risks" there would be no Leonid as in his- tory, no Columbus, no Champlain, no Wolfe, M PEACE AND WAE no Nelson, no Emmet, no Washington, no Lafayette, no American Republic. Without the taking of "unnecessary risks" there would have been no Lincoln. When the men who fol- lowed Garibaldi from Rome asked him what their reward should be, they were answered: "Hunger and thirst, forward marches, battles, and death." Garibaldi and his Thousand took unnecessary risks and freed Italy! In Ibsen's play, when Brand had led his men halfway to the heights they halted but this was Brand's speech to them: How long the war will last? As long as life! . . . What will you gain? A will that's whole, A soaring faith, a single soul, The willingness to lose, that gave Itself rejoicing to the grave; A crown of thorns on every brow; That is the wage you're earning now ! Which is better, the patriotism of Garibalidi, the idealism of a defeated Brand or the soft counsel of these moderns who set comfort above country, saving themselves above spending them- selves? This country does not want war, but if we thought it incapable of war zeal once war again became our national necessity we should pray to God that He make us, in our next incarnation, Belgians, Serbs, or French- men. [5] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS j WAR COSTS THOSE who predict a ruined Europe after the War of the Nations must remember that this depends partly upon whether or not the present struggle settles the armament question. Europe now spends over one thousand million dollars per annum on the war business. If part or all of this can be saved it will go far in the work of restoration. Furthermore, war is a tre- mendous inspirer of energy, as France proved after 1870 and as we proved after the Civil War. Science and industry will go forward even faster when freed of some of the burden of the military fanatics. Our civilization is not to be overturned. DELUSIONS ABOUT FORCE COLONEL ROOSEVELT once expressed a contemptuous opinion of young Chris- tians who have shoulders like a hock bottle. Roosevelt himself has what men call f orce has it physically and morally and that is why he is Roosevelt. But here in America we have an opposed school of thought the Friends of Flab- biness. Mr. Carnegie has organized a good many of them into peace societies, and pays their talking expenses. Now, of the two fallacies that [6] PEACE AND WAR keep cropping out about force as a factor in the lives of nations, one is as witless as the other. German thoroughness, skill, bravery, and brutal- ity are proving (as they have proved before) that force doesn't settle everything in this world. The Potsdam officials who are trying the present ex- periment with blood and iron may stand in Bis- marck's boots till they ossify they will never have his brains. The opposite delusion is that "force settles nothing." Some interviewer attributed this empty phrase to Jane Addams upon her recent return from Europe. Perhaps she did say it, but it is empty just the same. Ask any social reformer or historian who has heard of the French Revo- lution ; ask any Italian old enough to know about Garibaldi; ask any native of Poland land of the Broken Heart. This is not a world of auto- matic righteousness, and our only real excuse for being here is that our strength may in some way help to force the cause of better things to victory. THIRTY-FIVE YEARS VICTORIOUS MOLE TEQUOP ("the man who talks with his hands") has a record of victory extending over thirty-five years. In the early spring of 1878, as a Second Lieutenant fresh [7] NATIONAL FLOODMABKS from West Point, he overcame the Cheyennes in the Black Hills. The Crows were conquered at Mizpah Creek the same year. Other encounters, all uniformly successful, were with Geronimo's Apaches, with the Navajos and Utes of the Four Corners country, the Hopis beyond the Painted Desert, the Moros of Sulu in the Philippines, and, more recently, with the Navajos on the Beautiful Mountain. The names are sufficiently romantic. The Government saved a lot of powder on these "battles," for not a shot was fired. At most of them no troops were present. Success came be- cause General Hugh L. Scott (that is Mole Tequop's real name) prefers to know and study people in place of shooting them. He found out the feelings and grievances of the Indians, and dealt with them in honesty and fairness. The re- sults were honorable, permanent, and inexpen- sive. Can we say as much for war after some four thousand years of recorded experience? War is merely the deadly and extravagant pur- chase of fear. Why not train a few disciples of General Scott for our diplomatic service? Un- less this is done, it may some day be the epitaph of our modern civilization that it used civilized methods in dealing with the savages and savage methods in dealing with the civilized. [8] PEACE AND WAS UNION AT Gettysburg it was proposed to supersede the organizations of Confederate veterans and of the Grand Army of the Republic by founding in their place, on this fiftieth anniver- sary of the Civil War's greatest battle, an order of the United Veterans of America. This has already been accomplished in spirit. Not only is our country really and definitely reunited, but the country knows it, and the men who battled in '63 most enthusiastically know it. It is no temper of noisy militarism that the body-tattered veterans of the two facing armies have met on the blood-soaked battlefield fifty years after. Their* spirit is patriotic, but it is also peace lov- ing. These men, whichever side they fought on, know full well what is the cost of a great war. To be sure, they would not have their sons and grandsons spare themselves that heavy cost if an overwhelming issue and a great necessity should confront them. We have not yet reached the stage in civilization when war may safely be re- garded as a purely historic institution. We have, however, reached the point at which it is our duty, as shipping clerks or bankers, preachers or mili- tiamen, grocers or journalists, to recognize war's essential horror and criminality when entered upon out of vainglory, greed, or mere momentary [9] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS irritation. War ought to remain the last resort, whether waged with fists or bullets. Probably the country would feel this all the more intensely if it were not for the tiresome tirades of profes- sional peacemongers both the disinterested vol- unteers and the zealous pensioners of Mr. An- drew Carnegie. [10] II ON THE AMERICAN PLAN WHAT DEMOCRACY MEANS PUBLIC opinion is like steam in more ways than one. Repressed for any great length of time, it is likely to prove explosive. Granted a safety valve (sometimes called ballot boxes), it is discovered to be beneficently, creat- ively powerful. THE DAY AND THE FLAG THE Fourth of July is, above all others, the day of our flag "the flag that is like a flower," as the Chinese said when our banner was seen at Canton. The spirit of day and flag alike has never been more beautifully expressed than in these lines from the speech that Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane made to the clerks of his department on Flag Day: Then came a great shout from the flag: "The work that we do is the making of the real flag. NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS I am but its shadow. I am whatever you make me, noth- ing more. I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a people may become. Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest work, fitting the rails to- gether truly. Sometimes I droop, for then purpose has gone from me, and cynically I play the coward. But al- ways I am all that you hope to be and have the courage to try for. I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and en- nobling hope. I am the day's work of the weakest man, and the largest dream of the most daring. I am the Consti- tution and the courts, statutes and statute makers, soldier and dreadnought, drayman and street sweep, cook, coun- selor, and clerk. I am the battle of yesterday and the mis- take of to-morrow. I am the mystery of the men who do without knowing why. I am no more than what you be- lieve me to be, and I am all that you believe I can be. I am what you make me, nothing more. My stars and my stripes are your dreams and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so out of your hearts, for you are the makers of the flag, and it is well that you glory in the making." In "Who's Who in America," Secretary Lane's biography begins like this: "Born Prince Edward Island, Canada, July 15, 1864. . . . Removed to California in early childhood; educated at the University of California, 1886." Secretary Lane is an American. [12] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN A MORE UNITED COUNTRY LESS than forty years ago two fanatical young experimenters heard the world's first telephone conversation over a wire stretched between the rooms of their Boston workshop. Last month the same two men, Alexander Gra- ham Bell and Thomas A. Watson, formally opened the first transcontinental telephone line between New York and San Francisco, and heard each other much more clearly than they did that first time. The speed and power of modern engineering genius was never more strik- ingly shown, and the details are as remarkable as the feat itself. Imagine the human voice trans- mitted through 740 tons of copper and across the entire United States in about one-fifteenth of a second. Imagine talking 3,400 miles to your friend over a "phantom circuit" which is nothing at all but the abstract relation between four real wires! The new repeaters, which "boost" the conversation every thousand miles or so, have left no known limit to the land distance over which one may talk. The chief engineer, Mr. John Joseph Carty, hints very cheerfully of telephoning to China some day. Why not? The limit was fifty miles when he began, and they have added 4,700 miles to that already. But greater than these facts, [13] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS and more important than prophecies, are the cour- age and brains and faithful patient work of the many who have labored together to draw our whole United States within the compass of a single human voice. By these things is our country united and justified. TREATIES AND TOLLS AND MORAL TESTS DID we go too far when we said that the man who can read the English language as used in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, and still maintain that we have the right to exempt our coastwise ships from Panama Canal tolls, "there- by proclaims his own moral status"? Several of our readers seem pained by what they regard as an impugnment of their moral status, and have protested that they believe in the free-tolls law, and claim both the ability to read English and honesty of purpose. That acute ethical philosopher, William Marion Reedy of the St. Louis "Mirror," agrees with us. "Against the simple moral proposition of the President's canal- tolls message," says the "Mirror," "all the talk about running the canal to please ourselves is mere bluster. You can't beat the Golden Rule." The New York "World" calls our utterance "a [14] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN concise and correct statement of the case." What Collier's said has been widely approved and not severely criticised by many people. And yet we are not inclined to stand on this record. Maybe we were wrong after all. Minds are such curious things ! Martin Luther honestly believed that the devil appeared to him, and he threw his ink- stand at the adversary. Edmund Burke hon- estly believed that the rotten borough system of England was essential to the existence of the nation. William of Orange believed he had a moral right to give away the crown lands of Great Britain and Ireland to his Dutch friends. William Pitt, under honest convic- tion, kept himself in power by the most gigantic system of corruption ever known. Honest law- yers argue acutely for the wrong sides of cases. Many honest people believe that we may exempt American coastwise ships from canal tolls with- out committing any act of bad faith. We don't. NEXT! THE Tory mind is thoroughly committed to the idea that the people, through their government, can never do anything well ; for ef- ficiency they must call upon private individuals, actuated by a desire for great financial gain. Yet [15] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS even the most blinded Tory must admit that never in history was an engineering feat accomplished with such splendid efficiency, such resistless en- ergy, such f arsighted economy, as the digging of the Panama Canal by the force under Colonel Goethals. And why cannot this same efficiency, energy, and economy accomplish results just as creditable in the building of an Alaskan rail- road ? Why turn Alaskan railroads over to finan- ciers eager for private gain when Colonel Goeth- als and his splendid force are now ready for the next job? WANTED: A GENIUS STILL your arguments about the tariff; for- get for a moment all your private business. A great undertaking that defied the resources of the Suez Canal maker and the Old World's great- est republic is brought to triumphant conclusion by your Federal Government. Without whisper of slander or hint of graft, your engineers have conquered a deadly climate, brought sufficient labor into the jungle, drained and leveled and erected, until the Panama Canal is become a fact. The dry excavation was finished ten days ahead of schedule ; dredging remains, but with the waters of the two oceans flowing into the great locks the [16] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN end is within grasp. The Panama Canal is one of the world's nine wonders ; to gaze upon it is to feel like the "watcher of the skies" When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Have we no poet to chant this achievement of French imagining, American perseverance, and many-nationed muscle? He need not undertake to make official history of his poems ; Keats in his sonnet unjustly named Cortez instead of Bal- boa, but that scarcely affects the grandeur of the poetry. The Panamanian scene is as rich in leg- end and history as it is in vegetation ; buccaneers have anchored in the sleepy old Spanish ports of the Isthmus; Bernhardt acted in a gala per- formance at the Panama Theatre when poor old De Lesseps set to work digging the trenches Goethals was to complete ; all the races have met and mingled and diced and prayed and cursed and labored in the city made clean by Gorgas and his men. State socialism has had a partial trial in Uncle Sam's avuncular administration of his Canal Zone. The theme is tremendous; your poet would have an epic on his hands unless he chose just one side of it all. Here a few of its minor incidents are noted nothing of the tre- [17] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS mendous battle with Nature, nothing of the mean- ing of the victory. Who can make a great poem out of this great adventure? Will it be some poet whom we already know and love, or will some youngster burst full fledged into greatness, soar- ing high upon a large imagination? Some of the greatest poems in the past have been paid for only in posterity's admiration. We hope that the dig- ging of the Panama Canal will evoke a poem as great as any occasional poem in the past and if it does we shall see to it that its author receives a bigger check for it than Milton did for "Para- dise Lost." POETRY ABOUT PANAMA EVIDENTLY Emerson was not alone in holding that "the only poetry is history could we tell it right." There is, at least, a good deal of comment upon our editorial "Wanted: A Genius." An amusing letter comes to us from one of the poets who has for his part already celebrated Panama in song and in CoUiefs. Says Berton Braley: I have been trying to decide whether the man who wrote that editorial does not read Collier's Weekly, or if he sim- ply wanted to make a neat backhand slap at me. [18] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN No, no, we do read Collier's; read it in man- uscript, in proof, in the finished magazine. Yes, yes, we do like Mr. Braley's verse, or it wouldn't be published here ; but poets are so touchy ! Just to prove our appreciation, here is the catchy way Mr. Braley's "At Your Service" opens in our issue of May 31 : Here we are, gentlemen; here's the whole gang of us, Pretty near through with the job we are on; Size up our work it will give you the hang of us South to Balboa and north to Colon. Yes, the canal is our letter of reference; Look at Culebra and glance at Gatun; What can we do for you got any preference, Wireless to Saturn or bridge to the moon? But that is not all. George D. Hendrick- son of Philadelphia wounds us cruelly in writ- ing: To ignore Whitman's "Passage to India," bearing on the subject as it does, betrays an unpardonable lack of knowledge of the world's best literature. And some one in Cumberland, Md., declares: Your editorial, "Wanted : A Genius," is already answered in Percy Mackaye's "Panama Hymn," published in the April number of the "North American Review." Right ! In its address to Him who is "Lord of the Sundering Land and Deep," that poem strikes the true note of grandeur: [19] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS For thee hath glaring Cyclops sweat, And Atlas groaned, and Hercules For thee his iron sinews set, And thou wast lord of Rameses. Till now they pause, to watch thy hand Lead forth the first Leviathan Through mazes of the jungled land, Submissive to the will of man: Submissive through the will of us To thine, the universal will, That leads, divine and devious, To world communions vaster still. Poets and canal diggers are not so different, after all. Dipping into one of the old numbers of Collier's we find there this forgotten sentence : There is one Greek word for "I do" from which we get the word practical, and another Greek word for "I do" from which we get the word poet. And the San Diego "Tribune" adds: Perhaps the Panama Canal is in itself an epic that could not be improved upon by other poets than those who have written it already in the rocks and jungles. COLORADO, TAKE NOTICE! THE State of Ohio was once covered by- forests . Then there were no devastating floods. The forests were cut away, cut indis- criminately, ruthlessly, ignorantly. Now we [20] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN have the tragedy at Dayton and other lesser ones every year. If a few square miles of care- fully tended forests had been left at strategic points around the headwaters of the various riv- ers and streams of Ohio, we should not be mourn- ing these hundreds of dead or regretting the millions of money. This is part of what is meant by conservation. BRIDGE-BUILDERS THEY follow reporters, precede relief trains, and are on the spot almost before the crest of the flood has gone down. They were all over Ohio, spinning their quick webs across torrents it seemed nothing could cross. At Zanesville, where the Muskingum rose nearly fifty-two feet, there is a dam, and at the very foot of this dam was a heavy railroad bridge. The flood carried it out and bent its steel girders like so much soft wire. While the muddy water was still thundering over, a steam crane leaned out from the solid shore and delicately lowered a big hairpin-shaped frame of twelve-by-twelve timber. Weighted with railroad iron, it dipped to the bottom, was lifted out, measured, sawed, dipped again. It is nice work, so fitting one of these "bents" that the top will be level and ready to receive beams run out from the shore. [21] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS Once in place, stringers run out and bolted, ties and rails put down, the crane edged out a little farther, and down went another "bent." Be- tween this and the first a heavy scow was lowered to the water, and suspended in it from the crane's chains, with the flood roaring about them and splashing them with spray, men hauled the dangling "bent" into position at the bottom, a winch engine pulled it taut at the top, and the second beam was bolted on. And so, step by step, the bridge crept across the torrent as surely, neatly almost, as if no water were there. No interviews or medals for the construction gang. Dangling over what might be Niagara's rapids, with helpless idlers watching open- mouthed from the shore, they fight the river with their steel-and-steam giant and their own nimble skill, and at night return, unheralded and unknown, to some side-street hotel. There they eat everything on the bill of fare, and, red-faced, good-natured boys, sprawl before the natural-gas fireplace "like Mars, a-smokin' their pipes and cigars." RESURGENT OHIO THERE could be no comment more fitting upon the close of a period of paralyzing calamity than these two spontaneous expressions [22] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN of a stricken community. The first placard was run off the presses of the local newspaper while the pressroom was still under water: TO THE WORKMEN OF HAMILTON Do not leave Hamilton. There are citizens here who will help you to get the money to rebuild and refurnish your homes; work will be plentiful; opportunity is no- where greater than right here. In the days to come you will be proud to number yourself among those who stood by and helped to build the bigger, better, more prosperous Hamilton. The second placard appeared in the window of Hamilton's leading bank, the floor of which was still littered with flood wreckage: Noah was six hundred years old before he learned to build the ark. Don't lose your grip. Any poet or historian who seeks that intan- gible thing which Kipling called the American Spirit will find it here as nearly as it is possible to reduce it to words. These expressions came from typical American communities at a time when calamity had made them without conscious- ness of self or of others. The buoyant, uncal- culating, slightly boastful optimism, and the humor that would have "matched with destiny [23] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS for beers," even at a moment when destiny was in a pretty terrifying temper, are naive, sponta- neous, and native to America. THE GREATEST EXPOSITION WITH half the world at war, San Francisco opens the latest of our celebrations of the arts of peace. Every building was com- pleted, almost every exhibit in place, the expo- sition was free of debt and had aligned forty- two countries in this festival of the works of man when President Wilson freed the electrical impulse which formally set the wheels in motion. We have had fairs before this, but none so beau- tiful, none so nobly placed, none that so appeals to the imagination. The canal at Panama has finished the work of the pioneer, our Western coast has come into its own, and here is a great proof of the fact. The variety and scope of our eager nation is to be seen here and seen in its relation, not only to the achievements of our older communities, but also to the promise of the Far East and of South America. Those who can get to San Francisco this year will be rewarded not so much by an increase of their geographical knowledge or by the thrilling beauty of Jules Gueein's marvelous decora- tions or by the wonders of California's golden [24] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN days as by the vision of what our country is to become as the free, conquering, democratic spirit of the pioneer goes forth to win its place and do its work in the world that is to be. SUPPORTING THE COLLEGES PRESIDENT VAN HISE of the Univer- sity of Wisconsin once turned the laugh against some of his Eastern confreres at an aca- demic conference by saying mildly that he would rather hang on to the chin whiskers of farmers than to the coat tails of plutocrats. It is a more dignified performance and keeps the line of obli- gation clearer. But endowments come in time even to State universities. These gifts are usu- ally in the form of securities, or are so invested later on by the trustees, and will be found on analysis to consist of claims on the industry, loy- alty, and skill of other men. The college student often pays tuition fees of one sort or another, but these seldom, if ever, amount to one-half as much as the college is spending on each such stu- dent. The other half comes from the endowment. It is a very striking fact that men are tending the great turbines beside Niagara, working fast freight trains over the Rocky Mountains, drill- ing into the copper ledges of Arizona, splicing telephone wires below the streets of New York, [25] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS or standing up to the flames of Pittsburgh's blast furnaces and all to get Johnny Jones his college diploma. No wonder that Woodrow Wilson's motto was "Princeton for the nation's service." It is fairly certain that the careless- ness of college pleasure and the selfishness of the collegian's dream of egocentric success would yield to a noble idealism if these facts could be brought home. The universities get plenty of advice in June, and we would add only this: Read the treasurer's report and think about it. A LAND OF SNOW IT is no detraction from the indisputable rigors of the great Northwest to say that when win- ter is mentioned in this country the mind is as likely as not to turn toward New England. It doesn't require the Weather Bureau's daily Bul- letin from Eastport, Me., and Northfield, Vt., to bring this about. From the time our forbears starved on the shores of Massachusetts Bay the inexorable and beautiful season of snow has seemed as intrinsic a part of New England as the granite in her hills. Even if one were tempted to forget this, the literature of New England would prevent. The bleakness of winter serves as background for Mrs. Wharton's "Ethan Frome" an idyll of character and countryside [26] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN worthy of Hawthorne himself. A trio of poets paint the more cheerful aspect. Let Emerson give us the storm itself: Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight. . . . The housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Perhaps a dropping mercury brings the sort of clear night about which Lowell said: God makes sech nights, all white an' still, Fur'z you can look or listen; Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. And those who were born and bred among the White Mountains or the Green Mountains or the Berkshires will appreciate this from Whit- tier: Next morn we awakened with the shout Of merry voices high and clear; And saw the teamsters drawing near To break the drifted highways out. Down the long hillside, treading slow, We saw the half-buried oxen go, Shaking the snow from heads uptost, Their straining nostrils white with frost. [27] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS For a true, compact picture of old New Eng- land, nothing beats "Snow-Bound." AFTER FIFTY YEARS THE Fiftieth Anniversary of Lincoln's death found a Virginian in the White House and an ex-Confederate soldier from Louisiana sitting as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. No voice of sectionalism is anywhere raised to question the honor, integrity, and serv- ice of these men. Could anything have seemed more incredible to the grief and bitterness of fifty years ago? Could anything more vividly prove the unity of our nation? Lincoln may not have been "the typical American," but he did live out certain qualities of justice and fair dealing which his countrymen have always re- sponded to in the long run. "Gentle, plain, just, and resolute," in Walt Whitman's immortal words, his spirit is not dead in the land he loved. And the lesson of his life is plain for every people that cares to learn. The oppressed and wran- gling races of Austria, the hating cutthroats of the Balkans, the tyrants and victims of Europe all the way from Helsingfors to the Golden Horn can have peace whenever they will let other men lead their own lives in honor and in free- dom under the law. Despite anything we may [28] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN say in haste, in partisanship or in despair, that, and nothing else, is the American plan, and by- it our country will endure. WHO ARE THE AMERICANS? IN President Wilson's funeral address at the Brooklyn Navy Yard over the bodies of the sailors and marines killed at Vera Cruz, this question was answered finally and beautifully. It is the more memorable because of the endless lies that have been told respecting Woodeow Wilson's attitude toward newcomers. This is the answer: Notice that these men were of our blood. I mean of our American blood, which is not drawn from any one coun- try, which is not drawn from any one stock, which is not drawn from any one language of the modern world, but free men everywhere have sent their sons and their brothers and their daughters to this country in order to make that great compounded nation which consists of all the sturdy elements and of all the best elements of the whole globe. I listened again to this list with a profound interest at the mixture of the names, for the names bear the marks of several national stocks from which these men came. But they are not Irishmen or Germans, or French- men or Hebrews any more. They were not when they went to Vera Cruz; they were Americans, every one of them, and were no different in their Americanism because of the stock from which they came. Therefore, they were in a peculiar sense of our blood and they proved it by showing [29] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS that they were of our spirit that no matter what their derivation, no matter where their people came from, they thought and wished and did the things that were American ; and the flag under which they served was a flag in which all the blood of mankind is united to make a free nation. The men for whom these stately words were said once bore these names: Bos well, Defab- bio, De Lowry, Devorick, Fisher, Fried, Frohlichstein, Haggerty, Lane, Marten, Percy, Poinsett, Schumacher, Smith, Stream, Summerlin, Watson. All are Amer- ican names. UP AND DOWN EAST WHAT'S geography between friends? A first-class barber told us once that he had folks out West and he was going to visit there (in Scranton, Pa.!) . The "Leading Newspaper of the Coast," whose other name is the San Francisco "Chronicle," has an editorial section entitled : AS THE EASTERN EDITORS SEE "IT" They Agree That the Exposition Is the "Greatest Ever" In this unanimity of praise one notes the Brooklyn "Eagle" and the New York "Times" lifting the tune along with the Red Bluff (Cal.) [30] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN "Sentinel," Victoria (B. C.) "Colonist," and Salt Lake "Herald-Republican." When Peary stood at the North Pole the whole world was south of him and every breeze was a southern wind. So to those who front our destinies from beside the Golden Gate, the whole U. S. A. is east and British Columbia an addendum thereto. We "Easterners" must get together and assert ourselves, or, when California really gets going, we'll all begin to tip up to the serious detriment of those things which are on the level, including geography. Anyhow, we are good enough to go to that fair. APPLES OF GOLD RIVERSIDE, Cal., plans a great celebration to take place in April, 1915. The found- ing of the citrus-fruit industry of California is to be commemorated by means of an ex- position and a festival. One hundred and twenty-five thousand Californians earn their liv- ing in this business, in which hundreds of mil- lions of dollars are invested. Now, our grand- parents looked upon the orange as a fruit to be eaten only by the well to do, the reckless, or the ill. To-day it is as common as the home-grown apple, and sometimes cheaper. Florida and Cal- [31] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS ifornia are to be thanked for this, and California must thank Mr. William Saunders, who in 1868 was the horticulturist of the little Govern- ment service at Washington which has developed into our wonderful Department of Agriculture. Mr. Saunders learned that at Bahia, Brazil, a seedless orange tree existed. He secured some small trees which he had budded for the purpose. The first shipment died in transit, and Mr. Saun- ders sent for another to be packed according to his own minute directions. These grew in the greenhouse, under his charge, in the old Botan- ical Gardens, now to be removed to Rock Creek Park. In 1873 two of these trees were sent to a friend of Ben Butler of Massachusetts, then in Congress and possessed of a Congressman's "pull." Mrs. C. L. Tibbetts of Riverside, Cal., planted the trees, and they are still living. When they began to bear, the merits of the seedless fruit were recognized at once, and it was named the Washington navel orange. Nothing could be more fitting or more poetic than Riverside's celebration of this victory of peace. THEIR AMERICA AND OURS OUR advice is : Don't let pessimists persuade you that their America was better than ours, that the race is on the down grade. For [32] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN it isn't true. If you doubt this statement, con- sult James Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States," referring to Volume III, Chap- ter I. Almost all the foreign travelers who looked us over in the early nineteenth century called us sallow and unhealthy. Thackeray, visiting New York, found "most of the ladies as lean as greyhounds." A physician diagnosed the whole nation as suffering from St. Vitus's dance. George William Curtis spoke of his fellow Americans' "anxious eyes and sallow com- plexion," while Lyell noted the "careworn ex- pression" characteristic of Yankees. New Eng- land's own philosopher, Emerson, confessed to "the invalid habits of the country," adding: "In truth, we are a nation of health hunters, betray- ing the want by the search." Indiscreetly, too, we advertised our ailments, and the hearty salu- tation Good morning! gave way to a Howdy -do? that as often as not produced a stream of con- fidences about aches and pains. In Congress, members opened their speeches with self-pitying references to feeble health ; one gains the impres- sion in reading Rhodes that we were coming to be nationally hypochondriac till the Civil War gave us something more worth worrying about. In cases where our grandparents' health really was bad, it was due, in a measure, to atrociously bad cooking, to the drinking of too many fiery "drams" between meals, and to the fact that [33] NATIONAL FLOODM ARK S city people took little or no exercise. How much better off we are to-day in habits of eating, drinking, and exercising scarcely needs argu- ment. Think what a boy-scout movement would have meant to the ante-bellum generation! "There are times," writes the editor of the To- ledo "Blade," "when all of us despair of the future of the race so rampant seems evil, so triumphant and arrogant seem vice and selfish- ness. We know of nothing that can so swiftly restore faith for humanity as the sight of a half dozen boys in the scout khaki." It is not a bad America, citizens all ; it is an upgrade America ; it is the best and healthiest America yet. For, as Emerson put it for the benefit of his own un- athletic generation, "Health is the condition of wisdom" and no people at any time ever real- ized this truth more fully than the American people in 1915. PLOWING THE SOUL IN KANSAS WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE has told us how Kansas boarded the water wagon. Enthusiastically he describes his State reaching a "stage of social and economic adjustment much nearer the ideal status of the dreamers than the most radical visionary would have thought pos- sible." Then sounds this sudden wistful note : [34] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN And yet this population, so abundantly blessed, has not produced one great inventor, one great statesman, one great poet, novelist, artist, philosopher, or leader whose fame is really lasting and national. We have contributed nothing to the world that our sister State of Nebraska, with her saloons, cannot duplicate, except happiness and prosperity. That happiness and prosperity are worth while, from the viewpoint of those striving to be happy and prosperous, no one can deny. But are they worth while when the world's progress is considered? Are they an end in them- selves? When we are all happy and prosperous, will the world be finished and wrapped up ready for delivery into whatever heaven or hell to which we are billed? It is the pioneer's inevitable question after pioneering is done. Some escape it. Their spir- its demand that thrill of creation which comes from breaking trails, plowing virgin soil, raising roofs when the house one is building seems the only one in the world. When their neighbor- hood gets "too civilized" they move on. They have no time to question. Behind the smug com- fort and level commonplaces they run away from' there is, however, a second division of pioneers spiritual frontiersmen who go into new coun- tries with their souls, rather than their bodies. Theirs the questioning and devils of doubt. Kansas is growing up. [85] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS NATURE AT THE BAT THE American Geographical Society has discovered that the Yukon River is fifth among North American streams. Geographical fans had predicted that the Yukon would not long remain in the second division of its league, and now they are hoping that the June rise will place the Alaskan river in first place. If it should win the pennant, a host of good wishers will root for it in the world's championship se- ries. Of course this game is not quite so fast as baseball, but it thrills with divine enthusiasm all nature fans of the John Muir type, who think in terms of geological epochs. To them a river that goes on a bat once in three centuries is keep- ing its batting average up to .300; a mountain range that sags two inches off its base is a dare- devil base stealer; and a glacier that travels two feet in a couple of thousand years is tycobbing a home run on smoking shoe leather! So, you see, we cannot laugh at the geographical and geological fans. They are watching the biggest game of all. Old Christy Gravity, their pitcher, totes a curve that he can hurl around the sun and back, and when he swings the bat he knocks sizzling comets clean across the sky. [36] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN WEEDS AND LITERATURE MR. JULIAN STREET, in his account of his travels across the prairies, won- dered why Mark Twain didn't immortalize the tnmbleweed along with the jackass rabbit, the coyote, and the sagebrush. This is an indictment of Mr. Clemens which may stand unless we clear his record now. It also visualizes Western history for forty years. Odd how things are re- lated, isn't it? Mark Twain failed to mention the tumbleweed because he didn't see it. In the days of "Roughing It," the tumbleweed was the humble little plant Psoralea lanceolate growing beside badger holes and on the mounds of pocket gophers, and not yet wept, honored, or sung. It had had no chance. Along came the American farmer after the days of Mark Twain's jour- ney and ripped up the prairies with his plow. The tumbleweed seen its duty and done it at once it shed its seeds on the new breaking and flourished in a way to put the green bay tree to shame. Mr. Hayden Carruth, then editor of the Estelline (S. Dak.) "Bell" and now a New York magazine editor, did the immortalizing for the tumbleweed which Mark Twain had omitted. He described the weird manner in which the tumbleweed races back and forth over the prai- ries, invading North Dakota before the south- [37] NATIONAL FLOODMAEK8 east wind, coming back into the settlements when the wind changed. The German immigrants had a really good name for it an expression which meant "vegetable wolf," in recognition of the wolflike lope of the brown weed spinning before the Western zephyrs. Then came the Russian immigrants, bringing with them the seed of the Russian thistle Salsola tragus, or saltwort which looks exactly like the American tumble- weed when in motion, but is to it as bubonic plague to chicken pox. This is, no doubt, the tumbleweed seen by Mr. Street. Probably Mr. Carruth's tumbleweed literature was infected by both plants. In order that the one might succeed the other, the great American desert had to be changed to farms, and made the new and happy homes of countless European and metro- politan refugees. If you ask them, the tumble- weed is nowhere near as harmless as Mr. Street thinks it. Of course it does not invade the Pull- man car, but well, one must not expect too much of the tenderfoot. WE TAKE STOCK FIFTY years from now, when some writer brings Woodrow Wilson's "History of the American People" up to date, we think he will say that the ten years ending about January [38] ON THE AMERICAN PLAN 1, 1914, was the period of the greatest ethical advance made by this nation in any decade. On the material side he will doubtless conclude that the most important phenomenon of this ten years was the development of the gasoline engine and, especially in the latter part of the decade, its adaptation to commercial uses, to doing, in cities and on farms, the work formerly done by human and other animal labor. And we think the same historian will say that the most important eco- nomic feature of the next decade, from 1914 until, say, 1924, was the completing of great highways and the improvement of roads everywhere. If he is a very discerning historian, he will point out that the improvement of roads was an in- cident and result of the development of the gaso- line engine. Probably he will record that the first real success achieved in a long attempt to reduce the cost of living came at the completion of the good-roads era, when farmers within a radius of fifty or sixty miles from the city were able to pack their produce on five or ten ton motor trucks and take it themselves in a four or five hour journey to the consumer in the city. Because it was a gradual perfecting, because there was no single invention with a picturesque quality, like Bell's discovery of the telephone, the significance and importance of the gasoline engine and its adaptation to the automobile, to the carrying of burdens, and to doing the heavy [39] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS work on farms, have been lost. Few of the his- toric aids to the advance of civilization have been of as great help as the completion of a portable fountain of energy which, weighing only one-half as much as a horse, will do the work of sixty horses and keep it up without rest for practically an unlimited time. [40] Ill SOME HUMANi BEINGS MAKING DREAMS COME TRUE IT is not given to everyone to purchase the lost delights of golden-houred boyhood. But Edwaed Tilden, Chicago's millionaire packer, has found it possible to retrace the Road to Yesterday and to reclaim from eternity at least one halcyon day which, as a boy, he was de- nied. A half century ago a tanned, barefooted country lad with a big lump in his throat stood by the roadside near Delavan, Wis., and watched a circus caravan disappear over the hills. That was as near as he had ever come to seeing a cir- cus. The red gods had called; he could not fol- low. And as his hopes faded away, and his vi- sions of a sawdust ring and pink lemonade were buried in his heart forever, he vowed that some time he'd come back and "take every kid in town to the circus." How faithfully he kept his prom- ise, 2,800 youngsters of his boyhood home can tell you. On a recent June day the boys and girls from miles around were treated to a circus, an aeroplane flight, and a picnic on Mr. Tilden 's [41] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS Wisconsin estate. Ah, and the bitterness of years was swept away by one look into their happy faces ! They at least had not been cheated, and their wildest dreams had come true. That day will be written in their calendars in gold let- ters, while a correction will be made on that kept by a country boy fifty long years ago. SUCCESS WHAT is success? Sometimes it begins in apparent failure. A young physician went from New York to a small Western city to begin the practice of his profession. For a number of years he had been attached to a New York hospital, where he had unusual opportuni- ties to study stomach diseases. When he reached the small city, he found the community consid- erably excited because one of its important citi- zens seemed about to die of cancer of the stomach. The young doctor was called in. He analyzed the contents of the man's stomach, discovered that he did not have cancer, located the true cause of his suffering, applied appropriate treatment, and in a short time put the man on his feet. Suc- cess? Well, promptly every genuine cancer vic- tim within a radius of forty miles was brought to the doctor for treatment. And because a care- ful diagnosis showed a cancer in every case, and [42] SOME HUMAN BEINGS because he could not cure a single one of these unfortunates, faith in his ability declined as rap- idly as it had risen. In vain he explained that his first success lay in the fact that the diagnosis disclosed a patient who was not suffering from a fatal disease. However, he had to give up practice and move to another town. Will he succeed? Very likely. It is not easy to down a man of real ability who is courageous and declines to fake. "JUST CALL ME MAY" IN a drunken brawl in a dingy flat a girl is mortally stabbed, and as the police, bending over her, ask her name, she says: "Just call me May ; that will do. I do not want to tell you who I am." And the press of a great country reprints the little sentence from coast to coast. The wise words of a great philosopher would not be given more publicity. Why? Because, after all, the little things are the big ones. The simple are the universal. And because the one unappeasable hunger of the human mind is for drama. It is thus that the yellow press can hold the multitude. Virtue we need, wit we need, philosophy we need, but drama we must have. The scare head calls her a beauty. She was prob- ably no more beautiful than she was good, but [] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS she did the one thing which could thrust her, if only for a moment, from the sordid unimpor- tance of her little life on to the screen of the world's events: she died dramatically. COLONEL NELSON OF THE "STAR" THIS, our obituary of William Rockhill Nelson, shall be no sugary "tribute." The founder and editor of the Kansas City "Star" would not want that. He took his place in jour- nalism's Hall of Fame and it was a high place, up beside Horace Greeley and Samuel Bowles by kicking in the door with hobnailed boots. "I've tried to be gentle and diplomatic," he once explained, "but I've never done well in my stocking feet." He was set on doing things, and if you got in his way he stepped on your neck. To describe his personality you had a choice between "dominant" and "domineering." His friends called him "Colonel"; his enemies, "Baron." He had no respect for labels (some- times you found his paper supporting a Republi- can candidate for President and a Democratic candidate for governor) ; and he wasn't afraid of any man or set of men under heaven. The sub- scriber who paid a dime a week for thirteen pa- pers got the same impartial hearing in his court as a big department store or a theater. He never [44] SOME HUMAN BEINGS took any back talk from advertisers; his paper went into every home in Kansas City, and they needed him in their business. Though the "Star" was carrying hundreds of dollars' worth of ad- vertising for liquors and beer, he enthusiastically approved Governor Folk's efforts to enforce the Sunday-closing law. The brewers and distillers, and their allies, warned him to shut up or they would withdraw their advertising. He threw them all out of his columns and never let them in again. To-day no price would seem too ex- orbitant to these gentry if only they could get back. The manager of a theater once tried like tactics. Colonel Nelson told him: "Out you go and out you stay!" Great players Maude Adams among them appeared at that theater, but the "Star" ignored them, and Kansas City knew not of their coming and going. The editor who does things in this fashion makes enemies. But when he was talked of as the Taft Administration's Ambassador to France, Colo- nel Nelson ended the discussion by saying that the editor of the "Star" "regarded himself as holding a place of greater responsibility and use- fulness than any within the gift of the President or the electorate." [45] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS THE DEATH OF MADERO AND so it has come about that what is known as "being practical" is considered all-im- portant; everybody will be "practical" and no- body so silly as to give his life for his country, for, after all, what is one's country? A myth; an immaterial, intangible thing, which produces nothing. There is such a thing as faith, which can raise one to a realm to which mere reason cannot pene- trate. This faith has always inspired great sac- rifices, sublime abnegations this faith which, piercing the cold facts, sees the higher destiny of a nation, the mysterious hand of Providence reaching out to guide a people. Peace under the law. Peace, turbulent, if you will, but full of vitality the peace of a free people, not the sepulchral peace of the oppressed, whose inanimate tranquillity nothing can dis- turb. These were the words of the man who has gone down to defeat and death in Mexico after a year's struggle against hopeless odds. There was almost no chance for him from the first. He could please no one neither the powerful, whose feudal grip his modern ideas would have broken could they have been carried into effect, nor the helpless brown mass, whose voice he became, and [46] SOME HUMAN BEINGS who fancied, once Don Panchito were Presi- dent, they could pick silver pesos from the trees. He was no fighter, "the little sawed-off," as the pelados called him, no iron man, born to rule. Had he been that, indeed, the revolution he led might have been commonplace enough. He was just an ordinary man in a straw hat a worried little man trying to help. A dreamer, no doubt, as people are fond of repeating, but it took more than invertebrate mooning to write the "Presi- dential Succession" and to rise against old Don Porfirio when the Diaz tradition still stood solid as a rock. The success of Madero, the com- ing to the capital of that comfortable provincial family, so free . from the polished inhumanity often found in Mexicans of the ruling class, seemed a definite step forward in the humanizing of that strange land of sunshine and dust and blood. And whatever Madero's mistakes or in- efficiencies, the crushing out of this experiment in democracy carries with it that sense of almost personal tragedy which is felt when, in any part of the world, the Napoleonic cynicism, that God is on the side of the heaviest battalions, seems for the moment true. In the shelters to which Francisco Madero's family and followers may be driven there is at least this thing for them to remember: Visions like his may not always come true, but they are not forgotten. And it is "crazy dreamers," like "El Chapparito," to [47] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS whom, generations after the "practical" men are dust, grateful peoples build monuments and of whom they sometimes make their saints. TO OUR STENOGRAPHER WHO else knows us half so well? She has heard all that we have said and then made notes of it. She has read our incoming letters. She knows who pleads with us for help and what we do about it. Do we write frankly or evasively, she follows the straight-hewed line or the curve of our deviousness. Are we cour- teous only to the powerful, or is our treatment even to all who come seeking? The woman at our elbow, hammering out our paragraphs, is a clear-eyed witness. Over the telephone voices drift in from the world outside, and the tone of each speaker is caught and judged before our presence is acknowledged. She knows whether our friends are worthy. Is the home happy? She knows it. She notes all our tricks of per- son. Our good temper, our clean speech, fly further than we guess. She is familiar with the stale phrases we scatter over the thousand rou- tine letters, and is gladdened when we light up the languid page with an unspoiled turn. She is aware when we have tumbled out from a laden desk to a World's Series ball game. She too [48] SOME HUMAN BEINGS would enjoy Mr. Baker's versatility, but she wades through our debris till twilight. She could keep our tardy correspondence up to the minute, but she has to time her efficiency to our limita- tions. Never outpacing us, she is as loyal in the background as our shadow. A KING OF MEN GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, one of the leaders of our age, is dead. Many of basic services of our time depend upon the improvements in electrical and mechanical engi- neering practice which his stubborn genius wrested from the hard world of nature. Before he was twenty-two years old he had served four years in the Civil War and had invented the air brake which made possible the modern use and control of high-speed railroad trains. Over three hundred patents stand to his credit, and his name is inseparably connected with electric light and power, steam turbines, air springs, and many other modern wonders. While lights flash and trains run, George Westinghouse will be re- membered. His mechanical and organizing abil- ities brought him to the headship of corporations using capital by the hundred millions and num- bering employees by tens of thousands, and yet every one of them knew that "the old man" [49] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS could take the tools and do a better job. He was the first great employer in this country to put in the Saturday half holiday, and he never had a dispute or a strike in forty years. Hard work, justice, and honor were the standards of his life, a life singularly free from the vanity, greed, and deceit that mar so many able men. When he went to his grave the coffin was car- ried by eight gray old veterans who had been with him since the shops were started in Turtle Creek Valley, near Pittsburgh, and the many thousands employed there quit work to honor him. In all our modern world there is not a monarch fit to stand with Geoege Westing- house. THE WAYS OF ATROPOS T "K TEi once had an aunt, a very sweet but very V V timid aunt. Indeed, she was so timid that she spent all her gentle life in the little town of her birth, nor ventured into the cold world for fear of the awful perils which beset the wan- derer by land and sea. All her brothers and her sisters, her nephews and her nieces, were adven- turous and quite incorrigible, but it was Aunt Faith's dearest boast that by her prudence they were dissuaded from their maddest enterprises. One summer they all set out for parts remote [50] SOME HUMAN BEINGS to pass their vacations in devious dangerous ways. One went to Europe over the briny deep, one hunted grizzlies in the Rockies, one explored Canada in a canoe, one sought gold in the Klon- dike, but not even the mildest of these expedi- tions tempted Aunt Faith. Her timid heart quailed before such perilous adventures. So she stayed quietly in her peaceful home and prayed for the safety of the others. One breezy Sunday morning, as she was walking serenely to church with her Sunday-school Quarterly under her arm, a limb blew off an elm tree and stilled her gentle admonitions forever. And her brothers and her sisters, her nephews and her nieces, came home to honor her memory from the farthermost parts of the earth. THE MAN WHO WROTE "COLONEL CAR- TER OF CARTERSVILLE" OLD HOP SMITH is a landmark gone. "Old" was solely a mark of endearment. Had he lived a hundred years he wouldn't have been old. He was the kind of man of whom younger men say "He's a fine old boy." His abounding vitality is the most striking recollec- tion that will linger with those who knew him. A fine, robustious vitality leaped in his springy walk; it rode on his stiff and burly shoulders; [51] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS it bristled out of ends of his old-fashioned, wiry, upturned mustaches. When he strode to the front of a platform you felt as if he were roar- ing out: "Come up here, all you people of smaller vitality, and have a good time with me." He liked all kinds of old-fashioned American things, and wrote about them and praised them. He had a thunderous hate for the unwholesome modernisms and decadences of a good many up- to-date authors. Plain, old-fashioned ideals abode in him ideals like honor and patriotism and chivalry and hearty kindliness. All told, few living men have given out so much pleasure and stimulation to others. We shall miss him for the way he helped us despise some of the pinched little pessimists who will try to fill his shoes. BIG TIM A MACHINE politician, dead or alive, serves to sharpen the point of the moral- ist. So we hear now that "Big Tim" Sullivan's career "ended miserably," that "the audacious and domineering grafter of the Sullivan type has passed into history." We wonder! Here was a man who, in spite of civic faults, never smoked, never drank, never lost his temper; who left school at eight or nine and fought his way to wealth and power; who loved life and played the [52] SOME HUMAN BEINGS game; who kept the faith with those who fol- lowed him, and never lost interest in or sympathy with the submerged tenth. Political methods change; the "strategy" of one generation is crime in the next. We are working out a pure ballot, fair nominations, honest elections; we are on the way toward divorcing government from privilege and office from privileged incompetence, but the people of our cities will always value the leader- ship of men who care about them, who look after them in their distress, and sympathize with them in their small struggles and triumphs. When sociologists talk about "consciousness of kind" they have in mind something much more fundamental than any movement toward effi- ciency methods. What would New York or any other city in our country be like to-day if the men of light and leading, of virtue and power, of wealth and correct methods, had the broad hu- manity of this saloon-keeping son of an Irish im- migrant, this "creature of the underworld"? Our political ethics and practices will improve, but men of good will are sure to count until the last ballot has been cast. [53] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS A MINER OF GOOD METAL THERE has died at Helena, Mont., a remark- able character ; remarkable in that, while he was worth several millions of dollars and had as romantic a career as has ever been portrayed in fiction, he never sought publicity and certainly never dreamed that his name or deeds would be blazoned even on this quiet page. Yet there are several angles of Thomas Cruse's career that are worth pondering. Out of obscurity and poverty he became one of the wealthiest and most influ- ential citizens of a State famed for its men of wealth and spectacular achievement. He dis- covered the Drum-Lummon mine. Unlike many mining men, his good fortune did not turn his head. Though illiterate, he became a successful business man and banker, and left behind him the example of a well-spent, upright life, starred with many good deeds. In a time of financial depression, when money was hard to get even at high rates of interest, he loaned his State the funds to build its capitol. His mining industry supported for years a community of contented souls. Yet had there been a literacy test at the time of his advent in this country, he would have been compelled to return to the Green Isle whence he came. For twenty years, while in the lonely hills he dug for the treasure which he had faith was there, he braved the taunts of young [54] SOME HUMAN BEINGS and old on his visits to Helena to beg credit for flour and bacon to keep him alive. Boys jeered him in the streets, so austere was his manner and so ragged his clothes. When he was paid his first cash installment of $1,600,000 on his Drum- Lummon mine by an English syndicate, he showed his philosophy by turning to a friend as he pocketed a roll of bills and telling him that he had suffered for years the derision of many nick- names, but that he had an opinion he would be known henceforth as "Mr. Cruse." Nobody had ever thought enough of him to call him that before. He showed his human nature when, dur- ing the panic of 1893, he sent word to one or two merchants who had given him precious credit when he needed it that his bank vaults were open to them, but turned a deaf ear to the appeals of others who had turned deaf ears to his appeals in his days of trial. Here was great wealth, hon- estly achieved, against which no man railed, and it was not the root of evil or of riotous living, but branches laden with good modestly and fit- tingly showered. FRIENDSHIP PERSONALITY the gift of influence and the capacity for friendship these are priceless qualities anywhere. They have most [55] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS value, however, where educators are concerned. Sometimes we almost despair of our universities, with their overemphasis upon equipment, as if a plant were ever so potent as a man; sometimes we do despair of the college presidents and their insistence upon the doctorate of philosophy and the fact of contributing articles and books to the press as sine qua non of academic promotion. To illustrate by a single institution, take Har- vard. The impress received by boys educated at Harvard during the second half of the nine- teenth century came in most cases from men who held no degree other than the plain "B. A." The gift of friendship was bestowed most largely perhaps upon that cousin of President Eliot whose correspondence is now announced for pub- lication Charles Eliot Norton. One of the most eloquent of American critics and poets, George Edward Woodberry., does homage to the memory of Professor Norton in the Phi Beta Kappa poem which he read at the Harvard Com- mencement this year referring to himself therein as Norton's "firstling charge, boy leader of the host of those who followed in the after- time." Here is Mr. Woodberry's picture of the master of Shady Hill, correspondent of Emer- son and Carlyle, and friend to many lonely sophomores : A grave demeanor masked his solitude, Like the dark pines of his seignorial wood; [56] SOME HUMAN BEINGS But there within was hid how warm a hearth Hospitable, and bright with children's mirth. How many thence recall his social grace, The general welcome beaming from his face, The shy embarrassment of his good will Chafing against the forms that held it still; Or, in more private hours, the high discourse, With soft persuasion veiling moral force; The reticent mouth, the sweet reserved style; Something unsaid still lingered in his smile; For more he felt than ever he expressed. There is talk of applying efficiency systems to the colleges, but what efficiency system can check up the value to one college of a man like Norton, a professor of the humanities who taught hu- manity? JOHN < -^ i^ promise to print it this is a family journal but the verses should be preserved. They ex- press an epoch. THE GREAT DIVIDE TO define in specific terms the difference be- tween good poetry and bad has always proved baffling. The best that can be done is to compare that which is beyond doubt gold with that which is merely tinsel. Opportunity for actual parallel-column comparison is rare, but it sometimes occurs. At this season it is good to recall Emerson's lines: Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. One would be rash to dispute the quality of this. But the other day, glancing over a col- lection of songs, we came upon the following [104] THE BOOKS WE READ effusion, signed M. A. L. Lane and entitled "The Day's Gift": In solemn file the days go by; Each bears a golden token; We grasp some trifle as they pass, And grieve when it is broken. They offer to the earnest soul The chance of high endeavor, Rare moments which with good are fraught, And then are gone forever. With muffled step and shrouded form Beyond our ken they take their way; They give no sign, betray no scorn, Whatever price our lives must pay. We have no intention of discussing M. A. L. Lane and the delicate question of plagiarism. It would not be difficult, but the task is unpal- atable. We merely call attention to a great thought expressed in a great way and the same thought in an insipid and banal form. GEOGRAPHY THOUGH the years are long distant, we can still dimly see the face of our teacher, as with merciless severity she told us to bound Per- sia, mention its capital city and its most impor- [105] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS tant rivers and manufactures. With clouded brain we would rise to our feet to choke out in- coherently a series of astounding facts. In later years, spurred on by the reading of some his- tory and biography, we have spent many hours over an atlas. We have consequently gained some knowledge of the physical make-up of the world and have found the study highly enter- taining. It is a passive recreation, but it, too, has its moments of triumph, as when with unerr- ing aim we show a confused neighbor the spot on the map where Salonica stands. To those ad- venturous spirits, who in the flesh are perhaps unable to answer to the Wanderlust, we offer the consolation of imaginary journeys to the ends of the world, seated on the magic carpet of modern times, the atlas. POETRY THEY COULDN'T WRITE AND DID DO you consider yourself pretty keen at identifying the authorship of famous poetry? . . . We thought as much: everybody does. Very well, then, who wrote these lines? Life is ever Lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own! You have three guesses. . . . "Tennyson?" No; though "In Memoriam" is what every one [106] THE BOOKS WE READ guesses first. . . . "Swinburne?" Wrong again. . . . What, you give it up? Oh, very well, Whittier wrote it in "Snow-Bound." And now be cautious about placing this : 'Tis sweet to hear the watchdog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home. We can almost hear your guesses ranging from Shakespeare to our hearthstone New England poets, with many choices falling on Goldsmith and Burns (in his English manner). But per- haps the very reason why Byron was stirred to write such moving lines was because he so sel- dom had a real home to turn to. If you're still undaunted, perhaps you'd like to take a guess at the author of: The good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power And they should keep who can. If you don't know this, you wouldn't guess it in a month o' Sundays, so we'll give you a clue in the shape of other lines from the same poet : The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket. [107] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS While you have been misquoting this year after year, haven't you had a vague idea it was from Shakespeare? We had. And yet this and the one before were both written by Words- worth. All of which goes to indicate that one of the ways poets are like women is in their achievement of infinite variety. LITTLE WOMEN DISTANT blue of the New England hills, sparkling white of the New England fields, and, within, flowers and much-read books, work done with laughter, love with sincerity, and hymns sung by firelight that is "Little Women." Many have been the eulogies and monuments to those sturdy old New England exponents of high thinking; this simple book is an eternal tribute to the charm of its plain liv- ing. From Ohio to California and in the cities of the East live children of the Puritans, and in every home there is some common touch. Some- times it is a bust of Plato and a tradition that learning is more to be desired than riches. Some- times it is a lullaby and a chintz-covered chair by the fire, sometimes only a trick of speech or a simple family custom, but always it is the one thing that most surely touches the chord of re- [108] THE BOOKS WE READ membrance and gives to the wanderer the thought of home. That is why "Little Women" makes grown people smile and men cry as they see it acted out upon the stage. That is why the play is a source of real joy, even as the book has been so many years. To move great men to great deeds, to give knowledge to the wise, to give spiritual exaltation to the saint, are good and beautiful things, but to bring happiness to the hearts of uncounted numbers of eager little children is not to be despised. How many rollicking families have acted "Little Women"? How many lonely little girls have there discovered playmates? How many aspiring and dreaming young souls have found in Laurie their first lover and in Jo their first friend ? It will be long before this book dies out of the national life, long before that touch of the New England home fails to strike a deep re- sponsive chord, long before the succeeding gen- erations of awakening girlhood cease to rise up and call it blessed. THE POET IT is his part to tell of the excellence of the creation, the wistfulness of life that struggles to be free. He knows that we cannot perish as the grasses wither and as the fairness of spring [109] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS is scorched. For in us is a little of that which moves through the seasons and the ongoing of the systems. Over the grasses it hovers as a breath. They are breathed on and are glad, but they do not possess what man possesses of the creative spirit. And the poet tells us so by every song he sings. Before his eye, as he gazes at the outer world, ever and again the painted curtain is rolled up like a scroll. Dim eyed and amazed, he peers into vastness. Under his pos- session she trembles as in first love. With pain and halting, the vision is unfolded into the words of his song. As one who would cherish fire in a wind-swept place, so his small heart of flame and sweetness is buffeted and stricken. THE CRITICS CRITICS will show you how such and such a writer repeated the thoughts of Kant or Hegel, or used the phrasings of Dante or Mil- ton, or stole the plots of Boccaccio or Guy de Maupassant. They often prove their wide reading, they sometimes demonstrate their sa- gacity, but they do not justify their existence as critics unless they go further than this, for the genius of authorship declares itself less unmis- takably in gifts shared with forerunners or con- temporaries than in gifts peculiar to itself. [110] THE BOOKS WE READ Walt Whitman or William Wordsworth is neither understood nor elucidated when his pos- sible pilferings have been listed; at best the ground has only been cleared for the critic's real work of insight and interpretation. ON SEEING POETRY MANY there are who love the poetry of words and lines and stanzas as they have been set upon paper by the poets of all time. For them the mere procession of syllables can sum- mon up magic music, visions of beauty, the zest of living, kindling emotions, and lofty aspirations which crystallize into deeds. The lovers of writ- ten poetry are indeed thrice blessed. But what of the rest of the world those who with perfect frankness admit that poetry does not move them? Must such resign themselves to life without that rich reward? No; for there is the poetry of life itself, more potent than anything in books can be. Nor need one search for it. The sunlight of a dawn slanting through your window; the twittering of birds in the tree top; the dande- lions in the grass ; children romping in the park ; the wistfulness in the eyes of your own little boy and girl; the sight of two lovers at a trysting place ; the quiet happiness and understanding of the old couple at their golden wedding; the friend [in] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS whom you salute at the street corner; fellow workers content in their daily routine; the soar- ing lines of the skyscraper or the lonely syca- more; the ceaseless pulsing of the city street or the hush and winter calmness of a country hill- side; the farmer among his stock or the sailor in the rigging; the cry of the wind and the swirl of snowflakes ; the calm fireside at home and the rustle and leap of its flames ; night and the eter- nal stars these make the poetry of lif e, given to all, and transcending all else. [112] VII TARIFF TALK THE FOUNDATION STONE THE most beautiful railroad station in America is in Washington; even in that city of splendid buildings, its lovely beauty is unique and impressive. Carved in its marble facades are several inscriptions which were writ- ten by ex-President Eliot of Harvard, or chosen by him because of their appropriateness to that particular building in that particular city. One of them reads : THE FARM BEST HOME OF THE FAMILY MAIN SOURCE OF NATIONAL WEALTH FOUNDATION OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE Every Congressman, every lawmaker, every administrator of laws who comes to Washing- ton must pass beneath the marble arch which [113] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS bears that inscription. At least once, in the fresh- ness of novelty, he must be impressed by it; thereafter it becomes an old story, and he hurries past, unseeing. The inscription expresses a truth that is fundamental in human society. But for more than a generation, with one brief and abortive interruption, the Government at Washington has been in the hands of a party whose philosophy ignores this truth. The pro- tective tariff drains the farm and enriches the town, destroys the home and fills the factory, pro- motes the concentration of wealth instead of its diffusion. Under the Republican party this process has been pushed to a point that endangers our civilization ; the reversal that began at Wash- ington with the inauguration of Woodeow Wil- son comes barely in time. Socially, economi- cally, and politically, the country is ripe and overripe for change. At this particular period in this nation's existence, if any statesman will base his course on the social philosophy contained in Dr. Eliot's words, the very stars in their courses will care for his destiny. WHAT "PROTECTION" MEANS LITTLE FALLS is a town of twelve thou- sand in the middle of New York State, at a lovely spot on the Mohawk River. Lately [114] TARIFF TALK there was a strike there. (Because wages in the mills had been reduced from $6 a week to $5.40, and from $7.50 to $6.75.) When the stories of rioting, violence, and slums came out of the little city, an editorial in a New York pa- per, evidently written by one who had known the town in his youth, remarked in mild sur- prise: Disheartening in the extreme is the description given of Little Falls as a community. Middle-aged New Yorkers remember it as the most beautiful of all the Mohawk Val- ley villages. Now we read of slums more foul than any in New York City or Philadelphia; of houses built over a brook that has become an open sewer; of filth, poverty, and overcrowding. Now what was the cause? And just what had happened? Another newspaper, describing the strike and the town as it is to-day, tells exactly what happened: The city is a mill and manufacturing town. The owners are men who saw these mills and factories grow up. Titus Sheard came to town barefooted and built up a big busi- ness. . . . Robert MacKinnon started in a little shed, and after a time had more than two thousand employees. . . . There, in epitome, is what the high protective tariff has done for America. Two men, per- haps five, or a hundred, depending on the size of the town, have been made rich ; two thousand [115] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS others, or ten or a hundred thousand, have be- come laborers and gone steadily downward in the social scale. The picture of a factory village is everywhere the same one big mansion on top of the hill, a thousand mean little cottages in the valley. High protection has tended to divide all America into a small caste of baronial factory owners at the top, and a large mass of feudal laborers at the bottom. But let us keep to the specific case of Little Falls: About five years ago there was a strike in the MacKinnon mill. Till that time practically all the local employees were Americans or like Americans Irish, English, Ger- man. . . . The strike was broken by the importation of several hundred "foreigners." ... It is some of these foreigners who are striking now. The foreigners changed the character of the city in many respects. They doubled the police court business. . . . The foreigners took pos- session, and the odor of garlic succeeded that of flowers and the milder vegetables where there had been cleanli- ness and pride in neatness, there came the slovenly filth of overcrowding and poverty economizing. The newcomers, "the foreigners" of to-day, crowded everyone else out. . . . There again is the typical evolution of the American town ; first, soon after high protection was adopted, the factory owners searched the farms for native American girls and young men ; then came a period every middle-aged Ameri- can can remember it when the factories were filled with German and Irish girls and youths, [116] TARIFF TALK the first American-born generation of those races. To-day walk through a typical factory and you will scarcely see an Irish or German face; the factory owners are now using up the children of the more recent immigrants Italian, Polish, Slavic, Greek. (And if the process were to go on, if the Republican party, dominated by the factory owning element, had kept its grip on the country, twenty years from now you would see the factory owners filling their mills with Hin- dus, Japs, and other Asiatics.) Now ask yourself what became of that genera- tion of American-born factory workers, and of the Irish and Germans who followed them. Think through to the answer of that question and you will realize the devastating tragedy that the high protective tariff has brought upon America. They were a wholesome class, the American girls who worked in the factories in the fifties. Charles Dickens, on his American trip, found little to praise, but he rose to real enthusiasm over the mill girls of Lowell. He found not one young girl whom ... I would have removed from those works if I had the power. He spoke of "their cleanliness and comfort," their "joint-stock pianos" in the boarding houses, the circulating libraries that they organized and managed. "Finally," he said in a climax of en- [117] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS thusiasm for these American mill girls of the fifties, "they have got up among themselves a periodical," which developed at least one poet of some distinction. What became of these native Americans, and the Irish and Germans who followed them? It is common to say that they went up in the social scale when the newer immigrants came in. Only to a negligible degree is this true. For the most part, they did nothing of the sort. They disap- peared from the face of the earth. How could it be otherwise? The young women were kept working in the mills during all the years when they might have been bearing and raising chil- dren ; when they could work no longer they were thrown on the scrap heap, and that was the end of them and their kind. Moreover, the native American had a higher standard of living, which the first generation of immigrant-born acquired in their turn. Then the factory owners brought in another kind of immigrant, with a lower stand- ard of living, against whom the others could not compete. In this situation lies the cause of one of the most deplorable economic phenomena in American life. The statesman who works out the relation between high protection and race suicide will have gone far toward getting his bearings right. The harm lay not in the fact that protection stimulated immigration; we needed the immi- [118] TARIFF TALK grants, and need them yet. But there was harm in our letting the factory owner use the immi- grant to lower the wages and standard of living of those already here; there was harm in letting the factory owner use up and throw on the scrap heap the native Americans and the first Ameri- can generation of Irish, Scotch, English, and German born. Moreover, there has been untold harm in the way we have used our immigrants, dumping them into factory slums instead of taking them on the land, using them up as if they were the soulless raw material of manufac- ture. Let us be intellectually honest about the tariff . It is not necessary to advocate the immediate wip- ing out of all protection. If war had not inter- vened, to inflame passion, the abolition of slavery would have been done gradually, with care to alleviate the economic readjustments of its pass- ing. But there never was much doubt about the moral aspect of slavery. TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW SOMEWHERE just emerging from college, or starting to practice law in a country town, are those young men who, twenty years from now, will succeed Roosevelt, Bbyan, Wilson, [H9] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS La Follette, as the moral and political leaders of their generation. What will their issues be? The questions that agitate us now will have been settled. We think that one of these leaders will be a man who recognizes that alcohol is a poison and that prostitution in this country is quite largely a commercialized incident of the liquor business. Another will be a man who sees that taking money out of one man's pocket and put- ting it in another's is immoral, and that the char- acter of the act is not changed by calling it a "protective" tariff. [120] VIII OUR TOWN THE OLYMPIAN PENT within the particular cell of the apart- ment honeycomb in which it pleases us to say we live, with the lady in the flat over- head practicing scales, the cook in the flat below brewing (how unmistakably!) an onion stew, and the janitor and elevator boy fighting in the air shaft held in these chains of circumstance, the advertising pamphlet of a dictagraph company invites the dazzled eye. "Often," we read, "the sitting room, the sewing room, or the parlor is too far removed from the nursery to enable you to step easily into the nursery. If you are talk- ing to a friend or a stranger in any room in the house, and wish to know how the children are getting along in the nursery, you do not have to leave the room to find out. You use the dicta- graph." But overcoming the difficulty of reaching the distant nursery a very real one is only one of the boons conferred by. the dictagraph. There is the problem of servants, for instance [121] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS ("Euphemia, please shut the kitchen door until you have finished breaking plates"), with which all are familiar. "Domestic science two or three years ago was a practically untouched field. The master of the house depended upon a retinue (ah, yes!) of willing, if untutored, servants to serve him and his guests in a bungling, obtrusive way." This distressing situation vanishes before the dic- tagraph as mists dissolve before the sun. The re- tinue remains, of course, but the bungling dis- appears the master but breathes the word, the dictagraph carries it through the intricate, in- visible ganglia of his establishment. Exercise is another problem difficult to solve in our town. We often think we should like to begin the day with a ride in the park, but horses however, let us not sink to details too prosaic. With the dictagraph, "communication with the stable is assured. For instance, you decide to go for an early morning ride without having pre- viously instructed the stableman at what hour you want the horse. Perhaps you have been restless, wake early, and decide to ride before breakfast. In either instance the dictagraph stationed at your elbow saves all bother. With- out getting out of bed, you touch the key of the dictagraph. The gong in the stable arouses the stableman. The horse is saddled while you are dressing. When you go down at six the favorite horse is at the door." [122] OUR TOWN We see him there now, hear the merry peal of the stable gong as Jorrocks rolls out of bed and begins to groom (with that delightfully soothing "Sss sss sss" of his) the Irish hunter. We see ourselves drowsily becoming aware of the new day, while James, having laid our robe and slippers and tempered the water carefully, sprinkles a few spoonfuls of rose salts in the bath. In fact, we might continue indefinitely, but it's already 8.37, eggs and coffee are swallowed, and if we don't beat it for the Subway and catch that downtown express we can never get into the of- fice by nine o'clock. HOLMES IN BLUE THE fundamental function of a police force is to prevent crimes and catch criminals. Certain minor and incidental functions, as well as various incidental faults of individual police- men, are often so magnified and dwelt upon that this single basic duty is lost sight of. Judged by its efficiency along this single line, the New York police force is one of the most successful institu- tions in the world. Every once in a while one observes examples of its effectiveness which seem almost incredible and impress one anew with the strangeness of truth compared with the fiction of even Sir Conan Doyle. [128] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS The other night, a little German saloon in The Bronx, called "Zur Ewigen Lampe" (The Ever-Lighted Lamp), where the proprietor, the bartender, and a few friends were quietly playing pinocle, was raided by a gang of armed toughs who shot, probably fatally, the bartender and a patron. As soon as the excitement was over, someone telephoned to the police station. "All right," said the sergeant at the station, "we've got the man here." A policeman off duty, several miles from his beat, returning from a visit to friends in Brooklyn, had seen the mur- derer board a car, and with no more to guide him than some sort of intuition which told him that that man had recently been engaged in crime, arrested the murderer, took him to the station, and waited for the telephone to bring some message as to what the crime was and where it was committed. Incidents like this do not figure in the news- papers as do stories of police corruption. The prisoner who escapes is more unusual than the one who is caught, and consequently gets more public attention. The police, like most other people, suffer from the fact that simple devotion to commonplace duty does not make good head- lines. [184] OUR TOWN PROFITS AND DECENCY SOME five years ago the late "Big Tim" Sul- livan was quoted as saying that the well- known song, "They Say Such Things and They Do Such Things on the Bowery," had lowered rents and real estate values on that famous thor- oughfare by fully 25 to 30 per cent. The allu- sions stuck, and people would not go there. A few weeks ago the receivers of the Hotel Rector in New York changed its name to Claridge's. No one who remembered the references to "Rec- tor's" in such plays as "The Easiest Way," or who has savored the fleshly atmosphere of that popular musical comedy "The Girl from Rec- tor's," is at any loss to understand why this change was made. What would the respectable people of Alton, 111., for example, say to a man who had been in New York and had stayed at "Rector's"? It would be a confession of moral bankruptcy! With their usual delicate indirec- tion, our papers say that the name was "redolent of champagne and lobster." Certainly the Hotel Rector failed to make money despite every ad- vantage of location, structure, and management. And now comes word that San Francisco has wiped out the world-famous "Barbary Coast" on the ground that "it would hurt the Panama-Pa- cific Exposition." The Coast has been closed [125] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS before but always its influence has been too strong for honest officials and its spoils for dis- honest ones. The Coast's power was that of the united dive keepers and their gangs of repeaters and habitues, first of all; then the men who profited by it, landlords and merchants; finally, the tolerance of sightseers, who considered the Coast their playground. So great was this in- fluence that at one time, when the Coast was closed during a period of reform, the leading merchants of the city petitioned the police com- missioners to reopen it. Only one newspaper in San Francisco, the "Bulletin," dared to publish the names of the leading merchants who had signed that petition. But business men have learned a lesson since then. They know to-day that the profit in the waste and wreck of human life is, in the end, illusory. No community can get anything out of booze, gambling, and prostitution save impaired values, falling rents, higher police expenses, loss, degra- dation, and death. THE PASSING OF THE PALE FOR hundreds of years the world thought it wise to handle whatever was socially un- desirable simply by building a wall around it. So separate ghettos, pales, quarantines, or other confines were set for Jews, Christians, lepers, in- [126] OUR TOWN sane, or what not. This ancient precedent has become imbedded in our thought on social prob- lems, and every so often someone tells us that the remedy for vice is segregation. It must be ad- mitted that the idea of an orderly, well-regulated "quarter" seems much more solid and logical than these flighty "moral movements" with all their raids and parades, their sudden alternations of license and cruelty. But neither is constructive. The bald fact is that segregation means putting vice on a business basis with all that that implies as to advertising and creating "trade." The so- cial evil is to be made part of our community life an atrocious contradiction in terms. No one proposes to "segregate" typhoid or tubercu- losis, and the losses from venereal diseases are much heavier. We are going to do away with these things altogether. This seems a large or- der, but it must be remembered that the Orient is still complacent over dirt diseases which we have banished. Dirt is comfortable and self-in- dulgent, a part of "the natural order," but we found it too expensive. The constructive work required will take a long time, but it will be done. The goal was indicated in the report of the Chi- cago Vice Commission and in the speech, some years before, of a radical Western Congressman who said calmly: "In my region we are going to raise a generation of clean-living, God-fearing people, and we are going to do it without the aid [127] NATIONAL FLOODMAEK8 or consent of any brewery or brothel on earth." What St. Augustine said of poverty is true of the social evil: what we really need is to get rid of it. This ideal must not be lost sight of. When men believe that a decent life is not possible for them, then it is impossible. When they believe righteousness to be within their power, then it is possible. If the history of religion does not prove this, it proves nothing. We must be careful and practical in our methods of dealing with social problems, but we must also be idealistic to a high degree in the ends we seek. Nothing else will serve the life of our time or lay the needed foundations for those who are to come after us. It is still true that where there is no vision the people perish. THE MINIMUM WAGE THERE is no gain, there is loss, in trying to simplify what is not simple. And the line of investigation assumed by the Illinois Vice Commission, if correctly reported in the news- papers, is an over-simplification of a troubled matter. There is no sharp dramatic wage line below which girls tend to become prostitutes and above which their temptations vanish. In cer- tain cities four out of five girls live at home. When they violate social standards there are [128] OUR TOWN many elements responsible. One is the weaken- ing of parental control. And that weakening is due to the partial economic independence of the daughter, who can withhold her wages from the family or can leave home if a large measure of freedom is denied her. It is not the fact that her wages are low that leads to that weakening of parental control. It is the fact that she earns wages. Because of that she asserts the right to some of the same social freedom which has always been preempted by man. Also, women in in- dustry do not tend to become prostitutes to any degree that permits generalizations. Their in- telligence keeps them clear of a way of life which is diseased, unsuccessful, and full of suffering. The ranks of prostitution are recruited more gen- erally from the mentally defective, the untrained, and the ignorant. But it is an unfair burden on the home to take the daughter away from it and wear out her young strength in a depart- ment store and pay her less than a living wage. Justice demands that somewhere, either in the home or out of it, the girl be permitted to earn a living wage, to pay in full by useful work for her expense to the family of which she is a mem- ber. It is unfair that the department store should make the home support the girl. If the mini- mum wage for women is right, it is right not be- cause the lack of it drives women to prostitution, but because the lack of it weakens the home. [129] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS THE THING AS IT IS THERE were perhaps twenty men about the table, each a stored museum of little-known facts. One might know the marriage customs of some remote tribe of Eskimos; another might be absorbed at the moment in the ventral fin of a variety of fish found in Nicaragua. On the wall was a map of the world, and on this map were stuck various little flags. One was up in Ellesmere Land, within the Arctic Circle ; one in the South Seas; one in the Amazon head- waters, and another on the coast of Peru. On each of these flags was a name, and these names were names of friends and associates of the men about the table men who were burrowing at the moment into tropical jungles or dragging sledges over the ice. If a letter had arrived at that in- stant, stained with the travel of months by mule back, steamer, native courier, goodness knows what some one would have gone over to the map and moved one of the little flags per- haps half an inch. "Smith has got up to here," he would say. One of the flags marked a spot on the upper Orinoco, where a mountain rises straight up from the river like an office building from a city street. Nobody knows what there may be on its wide, flat top, for no one has been there a lost nation perhaps, like the one in Co- [130] OUR TOWN nan Doyle's story. "Humboldt says it can't be climbed," observed one of the men at the table. "Well, we'll see. X ought to find out." That was what X was there for to find out. That was the work, almost the religion, of all these men about the table to find out, to see the thing "as it is." Four or five of them were leaving the next day to rake a remote tropical jungle with a fine-tooth comb and classify its birds. To come back with three new kinds might excite them as much as it would excite the waiter serving them to find three gold mines. Outside, the city thundered money hunters, steam riveters, chorus girls, trolley-car motormen, perfumed ladies and poodle dogs in carriages as indifferent to them as they, a handful of scientific persons from the American Museum of Natural History, were to it. Cir- cles within circles innumerable make up that strange thing called a city. THE CASE OF BECKER THE New York policeman is blood-brother of the New York fireman. They are not only the same breed, they are the same family. And did you ever try to tip a New York fireman? Did you ever hear of one stealing anything from a burning house? Can you imagine a fireman [131] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS conspiring with an incendiary to profit by arson? A Lieutenant Becker is inconceivable in the twin department of public safety on Manhattan Island. Simply inconceivable. Yet the two bodies of men alike in courage but so unlike in public esteem are the same seed fallen upon two different soils. That is what makes the sit- uation so hopeful for reform. You are con- stantly assured that you cannot change human nature; that you cannot make people over by process of law. But if you cannot reform men by reforming the conditions that make men what they are, how is it that you can so easily de- bauch and degrade them by reversing the proc- ess? PASSOVER IF, man-in-the-moon-like, you could glance into the windows of these humble Ghetto homes, when the eve of the fourteenth day of Nisan has arrived, your heart would rejoice with the heart of the Chosen People. The Seder dishes have been put away; the cups and saucers from the shelves gaze down upon you with a sancti- fied expression. The copper matzoh set, the an- cestral samovar, and the two-handled cup for the hand washing glow from energetic burnish- ing. The house is spotless. The crumb of leaven left by the good housewife to test the [132] OUR TOWN sharpness of her husband's eyes has been dis- covered in the search by candlelight, and has been pronounced "void and as dust." And now the father in his snow-white kittel, not sitting but "reclining like a king," presides over the Feast of the Passover. The horseradish and bitter herbs, in commemoration of the days of bondage in Egypt; the shank bone of the Paschal lamb, and the matzoh cake, symbolic of the flight from Egypt, are partaken of, and little "Katzen," bright-eyed, has found the hidden matzoh flake and clamors eagerly for a gift. An Old- World picture this, but an encour- aging one. For the future of the Jew in Amer- ica is bound up with the traditions of the past. BREAKING IN ONE hears a great deal about successful people "breaking into" a certain town or line of business. Wise articles are written on the difficulties attending the process, and it is given the aspect of an achievement of individual heroism; something, as if some modern Amadis de Gaul had stormed a city single-handed. Yet when we look at the facts of business life, one of the most pressing problems is that of finding and keeping people who can be promoted; one of the severest tests of an executive is whether [133] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS he has any one fit to succeed him. And the rea- son is as clear as the fact. The only hope of permanent success for even the most gigantic of our modern corporations is to get into their own ranks the leaders of to-morrow, those who can think most rapidly and see most clearly. The hunt for talent never ceases where is the person who can and will put aside all distractions and study these problems through to a solution? Who will do this work, make this thing go? The modern world will pay almost any price for those who will do the worrying successfully. All our tremendous apparatus of companies, machin- ery, etc., makes the need for such people but the more imperative they are drawn in by a current as strong as Niagara. The "breaking in" really consists in their forcing their abilities into fuller being, into dominance over their own care- lessness and inertia. The self -absorption of com- mercial life makes it seem terribly aloof and im- penetrable, but it is still true that a man diligent in his business shall stand before kings in fact, a long way before them. THE SLAG SPOT WHEN Mr. Dooley came to this country, with his gift of the gab his geniality and sociability and humorous charm was it the fault [1*4] OUR TOWN of that inimitable philosopher himself that we had no place for him but behind the saloon bar? Who is to blame for the fact that the Irish genius for social cooperation has found among us its most notable manifestation in the solidarity of Tammany Hall? We import the music-loving Italians by the hundred thousand, and get the benefit of their gift of harmony only in the caco- phonies of the street pianos. The one public library in the United States that circulates fewer books of fiction than of history and science and philosophy is situated among the Russian Jews on New York's East Side ; and the Russian Jew has an ideal of citizenship as eager as his thirst for learning. Who is putting the red flag into his hands ? We are hearing much about the harm that the foreign immigrant is doing to us as a nation. Does he do us harm only? And if he did, whose fault would it be? It is the commonest charge of our foreign critics that our national life is unbeautiful, un- social, too barbarously competitive, and crudely neglectful of the ameliorating graces of art. We are adding every year to our materialistic civili- zation a huge heaven of Italians, Russians, Hun- garians, Poles, Roumanians, and all strains of the blood of art-loving and idealistic races with a genius for social life. We are receiving them, as we received the negro, into industrial slavery. We are crowding them into tenements where any [135] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS decent living is well-nigh impossible. We are putting them where we can get no good of them and they can get only evil of us. And we are complaining bitterly about it. We are like the Russian nobleman who housed tenants in his cel- lar and in consequence got smallpox in his fam- ily. If the foreign immigrant is a menace to us, it is because we are making him so. We are ex- ploiting his necessity, industrially, and suffering for the sins of oppression. That is as it should be. If we did not suffer, we should never learn. IN THE RAILWAY STATION WE used to call the railway station a "dee- po," but that was in the early Pullman period of our national art. To-day the Ameri- can station shares something of the continental traveler's admiration for the American hotel. The massive grandeur of the Pennsylvania ter- minal in New York is more impressive than most of the city's libraries or churches or sky- scrapers. The great train shed itself an Ama- zonian forest of steel is as impressive as the outer shell. Here is matter for both painter and poet. Abroad, Monet has painted the terminals of Paris and of London; and George Freder- ick Watts, with what Chesterton calls "a [136] OUR TOWN splendid and truly religious imagination," once offered to decorate Euston for an unsympathetic board of managers. The poetry of the railway has been hinted at in prose by Emerson and Henry James, and in verse by at least two others Verlaine and John Davidson. The latter is impressed by the delta wide of platforms, whence Discharges into London's sea, immense And turbulent, a brimming human flood, A river inexhaustible of blood That turns the wheels and again describes London's interwreathed And labyrinthine railways, sheathed In annual increments of soot. But we want some poet to view our railway stations more cheerfully than poor Davidson viewed London Bridge and Waterloo. The merry football crowds; the hurrying commuters with their children and their parcels, bringing a touch of wholesome family life into the jostling market place ; the self-important "drummer" with his attendant porter, charged with sample cases; the herd of newly arrived immigrants, tagged and ticketed like so much luggage and piloted by a mustached padrone here are types various [137] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS enough for Walt Whitman himself to make poetry of in the mere cataloguing. THE ELEMENTS WE have chosen, or Fate has chosen for us, a dwelling place where grass grows only by pushing its way up stubbornly and deviously between bricks, in the crevices of unmended pave- ments, and in patches of park or tenement- framed court. The sun shines on us and the rain falls; but factory smoke dims the sunshine, and the rain, when it reaches us, is stained and dust-laden. Our feet pound hard pavements; our horizon is limited by lofts and marred by gas tanks and department stores. We are herded with other men and women in our comings and goings as sheep bound for the shambles, and in the squirrel-cage apartment houses and offices where we spend days and nights. We jostle people on the street whose look repels us, whose bodily contacts we resent, and other folk with whom we could enter into real sympathy did opportunity but offer. We see both too much and too little of human nature and human be- ings; we are at once too subtle and too stupid to live richly among sordid surroundings. But a day offers a release from all this, and we make the day an adventure. We turn our steps out [138] OUR TOWN of the city gates and renew our friendship with the elements. We lie at full length in green grass; we grub in the soil or let sand trickle through half-spread fingers. We revel in the shock of a plunge into waters that cool us and sustain; we brace our legs to the bucking of the boat deck; we squat beside the fire we have built of driftwood on rocks lapped by tireless tides, and light our pipe from the long stick that, ten minutes before, toasted our savory ba- con. The good these expeditions do us is not physical alone; it mends the spirit. We return in harmony with life and life includes all things material and immaterial; objects animate and "inanimate"; agencies human and agencies di- vinely mysterious. The hum of bees on pilgrim- age, the fiddling of a cricket choir, the wind- blown odor of an unseen honeysuckle, attune us to the World Force and reconcile us to living in the human hive we call a city. We hear in the whir of dynamos and the throbbing of mo- tors the very music of power that thrilled us when we heard those other voices out of God's natural kingdom. Refreshed and reassured, we return to doing a modest share of the great world's work. [139] IX POLITICAL PERSONALITIES THE AFTERMATH THE exigencies of circulating over a con- tinent cause this paper to go to the printer before the result of the election is known. If the average voter could share the momentary mood of speculation which this fact enforces upon editors, his reflections would reassure him. Who- ever is President of the United States next 4th of March, there is hardly an American but will be proud of the sort of man who has come to the top of this Republic at the beginning of its one hundred and twenty-sixth year. Although some millions of his fellow countrymen will have voted disapproval of President Taft, probably not one hundred of them all would translate dis- approval as dislike, or any other uncharitable sentiment. Indeed, if all the persons who feel rather sorry for Taft had voted for him, he would have won. There aren't a dozen men in the country who think Taft is a wicked man. And he has had opportunities to be wicked how he could have turned the war in Mexico to [140] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES his own purposes! Most of Taft's failings are misfortunes and resolve themselves into two groups : he took himself seriously as the head of his party just at the moment when that party, after half a century of triumphant leadership, completely lost touch with popular sentiment. And it wasn't the party that changed ; it was the country. For the other, Taft had a static tem- perament in a highly dynamic age. When all the world clamored for change, he was strong for precedent and the old ways. He was out of tune with the times. A good many persons who have suffered that handicap have had their innings in history later on. In many another epoch, past and future, in a different public mood, these qualities of Taft's could be hailed as vir- tues. And as these things go like the swing of a pendulum, who knows but if Taft were given another term he might arrive upon 1916 in steady glory, the man of the hour? LIGHT FROM HISTORY ABOSTON reader with a long memory, who gives no hint of his identity in signing him- self "An Admirer Still" sent us this postal card : Dear Collier's I think it would be interesting just now to reprint a short editorial that appeared in Collier's [141] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS nearly three years ago, I think, in which the disruption of the Republican party at this time was predicted, and Pres- ident Taft compared with Buchanan just before the war. The paragraph referred to appeared in Col- lier's for May 28, 1910, under the title "A Light from History": "Many readers wish to know why we rated Mr. Taft so much higher two years ago than we do now. Let us give an incomplete answer by offering a comparison. Before Mr. Buchanan's inauguration everything looked as if he were sure to have a successful Administration. His char- acter, ability, and experience were promising. He had been well educated. He had been, almost without inter- ruption, in the public service. He had held positions in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, in the Cab- inet, in diplomacy. As Secretary of State, in an Adminis- tration whose foreign problems were difficult, his record had been good. As Senator he had stood well. His service abroad had apparently given him more than the usual in- sight into foreign politics. His character, with its up- rightness and caution, was particularly appreciated by the thoughtful. He talked well. What caused Buchanan's failure was a lack of harmony between him and the needs of the moment. Men like Lincoln and Seward, talking about irrepressible conflicts and houses divided against themselves, represented the stir of the time, and all that Buchanan could understand was peace. Experience and good intentions wasted themselves in effort after harmony. In the end the President was found firmly joined to one faction, using his patronage and influence to distress the other. Buchanan chose a poor Cabinet, which caused sur- prise, considering his long and wide acquaintance with men and affairs. Let us hope that the analogy between his [142] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES Administration and Mr. Taft's will in the end prove to be fanciful and slight." The analogy between Mr. Taft and Bu- chanan is much more clear now than it was when his Administration was only fourteen months old. GAYNOR THE Mayor of New York was a country boy who never became a rubber stamp. He was a rare American, for he contributed a per- sonality to politics. We like the photographs that show him exercising his Airedale terriers at his St. James home, or scratching the back of a blooded sow with a long stick. The Mayor, who died suddenly on shipboard, was a stoic phi- losopher of the ambulatory school. He had stood face to face with death without flinching; he was a loyal friend and an unremitting enemy; was equally shrewd and testy; was able as law- yer, judge, and executive; was overpraised by admirers and harshly treated by opponents. His most important public services were ren- dered before his election as Mayor of our great- est city, in 1909 ; he was never truly himself after the attempt at assassination, which left a bullet in his throat. Wrong headed in his attitude to- ward police scandals and District Attorney [148] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS Whitman, who probed them, he remained ca- pable of great independence. Tammany refused to renominate him as Mayor in itself a certifi- cate of character. Then came his independent candidacy, and his denunciation of Murphy and his pals as "a little coterie of men who follow poli- tics as a dishonest trade." Pungent of speech, Gaynor was a master of letter writing. He ran to short sentences, and preferred the shorter of two words whenever it said as much as the longer one. His simplicity and directness smacked of his favorite books Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, the "Autobiog- raphies" of Cellini and Franklin, the Bible. It was not so much that Gaynor had read many books as that he had read and reread thought- fully. He held hostile newspaper criticism of himself to be unjustified, talking in public of our "rag-bag press," and welcoming a correspond- ent's comparison of his fortunes and Lincoln's, even while confessing that he did not deserve it. "I have had a pretty tough time of it, but I have borne it the best I can," he wrote to a sympathizer. "You ask me to give an interview saying 'What I would say to the readers of 3,000 newspapers,' " he replied to a request of the Na- tional Publicity Bureau. "I would say to them to be very careful about believing all they see in the newspaper." [144] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES When all is said, one admires Gaynor for a "rattling, battling old boy." MYTHOLOGY ANY one interested in folklore can get a cu- rious example of the working principles of this subject by comparing the facts concerning some of our national figures with the versions of them persistently presented by our cartoonists. Hearst, for example, shown as a flamboyant "yellow kid," a measureless radical enraged against all property and order. The opposing facts are that he is that marvel of business abil- ity, an inheritor of great wealth who prospers as a newspaper publisher. He has mastered this trade from ink to extras as few men of his time have done. His profits have been enormous, and his radicalism is whip and spur to the cir- culation department. The masses devour most ravenously the Hearst supplements and maga- zines, which urge that children be treated kindly, that husbands and wives be faithful and true pernicious novelties of doctrine which Hannah More and E. P. Roe would heartily indorse. Finally, his devotion to property is such that he seems to favor war with Mexico in order to safe- guard mining rights. Cartoonists show us Murphy of Tammany [145] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS Hall as a clumsy dolt in ill-fitting clothes, exposed in some nefarious enterprise. As a matter of fact, he lives aloof from the vulgar on his country estate a man of power and silence. He is attended and circumstanced like a first-rate potentate judges admire his game of golf, holders of high office attend on him for the word of fate. If it suited his taste, legis- lators would fetch his morning cocoa. Murphy never explains, never apologizes, never stoops to show himself to "the people" or to court their favor. He usually wins. Save in origin and early training, he is no more democratic than Louis XIV. The future historian who will free himself from current delusions, and see Hearst and Murphy for what they really are, will have, by that much, the advantage over contemporary writers. THE MOVIES AT ALBANY THE tragi-comedy "William Sulzer A Man of the People" has now been pro- duced by Manager Charles F. Murphy, the heavy. Before the curtain fell, the audience's only question was: Would Murphy and his creatures stab Sulzer in full sight of all, or would they give him a chance to expire more [146] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES gracefully off-stage? Tammany made and un- made the fallen hero. The moral of the piece is, for the people : Don't look to Tammany for your Governors. For the Sulzers it is this: Tammany insists on its enemies being honest. So long as Sulzer "played the game," his weak- nesses didn't matter. After he had dared treat Boss Murphy disrespectfully, they mattered very much. Sulzer "rose from the ranks"; his father was somebody's German gardener. Now, men who rise from the ranks to positions of high trust and honor owe it to themselves and to hu- manity not to sink any faster than they have come up. Their careers may prove a great in- spiration or the reverse to other gardeners' sons. This particular self-made man failed to measure up to his opportunity. He was never a big man; only a strutting actor built for the movies. His studied suggestion of Henry Clay imposed on no really good judges of physi- ognomy and character. Yet blustering Bill Sulzer, who renamed the Executive Mansion at Albany "the People's House," and reeked with spectacular simplicity, was not bad at heart. Superficial as he was in his democratic and progressive tendencies, he was not exactly a hypocrite. His drama is not a play with a happy ending, and one's pre- dominant emotions are disgust and pity: dis- gust at the instrument of Sulzer's ruin, the po- [147] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS "^^ M litical machine which personifies all that is sinister in New York's civic life; pity for the well-meaning weakling. Had Sulzer been a dangerously evil man, he would have made his peace with Tammany in time to save his skin in time, even, to profit by momentary resistance. Average citizens have not joined in stoning the lost leader, but they are profiting by the object lesson. It is for Tammany, with its grinning Murphys and Frawleys and Levys, that an inner circle in hell is being warmed. SOME LANGUAGE FROM the far places of exile rings a voice. Castro, once President and dictator of Ven- ezuela, has a few thoughts to emit regarding his successor, and proceeds to emit them in flame- tipped words : Crime extends its horrible wings over the whole republic of Venezuela. The crazy and ferocious Gomez bears on his forehead the eternal mark of the traitor. His brutal look and perfidious smile encourage his few followers to finish the ruin of the fatherland. Heroic Venezuela ac- claims me again to vindicate her rights. I am a slave to honor and duty, and I accept the honor. As a president, Castro had his faults. As a rescuer of heroic Venezuela from impending ruin, [148] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES ^^^^^ ^ ^ - 1 * a clipper of the horrible wings of the crazy and ferocious Gomez, a sponger out of brutal and perfidious, though encouraging, smiles, a vindi- cating slave to honor and duty, he left much to be desired. But as an inspired orator he soars high above all specifications. When Castro gets tired firing high-explosive words at his own country he should come again to this one. There is an immediate call here for his brand of eloquence. Tammany needs it to tell what it thinks of Sulzer, and Sulzer to indicate his sentiments toward Tammany. The suf- fragists and anti-suffragists would find it a valu- able adjunct to their expressions of mutual es- teem. The Hon. Jo-Uncle Cannon might em- ploy it (in his milder moments) to unburden his soul as to reform and reformers. The Castronian oratory should be committed to the talking-ma- chine records as the basis for a correspondence course in dialectics, to enliven an era of verbiage grown all too dull and polite. BROTHER AMOS PENNSYLVANIA friends teU us that folks in that State are opposing Gifford Pinchot because the public prints have associ- ated him with some rather extreme reformers. We hasten to inform these Pennsylvanians that [149] NATIONAL FLOOD MARKS they are confusing Gifford with his brother Amos. Gifford Pinchot is a great idealist. He is one of the large figures of his generation. Because of his identification with all that is im- plied by the term "conservation" the future his- torian will have a good deal to say about him. Amos Pinchot, as Perlmutter would put it, "is something else again." He is a young man who has acquired a great deal of money by the easiest known form of acquisition. The leisure which comes from that and the possession of a famous brother account for such participation as he has in public affairs. Amos is a Cubist in politics. He belongs to the Futurist fringe of reform. He is for most of the "isms" iden- tified with current agitation, not omitting pessi- mism. What he isn't for he's against. We cer- tainly hope the Pennsylvania voters won't con- fuse him with Gifford. TEXAS LION-HEART THE papers say that Bailey is going to try to come back from Texas to the Senate. If he does, our interest in his campaign won't be wholly hostile. He is against most of the things in government that we are for, but we know his quality. For such harm as we think he ever did, his teeth are pulled. Standard Oil will never re- [150] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES tain him again. All that sort of thing is com- pletely in the past of American politics. Intellectually, Bailey is needed. In intelli- gence, in education and experience, in knowledge of the philosophy of government, in personal force, he is incomparably the superior of the man who now holds his seat, or any of the Senators who came in as flotsam on the reform wave. In- deed, when Bailey was in the Senate he was al- ways among the first five strong men. In any Senate we foresee he would probably be among the first ten. The reform of the Senate which came with their direct election, and the agitation of the past few years, resulted, of course, in a higher ideal of the responsiveness of the public servant to the public will, but equally clearly it resulted in a distinct intellectual deterioration. What is needed now in the Senate is intelligence, and devotion to conviction any sort of convic- tion and courage and force. We wish Bailey well. In reality he is an incorrigible romanticist. He is like an overgrown boy who has been read- ing Sir Walter Scott and dramatizes himself as Ivanhoe, Guy Mannering, or Richard Cceur-de-Lion. We heard a story about Bailey last Winter: Congressman Neeley of Kansas, discussing a bill on the floor, spoke of the ex- Senator from Texas as "smeared with the smell of Standard Oil." (The figure of speech is the Congress- [151] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS man's, not ours.) Bailey heard the quota- tion and wrote a letter to Congressman Neeley demanding personal satisfaction, which he sent through the hand of a friendly public man. Neeley paid no attention to the incident until he received a second visit from the inter- mediary with a demand for an answer, and was given the idea that Senator Bailey wanted ac- tion and satisfaction of the old-fashioned sort. Thereupon Neeley, taking the position that cus- tom accorded him the choice of weapons, sug- gested that each combatant should have a three- foot length of bologna sausage, the combatants to stand twenty feet apart, and heave. We have been told this story under circum- stances which urge us to believe it. If by any chance it is not wholly true, we hope the Texas ex-Senator won't call us to account for it. It makes us understand him more clearly and like him better. We think it will have the same effect with the public. LODGE AND CODFISH TO understand and appreciate a virtue, but be utterly unable to practice it, is a com- mon enough failing. If Henry Cabot Lodge could assume some of the qualities he recognizes [152] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES and praises in Daniel Webster, the Senate would be relieved of the pettifogging and exas- perating obstructions which are placed in the path of measures of broad importance by one nar- rowly provincial Senator. "After all has been said," writes Senator Lodge, in his biography of Webster, "the question of most interest is, what Mr. Webster represented . . . what he means in our history." And Mr. Lodge answers his own question: "Webster stands to-day as the preeminent champion and exponent of nation- ality. He said once: 'There are no Alleghenies in my politics,' and he spoke the exact truth. Mr. Webster was thoroughly national. There is no taint of sectionalism or narrow local prejudice about him. He towers up as an American, a citizen of the United States, in the fullest sense of the word." This from a Senator who, more than any other, is known for having again and again blocked the passage of bills important to the whole nation, because they would work injury to one small, industry in the neighborhood of Mr. Lodge's home! Would that Mr. Lodge could say: "There is no Gloucester in my poli- tics." Mr. Lodge stands to-day as the preemi- nent champion and exponent of codfish. Reci- procity with Newfoundland must fail, because Mr. Lodge's fishermen neighbors might be hurt. The Pure Food bill must be held up and de- [153] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS layed, and an important provision of it must be amended, because the Gloucester fishermen want to use boracic acid to preserve their prod- uct. Since Mr. Lodge must be known to the world chiefly as the representative of one in- dustry, it is a pity for his fame's sake that this industry can not be a more dignified and im- portant one in its extent, and a less circum- scribed one geographically. Mr. Lodge towers up as a citizen of the Penin- sula of Nahant in the fullest sense of the word. THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS MR. BRYAN'S career illustrates the high cost of a place in the sun. So long as he was a failure he was a brilliant success. It was Mr. Bryan's free-silver eloquence as much per- haps as any one force that stiffened McKinley's backbone as defender of sound money. As "Boy Orator," as missionary of popular government, as vigorous defender of all the moralistic tru- isms, as a candidate for the Presidency peren- nially turned down and perennially cheerful, Mr. Bryan deserved well of the Republic. Ironically enough, his crowning public service, his action at Baltimore in making sure Woodrow Wil- son's nomination, marked the beginning of the end. [154] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES For Bryan's public usefulness ended where his public service began. Perhaps he was dis- couraged from making a real effort to be an efficient Secretary of State by the thought that men like Jefferson, Marshall, Monroe, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Seward, Bayard, Blaine, Olney, Hay, and Root had preceded him. That attainment to high office marks not the crowning of a career but the chance to carve one out of opportunity has been too subtle an idea for Mr. Bryan. His idea of administering the foreign relations of a great nation in stirring times is aptly suggested in that foolish, almost shame- less, letter to W. W. Vice: How many jobs have you for my friends and at what salary? It reminds one of Gambetta in France, explain- ing to Juliette Adam that it was only just if after leading his soldiers to battle he let them have the booty. The effect of incompetent spoilsmanship upon our relations with the other American repub- lics does not worry our Secretary of State he is too sure of his own virtue; for Mr. Bryan has the f oozly type of mind which really thinks that good intentions are all that is essen- tial to virtue. To such a mind anarchy in Mex- ico is only a fact and facts never deeply con- cern Mr. Bryan. An idealist in all things but performance, Mr. Bryan is not ashamed to be found out; he claims to be proud of his loyalty [155] NATIONAL FLOODMABKS to his friends. It will be his epitaph that his life as an effective politician ended when an opportunity was given him to prove himself a statesman. He worked to give the nation Wil- son but after that beginning he made of him- self a millstone for Mr. Wilson's neck. POETRY IN" this era of dangerous political experiments and economic heresies, when men's minds are so tolerant of innovation that they listen without horror to schemes for changing the very fabric of the Constitution itself, it is soothing to know there is one statesman who stands firm by the rock of established things. His mind is adamant alike against the fallacies of altruistic dreamers and the errors, schisms, hallucinations, and fun- damental unsoundnesses of blatant heresiarchs. For him, no loose talk, no irrational monomani- acal frenzies of the radicals. His sound conservatism, his anchorage to the basic rocks of the tried and tested, are splendidly expressed in a fugitive bit of poetry in a Missouri paper. Lack of space forbids, unhappily, the reproduction of the first two stanzas, wherein the poet points out the identity of Mr. Fairbanks, since his first entry into politics, with the established principle of gov- [156] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES eminent that, so long as there is not a conden- sation of atmospheric vapor into drops large enough to attain sensible velocity, those condi- tions commonly known collectively as the weather will remain in the state popularly known as dry. However, the concluding stanzas suggest the fun- damental stability of the beliefs of the Indiana statesman: Then Mr. Fairbanks waxed quite warm; His voice riz to a roar. He yelled: "I say to you, my friends, That two and two make four." And thereupon all doubts dissolved, All fears were put to rout; Pie-seekers said that Fairbanks knew Just what he was about. He did not name unbusted trusts Or mention Standard Oil; He did not talk of railroad graft Nor speak of children's toil. He said the crops looked mighty well, The cattle all seemed fat, The sky was blue, the grass still grew, And the G. O. P. stood pat. And he let it go at that. There is, among the well-informed, a fugi- tive rumor that the subject of these verses might, if the urgency of the country's need were suffi- ciently impressed upon him, be persuaded to ac- cept the office of President. Is it not time for patriots to unite in a call? [157] NATIONAL FLOODMAKKS OUTDOORS AND INDOORS IT is as an inspiration of wholesome living that Theodore Roosevelt's "Autobiography" makes its deepest appeal. The political chapters are not without interest, nor is the chapter on cowboy land, with its anecdotes of hard riding and encounters with man and beast. But we take most pleasure in the descriptions of family life where Mr. Roosevelt figures first of all as a puny youngster, with a keen interest in Indian fights and miscellaneous "specimens"; later on as the responsible head of a large household. Is it too much to say that the author-President's most valuable gift to this nation is the example he has set in prizing and praising the durable satisfactions of life the essentials that do not cost most, in the long run, yet are inevitably worth most? In the Foreword to the "Auto- biography" we read: There is need to develop all the virtues that have the State for their sphere of action; but these virtues are as dust in a windy street unless back of them lie the strong and tender virtues of a family life based on the love of one man for one woman and on their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common obligation to the children that are theirs. Roosevelt has been called a master of plati- tude. He is. And here is one of the platitudes we [158] POLITICAL PERSONALITIES aren't tired of. Moreover it has positive fresh- ness at a moment when there is increasingly loose phrase weaving about the new eroticism. But the way of virtue and duty is not all stone by the Roosevelt view. You don't have to die and go to heaven to cash in its reward. No dust and ashes cloud this wine of life. [159] X THE PRESS FOR US SCRIBES GOOD motto for editors is this one of King Solomon's invention: A Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruc- tion, and understanding. "INDEPENDENCE" AND JOURNALISM TO most folks an independent paper is one that supports their side; the one that sup- ports the other side is partisan. Also, there seems to be something in human nature which reacts against the idea of a really independent paper a paper, that is to say, which supports the better acts of a man or a party and condemns the less desirable ones. Perhaps it is mixed up with the universal human liking for the quality of loyalty. To interrupt a course of praise seems, of course, like the unpleasing trait of dis- loyalty. But is there anything else for a really [160] THE PRESS independent paper to do? Many a paper which regards itself as independent merely contents itself with keeping silent about the things it can- not conscientiously praise. In the nature of things, a really independent paper cannot inspire universal affection. It is on the fence, and it is going to get the bricks from both sides. In spite of all the talk about an independent press, in spite of the great growth of the independent vote, the only really independent papers in this coun- try continue to be the ones that have held to that rule for more than a generation, such as the New York "Evening Post" and the Springfield (Mass.) "Republican." The editorial page of the New York "World," which has been for more than thirty years a remarkably able and virile critic of public affairs, has been, of inten- tion, prevailingly Democratic. It has not been independent in the sense of detached regard, or disregard, of all parties and all leaders alike. A NEBRASKA JOURNALIST SPEAKS PEOPLE have no confidence in great news- papers, says Mr. Bryan, "because they are big enterprises too much influenced by big busi- ness interests." It is true that great newspapers are "big enterprises" and that is, as the New York "World" observes, just what tends to pre- [161] NATIONAL FLOODMABE8 vent their being influenced in any sinister sense by "big business." Great newspapers are, or can be, independent of both big and little busi- nesses: individually speaking, for, of course, every newspaper depends upon business taken collectively for its prosperity and even for its bare existence. But the great newspapers of Chicago and New York are probably less af- fected, on the whole, by the railway influence or the quack influence or the booze influence than are the struggling little newspapers of the small towns. WHAT DOES A NEWSPAPER MEAN? TWO or three months ago the Hartford ( Conn. ) "Courant" got out a ninety-six-page edition to celebrate its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. No. 1 of the "Courant" was "printed by Thomas Green at the Heart & Crown near the North Meeting-House," and boldly asserted: Was it not for the Press we should be left almost in- tirely ignorant of all those noble Sentiments which the Antients were endow'd with. The "Courant," for one, has held to its tradi- tions fairly well. Though the "noble sentiments" of our press are somewhat obscured in some [162] THE PRESS printing offices by the rush and roar of patent- medicine advertising (see Mr. Bryan's "Com- moner"), we believe the older creed is coming back; that social service, the betterment of life, the ennobling of the human spirit, are to become more and more the conscious goal of journalism. What does a newspaper mean to you? TAINTED NEWS PHILADELPHIA has no newspaper which is not frequently and tightly gagged by the business interests which control its department stores, and the same sort of alliance is not un- known in other cities. A few weeks ago a pro- prietor of a large department store in Philadel- phia was arrested and committed suicide under circumstances which called out, morning after morning, the largest headlines on the front pages of the New York dailies. To this day, no Phil- adelphian who confines his reading to his local papers knows anything about that incident. The Philadelphia papers might explain their silence on the ground of a taste above such horrors; we should accept the theory if we felt sure that they made no distinction between victims of scan- dal who run full-page advertisements every day and unfortunates who do not. [163] NATIONAL FLOODM ABKS GOOD HUNTING QUACK doctors are the most vulnerable of big game. How astonishingly tender their commercial susceptibilities are has been shown by the Chicago "Tribune." One week of exposure through the "Tribune's" columns practically ruined every venereal disease quack in the city. Some shut up shop and disappeared. Others sat idle in empty offices, forlorn spiders at the center of flyless webs. Never before was so pow- erful and profitable an industry brought to such instant wreckage. What destroyed this pirate trade was not alone the direct result of the ex- posures, definite and potent though that was. The lethal blow was the eviction of all this class of advertising from the daily press. Within four days of the "Tribune's" declaration of war every morning and afternoon paper in the city which was carrying this class of copy had been shamed or alarmed into throwing it out. The evening paper of William R. Hearst, who a year ago bragged mightily of having foregone his alliance with quacks, was forced to exclude advertising which represents in the neighborhood of $70,000 a year blood money to that apostle of journalistic purity. Finally, the militant "Tribune" gives notice of its intention to stir up prosecutions un- der the law; or, if the present law be inadequate, [164] THE PRESS to agitate for the enactment of a stronger statute under which the malefactors may be brought to book. In view of this newspaper's established reputation for carrying out whatever it under- takes to the fullest conclusion, it is a fairly safe prophecy that in Chicago the venereal quackery game is up. Out in Seattle the "Sun," a lusty infant of Far Western journalism, performed a like service for its city; and some years ago the Cleveland "Press" made a valiant but only partly successful effort in that vicinity. But the Chicago campaign has been by far the broadest and most significant. On its letterhead the "Tribune" terms itself "The World's Greatest Newspaper." To our mind its anti-quack victory goes far toward making the boast good. RESPONSIBILITY SAYS one of the quarry of the "Tribune's" quack hunt: "I have paid most of what I made to newspapers that printed my ads." Despite its source, that statement is indubitably true. Without newspaper advertising no quack can hope to do business. The "Tribune," in its articles, showed that as soon as the advertising was cut off the venereal sharks ceased to receive patients enough to keep their offices going. Con- sider, you newspaper reader, the true significance [165] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS of this. It means that the responsibility for quackery in your town rests with your daily paper. If the newspaper owner didn't accept that poisoned money the quack couldn't con- tinue to take his profit of human terror and human misery. And the responsibility of the newspaper is readily brought home. No use in attacking the quack except by process of law, and most State laws along this line are wretch- edly flimsy. Moral suasion cannot influence the crooked practitioner because he has no charac- ter. But a newspaper has a character, and that character is part of its capital. Where the emol- uments of evil advertising bring open disgrace upon a journal that journal will drop the adver- tising. It took the "Tribune" but four days to clean up every newspaper in Chicago. In Port- land the papers were compelled by force of pub- lic opinion, voiced through a committee of citi- zens, to discard this class of business; and now there are no venereal quacks in Portland. What city will be next in line? The task is possible to any community which can organize public opinion. The method is simple and direct. Compel the newspapers, by force of fear or by the persuasions of decency, to cleanse their col- umns, and quackery will promptly and surely die of inanition. [166] THE PRESS THE BIBLE AS A NEWSPAPER SERIAL FOR a newspaper to reprint a "best seller," a chapter or two to the issue, is no journal- istic novelty. Yet, oddly enough, the idea of publishing in serial form the best seller of all best sellers is an experiment so unusual that it is attracting wide publicity. If you haven't hap- pened to notice the statistics, you may not know that the book which leads all others in sales is the Bible. Editor W. W. Folsom of Hope, Ark., is reprinting the Bible in his "Ga- zette," a chapter a week. To date he has com- pleted the publication of the Four Gospels, and the feature has proved so popular that the other day he notified the Little Rock Board of Trade that if he lives long enough to reprint the New Testament in its entirety (he is now seventy-six) he will then begin to reprint it a second time. Not so very long ago the library table in an American farmhouse sitting room used to dis- play only a patent-medicine almanac, a copy of the "Weekly Tribune," and a family Bible. In recent years the R. F. D. has weighted down the red tablecloth with a variety of other reading matter. Has it befallen that, to make room for numerous magazines, dailies, and novels, the bulky, brass-bound Bible has been relegated to the table's lower shelf, where a thin layer of dust [167] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS is settling on its cover? If so, Editor Folsom is restoring in Hope the old order of life cele- brated in an ode to "Kansas, 1897": When the cares o' day is done On the plains o' Kansas An' the kids begin to yawn, Sleepy like, in Kansas, Farmer wipes his glasses blurred; Reads a chapter o' the Word; Then kneels down and thanks the Lord That he lives in Kansas. A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE A MAN of vast wealth dies, and his son, just twenty-one years of age, succeeds him as "head of the family." This young man is pre- sumably one of generous, likable parts; no brighter, no abler, than thousands of boys work- ing for $15 a week. He is probably decently disposed to go about his daily life of work and play, and mind his own business. But this he cannot do as other youngsters do. Almost every day his least movement or doing is chron- icled in the press with all the circumstance of a candidate for the Presidency. All the Powers of Foolishness conspire to make him their very own by adoption. The papers print it and people read it. Which is initial, the supply or the demand? [168] THE PRESS SPLASH! HOW dull would life be without the country- correspondent. From a thousand obscure hamlets he contributes his iota of innocent uplift to enlighten the aggregate burden of existence. At present blessings are due to some unidentified Horace Greeley of North Falmouth, Mass. Hark to his tidings of great joy: "Manuel White is almost ready to be connected with the town water, which will be a great convenience for him." Convenience! Mark the scholarly re- straint of the phrase. Convenience, indeed, with the thermometer at ninety-five degrees in the shade of the electric fan! Transport, rather; ecstasy, beatitude, elysium, paradise. Would that we might, at the present perfervid moment of writing, enjoy Manuel's prospects and look forward confidently to being connected with the North Falmouth or any other town water a double connection, if you please, one at the base of our swooning brain, the other at the further terminus of our sizzling spinal column. And if the North Falmouth cannot more than supply Mr. White's aquatic needs, we might go fur- ther and fare worse. On consideration, what we really yearn for is to link ourselves to the Yukon River, and when that has flowed past we should rejoice to act, until further orders, as channel [169] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS for the Arctic Ocean, being perfectly willing to overlook casual polar bears, walruses, and other fauna of the region, for the sake of an iceberg or two thrown in. Hydrotherapy for ours, and plenty of it! Meantime, hats off to Manuel! He has gone far toward the solution of the hot-weather prob- lem. BUT WHY SHOULD HOOSIERS DIE? SUFFERERS from any ill that flesh is heir to should subscribe to the venerable "Cour- ier," which furnishes light and leading to the town of Evansville, Ind. Whereas most jour- nals subsidized by the Great American Fraud publish advertisements of only a few choice ex- amples of quackery, the "Courier" has them all. Here are some specimen ailments and the "Courier's" sure cures arranged alphabetically for quick reference: The Disease The Remedy Age Duffy's Malt Whiskey. Bad blood Hood's Sarsaparilla, Dr. Williams' Pink Pills. Catarrh Kondon's Jelly. Colds and coughs . . . .Ely's Cream Balm, Pape's Cold Compound, Pinex, Vinol. [170] THE PRESS Colds or indigestion . . Globe Pine Compound. Consumption Dr. King's Discovery. Dandruff and falling hair Parisian Sage, Danderine. Diseases of men .... Pabst's Okay Specific, Dr. Luckett's remedies. Dyspepsia Caldwell's Syrup Pepsin. Epilepsy Kosine. Eye troubles Optona. Headache New Life Pills. Indigestion Pape's Diapepsin. Itch Resinol. Kidney and bladder com- Kilmer's Swamp Root, Crox- plaints one, Jad Salts. Liquor habit Orrine. Nerves Warner's Nervine. Paleness Ayer's Sarsaparilla. Piles (curable at home) . Pyramid. Rheumatism Mark Jackson's prescrip- tions, St. Jacob's Oil, Toris, Warner's Safe Rheumatic Remedy. Skin diseases Zemo, Saxo Salve. Toothache E-Z Tooth Filler. Tuberculosis of the glands Erknan's Alterative. Ulcers Bucklen's Arnica Salve. Women's diseases . . . Mother's Friend, Lydia E. Pinkham's Pills, Orange Blossom, Dr. Pierce's Fa- vorite Prescription, Car- dui. Worms Kickapoo. All diseases Grove's Tonic. In justice to the Evansville "Courier," we has- ten to add that this little table does not include all [171] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS the remedies, restoratives, specifics, palliatives, febrifuges, boluses, Galenicals, simples, tinctures, nostrums, cerates, and ptisans for which space is bought in its liberally conducted columns. Old Doc Warner offers to cure a great many dis- tempers which we forbear to list; the Every- woman Company philanthropically offers to make sylphs of the obese; Menthoeze is, we de- duce from the "Courier," good for almost any malady; Wyeth's Sage and Sulphur darkens gray hair so that "no one can tell" and what shall we say of Foley's wonderful pills and Ren- war, and all the other doses? Evansville offers extraordinary inducements for the young physician. Comparatively few users of these concoctions are killed outright. It takes more than quacksalvers and medicasters to do for some folk. Moreover, there is room for other professions than the doctor's, and when the hardy Hoosier does die, he has to be buried so that the "Courier" advertises the very best of tombstones. Three cheers for dope! FACT FICTIONS THE romances that actually happen are so many that we are in a fair way to miss their full value. Consider the case of Adelaide M. [172] THE PRESS Brance, the woman whom an up- State lawyer in New York hid in his offices for three years; with whom he spent a great deal more time than with his wife and family; and all this without anyone in the curious little town ever once sus- pecting it! This mysterious romance was pub- lished only when the sudden death of one of the principals cut it short ; yet it is more improbable than tales of Balzac and of Mrs. Wharton with much the same plot. In the same week that saw publicity given to this story, four men sat drinking in a sailors' hotel on the New York river front. They plotted there a piece of night brigandage that transcends in sheer effrontery any tale of Chinese river pirates published be- tween lurid covers. On Christmas Eve, amid circumstances that would have distinguished a novel by Eugene Sue, they seized a tug, kid- naped a railway barge, looted a string of freight cars, turned the barge adrift, and transferred their plunder to waiting wagons in somnolent Brooklyn. What their next move was, nobody knows. And here is one more news item out of the same week's papers: A British peeress (by marriage) enters the convent of the "Poor Clares" at Edinburgh one of the strictest con- ventual establishments in all the world. Before she was Lady Lyveden, this woman was a shop- girl. Shopgirl, baroness, nun. There is no more striking series of transmutations in Marie Co- [173] NATIONAL FLOODMARE8 belli, Ouida, or (we're thinking of "Sister Teresa") George Moore. No wonder Stevenson said that there was matter for an epic in every issue of a one-cent newspaper. Only sometimes we lack the poet. A KENTUCKY METAPHOR EVERY Kentuckian is born to the literary purple. His first articulate cry is a dactyl; he prattles in hexameters. We are not always deeply impressed by everything the Bluegrass editor says; but the way he says it his verbal pyrotechnics, his lingual chiaroscuro, his sudden swoops and pirouettings, the rumbling thunder of his polysyllables, the rippling tinkle of his penults these delight us perennially. The Ken- tucky Colonels are fountains of words ; they flow from them with the murmuring gurgle of bot- tled-in-bond from a Pendennis Club jug, the gentle tinkle of ice in a julep glass. Consider the Honorable Augustus Owsley Stanley, Mem- ber of Congress from Henderson County. Con- gressman Stanley was endeavoring to picture to his fellow-statesmen the more subtle and recherche qualities of a beverage which is one of the chief commercial products of his own dis- trict. "It will," said he, in describing the local brand, "turn an anchorite into a howling dervish, [174] THE PRESS and make a rabbit spit in a bulldog's face." Now, there is real literature for you. Picture the scene. Was the quality of inspiring reckless dar- ing, of filling with death-defying, fate-scorning courage, ever so concisely, so aptly, so vividly ex- pressed as by picturing the timid, shrinking, and pusillanimous bunny spitting defiantly into the menacing countenance of the fierce and terrible bulldog? Beside this, how inept and futile those clumsy figures of speech with which Homer tried to tell how brave his heroes were, how tame and tautologous Shakespeare's description of the courage-inspiring virtues of sack: "Warming of the blood; which, before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice." It is no disap- pointment to our pleased anticipations to learn that Congressman Stanley is an emeritus pro- fessor of belles-lettres in a Kentucky college. THAT PERSONAL NOTE THE personal note is struck in different ways by different individuals. The New York firm of Rogers Peet & Co. strike it in one of their advertisements in asserting that "not the least of our business assets are the 'men be- hind the counter.' " The advertisement is worth reading: [175] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS For the most part, they've grown up with us and conse- quently "know the business" from A to Z. Mr. Lemuel R. Kniffin, for some years in charge of the Livery and Auto Wear Department of our Thirteenth Street Store, is spending the summer at Newport. He is not there for his health or pleasure, but to help our Newport representative reorganize his business and put it on an up-to-date basis. You see we make merchants. Whoever reads thus far in the advertisement reads to the end. He wants to learn more of the competent Mr. Kniffin and his summer plans; failing in that, something of Edward J. Tracey, described as "another good one," who mean- while receives Mr. Kniffin's customers and sells them Norfolk suits, leggings, caps, goggles, rub- ber coats, and gauntlets with reenforced palms. The literary critics talk of the "personal note" in literature; let them go to the wise advertiser. RELIGIOUS PAPERS FOR money, the religious papers which carry patent-medicine advertisements prostitute their columns ; when the balance of profit points the other way, they will clean their columns up. Here is one case where the means of reform is simple, sure, and direct. Mr. Charles Hughes of Jellico, Tennessee, knows it. He sent this let- ter to the religious paper which has been coming to his family: [176] THE PRESS Gentlemen When my subscription to the "Standard" expires, please discontinue same, as I do not care to sub- scribe or even read a paper that carries as many quack and fraudulent advertisements as the "Standard." It is a pity that a paper supposed to be published in the in- terest of the Christian religion and for the bettering, the uplifting, and educating of the people should descend so low as to endorse and carry such advertisements. When you rid your columns of such trash, I will be glad to again become a reader of your paper. Very truly yours, Charles Hughes. Conferences, synods, or such other religious or- ganizations as have official supervision of offend- ing papers, can supplement this method effec- tively; and even privately owned, free-lance re- ligious papers would have a wholesome respect for a few winged words from the organizations to whose members they cater. UNCOMMERCIAL ADVERTISING ADVERTISING is no longer the servant of commerce alone. Churches are learning its uses. But the past master in the art is the Cin- cinnati Zoological Garden. Though this insti- tution is privately owned, there is no reason why its example should not be followed by municipal gardens. The motto of the Cincinnati Zoo is: "We belong to you ; your admission is your con- [177] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS tribution" and the gatemen admit enough of the city's population year after year to make the gathering profitable. Every street car in town carries its cards, and they make by far the most interesting reading to be found there. One of them shows a picture of the Zoo's ostriches with this line of type : Do you know why the ostrich is the best father in the world ? A Week later it is a portrait of camels, introduced with the query : Do you know what arrangement enables a camel to breathe in a sand storm where other animals would perish ? And at the Zoo itself a little paper is sold for five cents, answering all the questions and yielding a wealth of natural history in popular tabloid form. There is a suggestion here for art museums and libraries. In the case of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the following might im- pinge on the Manhattanite's ruling passion: This painting, by Paolo Veronese, cost $300,000; you can enjoy it on Saturdays for nothing. And the public library in Anytown could beyond a doubt increase its circulation by issuing such cards as these : Napoleon said: "Show me a family of readers and I will show you the people who rule the world." How much reading is your family doing? [178] THE PRESS The Public Library buys 100 new books every month. Two of them are yours for the asking. Publicity may yet prove to be the handmaiden of the arts, if not their mother. PLAYING ON THE PUBLIC T ]f THAT great man would make the best V V modern editorial writer, when masses have to be fed with ideas, stimulated, sometimes guided, is a question that has brought many re- sponses since we sprang it on our readers. The nominations now include Dickens, Macaulay, Voltaire, and Defoe. Victor Hugo, who is suggested by a correspondent from St. Paul, cer- tainly stirred the public opinion of his country, immediately and strongly, both in prose and verse. From Toledo comes the name of Jean Jacques Rousseau. An intelligent observer from Providence, R. I., nominates Walter Bagehot, who, however, seems to us better fitted to lend great power to a paper like the New York "Evening Post" or the Springfield "Republi- can" than to the publications of very wide circu- lation. Henry George, whose name is sent in from Rome, Ga., although more generally known for his taxation scheme, comes as near as we can trace to being the founder of the modern critical, [179] NATIONAL FLOODMAEK8 looking-under-the-surface, or muckraking school. Benjamin Franklin is mentioned, from Phila- delphia, in these terms: With him as editor I would at once send in my subscrip- tion for life. He very nearly combined the broad learning of Macaulay, the wit of Swift, and the satire of Vol- taire. He knew as much of human nature as Dickens, and could be fully as quaint or unusual as Defoe. Frank- lin - was the great starter of things, as witness his inau- guration in Philadelphia of hospitals, street paving, street lamps, circulating libraries, and a university. He was a politician and a diplomat, a philosopher and a profound investigator. His style of writing was delightfully sim- ple, direct, and convincing. And, besides that, he was a century ahead of his time in realizing the value of a news- paper cartoon. Better than any of the others here men- tioned, Franklin would fit into the present materialistic age. For him who wrote the King of Prussia Edict, what a mine unfathomable would be the American Con- gress ! Which seems to us to be making out a rather good case for Ben. A Denver celebrator of Ed- gar Allan Poe says he had an analytic mind, clear thought, comprehension of the use and meaning of words, and sympathy with his fel- low man ; but, says the ironic observer of our pro- fession, "perhaps these are not valuable editorial qualities." [180] THE PRESS A GLOBE TROTTER FULL of years and honors, our old friend the Paragraph from Siam has girdled the globe again, turning up the other day, apparently as fresh and young as ever, in New York City. The "Times," in the course of its duty to publish "all the news that's fit to print," solemnly greeted him as a stranger and announced his arrival in an editorial. Supposedly, the old boy then took up his journey westward. As we recall it, this is the Siamese humorist's third circuit of the planet; and we have a dim recollection that when he dropped into town the time before he announced himself as from India. Anyway we wish him Godspeed and long life. May he continue to make countless millions laugh! One warning, though he oughtn't to attempt to stop at Kan- sas City, where he has almost worn out his wel- come. In the office of the "Star," in the course of a single year, he turned up three times once on the first page; once on the editorial page; once in a Sunday issue. No exchange editor can resist the appeal of this paragraph and its brief note of introduction : ENGLISH AS SHE IS WROTE We have received a copy of the following announcement in a newspaper published in Siam: The news of English we tell the latest. Writ in per- [181] NATIONAL FLOODMABKS fectly style and most earliest. Do a murder commit, we hear of and tell it. Do a mighty chief die, we publish it, and in borders of sombre. Staff and each one been col- lege, and write like the Kipling and the Dickens. We circle every town and extortionate not for advertisements. Buy it Buy it. FOR THE FARMER TO the desk of the writer of this paragraph there comes jn the course of a month some- thing more than a ton of printed matter. Among the few periodicals which command friendly and interested reading is the "Farm Journal," pub- lished by Wilmer Atkinson Company of Phila- delphia. It has old-fashioned charm, sincerity, piquancy, occasionally a militant sword for fraud and chicanery, and throughout an atmosphere which breathes the desire of service to its readers. Its charm starts with its title piece at the head of the first page, an old-fashioned stone farmhouse of the kind that is common in the Quaker and Pennsylvania Dutch parts of Pennsylvania, sur- rounded by little pictures of typical farm life : a mother and two daughters making pies in a farm kitchen, a boy bringing eggs, a stalk of corn, and some climbing roses. About the first printed matter in every issue of the paper is this standing notice : [182] THE PKESS FAIR PLAY We believe, through careful inquiry, that all the adver- tisements in this paper are signed by trustworthy persons, and, to prove our faith by works, we will make good to actual subscribers any loss sustained by trusting adver- tisers who prove to be deliberate swindlers. Rogues shall not ply their trade at the expense of our subscribers, who are our friends, through the medium of these col- umns. . . . This notice has appeared in every issue of the "Farm Journal" since 1880. We think it ante- dates by twenty years the movement for clean advertising in periodicals generally. When this guarantee first appeared in the "Farm Journal" many farm papers were primarily vehicles for the purpose of helping swindlers cheat the farmer. The "Farm Journal" has kept a charm- ing and attractive old-time quality and appear- ance, while it has adapted itself to all that is use- ful in the modern science of agriculture. We know no publication so sure to inspire and in- struct any person with a real affection for the soil as the "Farm Journal." WANTED: A MIRACLE TWO or three Frenchman wrote years ago a a novel founded on this idea : Christ re- turns to earth and visits Paris. His personality [183] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS has a tremendous influence upon the population, and various modern miracles are worked, notably in journalism. Newspapers crowded with news and advertisements appear next morning almost blank, for every lie contained in them has miracu- lously faded into blank paper. What would hap- pen if a miracle of this sort occurred in Tacoma, Wash., and what would be left of the Tacoma "Daily News" ? A reader of ours out there sends us a marked copy containing thirty-four patent- medicine advertisements, many of them making ridiculously excessive claims. Incidentally, it is a striking feature of the present day reaction against patent-medicine fakery that it is the readers of newspapers who do the protesting against these advertisements. When will erring publishers realize that it pays to be good? THE REPORTER TUGGED by some centripetal force to wher- ever there is a clash of human passions, he is always "on the spot." Unlike his brother, the novelist, who fashions out of the furnace of his mind at painstaking intervals some finely mod- eled bit of porcelain, the furnace of this man's soul is always at full draft. Into it is flung day by day all the inflammable stuff of life the mixed ingredients of heroism, murder, revolu- [184] THE PRESS tion, passionate love. And steadily, inexorably, it is poured out again, uncritical of itself, slag and ore, half drivel and half literature. The rec- ompense he works for is to have his fellow work- ers say "Good story." His only critic is "the desk." To-day, yesterday's "good story" is light- ing the morning fire in a thousand tenements. Anonymity, which guards him from self-con- sciousness, stands also mockingly between him and fame. He snatches his friendships like his meals, as stokers must strike up their friendships between shifts when the Mauretania is "out for a record." Yet there is no freemasonry like his. From behind the scenes he makes the puppets of the world's stage dance for us. But we can sus- pect his smile, as he surveys our antics, to be something between pity and contempt. [185] XI WE GO TO THE COUNTRY THE COMING OF SPRING JOHN BURROUGHS is seventy-some- thing years old, God bless him, but when a man has passed seventy-five the years don't really signify. One is grateful to John Bub- boughs for a great many things ; one of them is the wholly unaffected love for nature and his fel- low men that he has proved during all these years. Opening one of his books the other day (it hap- pened to be called "A Year in the Fields") we found it asking the question: "From what fact or event shall one really date the beginning of spring?" And then one finds the answer: The little piping frog usually furnishes a good starting point. One spring I heard the first note on the 6th of April; the next on the 27th of February; but, in reality, the latter season was only two weeks earlier than the former. When the bees carry in their first pollen, one would think spring had come. Yet this fact does not always correspond with the real stage of the season. Be- fore there is any bloom anywhere, bees will bring pollen to the hive. Where do they get it? [186] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY The coming of spring is indicated to us in more ways than one in city or country. For instance, there is that yearning we have to cut loose and desert the ship of state and the mar- kets and the magazine office and to spend our days afield. Sometimes we yield to that instinct and break off in what is really only the middle of the editorial paragraph. THE ANCIENT CALL RESERVOIRS of happiness surround us on every hand. In their totality they make up the sum and ocean of Nature and natural beauty. But to reach us they must have chan- nels through which to flow, and the only pos- sible channels are the feeling for them and the love in our hearts. Every spring and summer the Earth, that divine mother, pours out anew her lavish affection for us, her poor strayed crea- tures, maddened by the pursuit of unrealities, herded within walls, suffocating, ill at ease, hag- gard with petty cares. She calls and beckons and draws us, but, like foolish children, perverse and untractable, we hide and answer not her call. Every tree, every leaf and tendril and blade of grass, brings us her message of healing and wholeness, but we heed not the messengers. [187] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS The ends of our endeavor Are wealth and fame, Yet in the still Forever We're one and all the same. . . . Our arguments disputing, The universal Pan Still wanders fluting fluting Fluting to maid and man. Henley knew that ancient call, and the prose poet, Algernon Blackwood, in his wonderful book, "The Centaur," is no less clear upon the immemorial legendary kinship between the earth and man : "The strength and dignity of the trees he drew into himself; the power of the wind was his ; with his unwearied feet ran all the sweet and facile swiftness of the rivulets, and in his thoughts the graciousness of flowers, the wavy softness of the grass, the peace of open spaces, and the calm of the vast sky." All mankind yearns for that peace and that at-one-ment, and every summer is a crusade of Nature to bring more happy converts to her sheltering fold. BIRDS WE HAVEN'T KNOWN JOHN MUIR,it seems and Colonel Roose- velt so reports it "was not interested in the small things of nature unless they were unusually [188] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY conspicuous. Mountains, cliffs, and trees ap- pealed to him tremendously, but birds did not unless they possessed some very peculiar and in- teresting as well as conspicuous traits." One night, when they were camping in a grove of giant sequoias and the Colonel asked him about some birds singing near by, he was surprised to find that the naturalist wasn't listening and didn't know anything about them. A long sigh of relief and three times three for John Mum! He could sit on a solemn summer evening at the foot of a giant sequoia, looking down on time as it had looked down on the sierras since burning Sappho loved and sung, and not insist on know- ing whether some stray chittering in the bushes came from a goose-billed flea catcher or six-toed Robinson sparrow No. 3. Far be it from us to suggest that to science one thing is not as "im- portant" as another. The habit of repeating, in the most untoward circumstances, the names of all the birds conversing in the neighborhood is a harmless enough pedantry. Yet we can't help feeling that our bird sharks might well read an article by M. Rene Doumic in which he de- mands a return to the French idea of culture, and contrasts what he calls the German habit of ac- cumulating facts with the French insistence, in addition, on something that will nourish sensi- bility and taste. To be a nature "lover" a man must, after all, do a little something more than [189] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS merely ring up facts as they go by, as a watch- man at closing time rings up the names of the employees hurrying past him out into their real lives. THE HEN OF TO-DAY NO longer is the hen a straggler on society's fringe; her intensive culture is full of in- terest or shall we say profits? If she cannot do better than seventy eggs a year (which is per- haps about what the farmer's hen has averaged without a college education ) , it is into the pot "for hers." Evolution has labored in the making of a feathered lady like C 521, the Oregon Ex- periment Station's triumph, with her world rec- ord of 303 eggs in 365 days. In this process all our modern words come into play : heredity, en- vironment, survival of the fittest, eugenics. But it is a case of factory development as well as race development, for the hen of to-day is above all a delicately organized machine, speeded up under scientific management. No more is the cry for show points and purity of strain. The champion of them all is a mongrel seven-eighths Leghorn and one-eighth Plymouth Rock. It is the egg that counts, and egg-laying contests at the ex- periment station have proved that fine feathers don't make the finest bird, nor yet does the proper [190] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY set of a rose comb or the correct tail carriage fix productivity. Poultry houses are no longer heated. We have the outdoor school for the su- pergirl at Bryn Mawr and like treatment for the Oregon superhen. In these costly days the fabled hen which lays an egg a day is second cousin to the goose that laid the egg of gold. GREEN THINGS GROWING THE tulips ought to be in bloom now in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and that is a true sign that spring has conquered over our en- tire land. The roses were by long ago in Cali- fornia and in Dixie, and it is some time now since the shy arbutus lit New England's wooded corners into beauty; but one still saw winter's backward threat over those flatlands high under the northern stars. It needed the bright ban- ners of the tulip to show that old Boreas is dis- armed at last. Isn't there an old saying about planting corn when the new oak leaf is as large as a squirrel's ear? That ought to give even the most confirmed city dweller an excuse for get- ting out among the braveries of the newly bud- ded woods. There is nothing so beautiful for those who will see it as the delicate green miracle of these same new leaves, unless perhaps it is the fairy sickle of the new moon hanging low in skies [191] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS cleared by recent rain. Even in a hard city street the bourgeoning of just one tree is like a benedic- tion. He was a true poet (whoever he was) who said something to the general effect that "the origin and springhead, as it were, of all music is the very pleasant sound that the trees of the forest do make as they grow." Get out among them now and see what a fair world it is when blessed by the recurring loveliness of spring. Surely the eternal lesson of love and life is now made plain. PATTER OF RAIN OUR umbrella hand is getting calloused again; the score board detains no office boys; outdoor games and plays are at a hoarse discount, and all our golfing friends are snuffling in their speech. Since it rained on this or that saint's day, must it rain forty other days and nights? The talk one hears about the war is gloomier for these lowering clouds and fiercer for the flashes that split them. No wonder the wise fathers put their elections in the fall, when crops are gathered and roads are sometimes dry. No administration that ever blessed our country could stand up for a spring campaign under the burden of a long rain. Class hatred is fostered by these swishing automobiles which know not [192] WE GO TO THE COUNTEY the just from the unjust. This is the real sort of season for hibernating*. The cold of winter braces the nerves and bites one into action, but just try to wake a child in time for early break- fast some warm-misted morning and note the difference that is, if you get up early enough yourself. There's a real subject for debate in the question whether a lazy summer rain is drowsier than bees in clover. It should be argued before a jury of dormice and the victor crowned with blue corn-flowers drooping full of dew. With these rain wreaths down the sky, and the greenness of growth everywhere, and the soft air's healing touch upon it surely there is gentleness now at the very heart of things, and summer herself is smiling upon us through the clouds. MOWING TIME HAYING is the kiddies' carnival from the day the farmer whets the knives of his mowing machine till the barn door slides shut on the last load. First of all, the mowing ma- chine sings merrily in its meadow-encircling orbit. The scythe is less used nowadays, so that the un- mistakable slither of the whetstone against the slender blade is not so often heard picked out against the summer hush. Without the scythe [193] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS there is less reason to seek the pail of oatmeal and water which stands in the shade at the edge of the field. After the grass is cut comes the tedder to do its work with grasshopper joints and grasshopper kick. Next the big rake attends to the long windrows. Then come larks for the kid- dies. None of the poets of new-mown hay have more than hinted at the actual joys of romping in it. Last of all comes the making of the load, a scientific process. If you are lucky, you get a ride to the barn, swaying high in air and forc- ing all other vehicles into the ditch. And finally the unloading. In the well-filled mows the hay pricks your bare legs and grasshoppers some- how work in under your shirt. But you make caves and have grand games of hide 'n' seek none the less. Haying is a less time-consuming en- terprise than of old, but the modern improve- ments have not impaired its old-time joys for youth. THE "VALUE" OF CORN IN a recent number we tried to make the point that a short corn crop means less food. The Fort Worth (Tex.) "Record" interprets this as an attack on the farmers because they do not live within the city limits! Now, we are perfectly willing to see the food growers get every proper [194] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY advantage out of the working of the law of sup- ply and demand. Collier's is disposed to insist that they be not deprived of their hard-earned market prices by various modern systems of food adulteration and of market manipulation. Jus- tice must and will be done in these things. The last proposition we would ever think of urging or even suggesting is that the farmer "cheerfully give to the nonproducing classes the full benefit of all good seasons." This absurdity is the sole product of the Fort Worth "Record" (probably due to mental drought), and we must refuse all credit for it. Our point was and is solely this: That less food means less to eat ; that this condi- tion is a national misfortune, and that to gloss it over by talking about "value" is to exhibit that old weakness in thinking which mistakes dollar marks for things. There was once a great deal of this abroad, even in Texas, in the old fiat-money days. As all good Texans cannot be helping Mr. Bubleson run the post office, it is worth while that some of them think clearly, and this rejoin- der is printed merely to keep the record straight if possible. We hardly dare hope that the corn will be acknowledged. [195] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS THE OLD-TIME GARDEN ARE the times grown too feverish to admit of our still having an old-fashioned garden? Of course there is no direct "civic uplift" in hollyhocks; sweet William doesn't help to solve the "social evil"; the ragged sailor and the mil- lennium aren't in any way allied. And yet the riot of color at least we thought it riotous till the era of pointillism dawned is still a pleasant memory, and at this time of year one wishes he had planted more seed last July and August. Moreover, we have Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's word for it that "a child needs grass as much as it needs a bed" and if the child of the "larger feminism" needs grass, perhaps the grown-up is entitled to a few flowers. Already it is time, in this latitude, to think about Canter- bury bells and the annual poppies and pansies. May is soon enough for your larkspur without whose gay blue spikes the garden would be tame indeed. Yes, in spite of the risk of seeming reac- tionary, we unqualifiedly declare in favor of the old-fashioned garden. [196] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY IN PRAISE OF WEEDS SENTIMENTALITY about flowers is an old story, but sentimentality about weeds is, one may say speaking as an agriculturist a more serious matter. And yet look at that de- lightful chapter in that delightful book, "A Year in the Fields," by John Burroughs: One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds. How they cling to man and follow him around the world, and spring up wherever he sets his foot! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so harm- less withal, that one comes to regard them with positive affection. Motherwort, catnip, plaintain, tansy, wild mus- tard what a homely human look they have! Your smart new place will wait long before they draw near it. Our knotgrass, that carpets every old dooryard, and fringes every walk, and softens every path that knows the feet of children, or that leads to the spring, or to the garden, or to the barn, how kindly one comes to look upon it! . . . Weeds are Nature's makeshift. She rejoices in the grass and the grain, but when these fail to cover her nakedness she resorts to weeds. It is in her plan, or a part of her economy, to keep the ground constantly covered with vege- tation of some sort, and she has layer upon layer of seeds in the soil for this purpose. . . . The soil is a storehouse. Dipping into the treatises of CATO'and Varro, in the translation made by "A Virginia Farmer" under the title "Roman Farm Management," we find, if not the counterpart of this passage by [197] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS John Burroughs, at least ample evidence that the ancient Romans knew full well the value of what we used to call "waste material." Our farm journals nowadays talk a good deal about the conservation of certain weeds or, rather, their utilization as Nature's insurance against worn-out lands. To quote one of John Burroughs's con- temporaries, Mr. E. P. Powell: The Roman farmer composted everything, manipulated its fermentation, and saved every ounce of the result as plant food. It is most curious to find Varro in the forty- second chapter discussing very familiarly that recent dis- covery in American farming, alfalfa. We have to console ourselves that they did not know what we know about bacteria. After all, Mr. Burroughs's kind words for the weeds are not all sentiment. THE COUNTRY BOY'S CREED WE came upon it first in the Greenwood (Miss.) "Commonwealth." But no source was given. We traced it, however, to its publication in the "Progressive Farmer" of Memphis, Tenn. That is as far as we have got, although a query to that paper brings the infor- mation that very likely the "Creed" was first [198] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY i used by a Boys' Corn Club in Virginia and was later adopted by all the Corn Clubs in that State. It would give us real pleasure to learn where and how this expressive statement of an ideal crystallized into words. Perhaps by this time you are curious to read it for yourself: I believe that the country which God made is more beau- tiful than the city which man made; that life out of doors and in touch with the earth is the natural life of man. I believe that work with nature is more inspiring than work with the most intricate machinery. I believe that the dig- nity of labor depends not on what you do, but how you do it; that opportunity comes to a boy on the farm as often as to a boy in the city; that life is larger and freer and happier on the farm than in the town; that my success depends not upon my location, but upon myself; not upon my dreams, but upon what I actually do; not upon luck, but upon pluck. I believe in working when you work, and in playing when you play, and in giving and demanding a square deal in every act of life. "Iron sharpeneth iron." Who knows a more succinct phrasing of the aspiration which this country needs through all its length and breadth ? AUTUMN AUTUMN" is the poet's season. Spring is it- self poetry: youth and running sap and first blossoming. When all creation is mating, [199] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS what chance has the written word? Summer is too idle a season for poetry, or too full of actual enjoyments. Poetry means less than sunlight. And winter is too cold for verse, unless it he verse in a brisk measure, that twinkles its feet on the double-quick to hurry circulation. Autumn is poetry's proper season partly because of its dazzling whites, like winter's, or vibrant heat, like summer's, or incorrigible heedless youth, like spring's; also because fall is the season of tem- pered colors and harmonized compositions. The Louisville poet, Madison Cawein, paints the autumn scene: The gray decides; and brown Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express Themselves and redden as the year goes down. Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like cornstalks die, And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie. The very melancholy of fall time a gentle per- vasive melancholy that enriches these days of the old year nobly dying makes for poetry : Deepening with tenderness, Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along The lonesome West; sadder the song Of the wild redbird in the leafage yellow. Deeper and dreamier, aye! Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky Above lone orchards where the cider press Drips, and the russets mellow. [200] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY Autumn is a time of splendid reminiscence and chastened prophecy. OCTOBER ONE of our Philadelphia friends finds fault with our views on Autumn. "Later, in the fall, you may be as melancholy as you like," he writes, "but there's nothing blue about Octo- ber but the sky. Do you know Tom Daly's poems? Come, forsake your city street! Come to God's own fields and meet October. Not the lean, unkempt, and brown Counterfeit that haunts the town, Pointing, like a thing of gloom, At dead Summer in her tomb; Reading in each fallen leaf Nothing but regret and grief. Come out, where, beneath the blue, You may frolic with the true October. This is the season, not for melancholy in front of a smoky wood fire, but for profitable exercise. Now, if ever, come walking days. Try it !" We mean to. We have begun already; it was moonlight a few evenings ago, and we walked briskly after dinner. We took a collie along for company, and both of us enjoyed the evening, and all the fresh country odors it somehow drew [201] NATIONAL FLOODMAEK8 from soil and turf and shrubbery. Our Phila- delphia correspondent quotes from T. A. Daly a fellow townsman to be proud of. We like him best in his Italian- American verses, that one may compare with Deummond's French-Cana- dian ballads without a blush or an apology. We like Daly's Italians in America better than his straight Yankee or Hibernian, though the latter was lately praised in no measured terms by Mrs. Hinkson, Katheeine Tynan that was. To our mind, good Padre Angelo can never be matched by Father Dan O'M alley or "his River ence, Father O'Flanigan," while "Mia Carlotta" and "Between Two Loves," for tenderness and hu- mor, outdo anything of Daly's in Irish dialect. Yet the poet is the best of Irishmen as well as the best of Americans, and if you don't know him you have only to hunt up his "Carmina" and "Canzoni." October is as good a month as any to enjoy Tom Daly and cross-country walking. SOUTHWARD AGAIN OF all summer tourists the most wonderful are the birds. And at this season some of them are packing up and starting south again so quietly that one is unaware. For three and a half months, speaking roughly, they are saying their good-bys to the North ; many of them have [202] WE GO TO THE COUNTRY had a vacation of only six weeks, for which some will have traveled 15,000 miles. For centuries, for eras, man has witnessed the flight of birds, their invasion of the frozen North in all the gay- ness of bright feathers and wooing time; their melancholy retreat before a winter unannounced. Yet few of us can speak on the subject with much authority. Why does the insect feeder take his flight in August, when it is still warm enough to suit everyone and the air is full of dinner? How high does the golden plover fly, and why does the warbler lose his head in approaching the lights of the city? By day and by night the birds' exodus is a marvel ; but at night it is most mysterious. It is not alone feathered citizens fearing the hawk tribe that pursue night travel at the risk of life. Why? Some species have organized their retreat on the most systematic plan; others are impres- sionists, and mix with other kinds of fowl, travel- ing as the spirit moves, covering no great dis- tance at a time. We all know how the blackbirds and crows meet and swing off in troops, starting in August and attaining great numbers in Sep- tember flight. Some birds certainly rise to a height of four or five miles on their pilgrimage, and the speed of some is calculated at a hundred miles an hour. Millions upon millions of birds are in motion at this time, or a little later. The loss of them for a season may in part explain our autumn sadness. [203] XII WE RELAX VACATION TIME TIME was when we considered ourselves ex- ceptionally lucky if we could squeeze in a summer holiday of two weeks. Nowadays that isn't enough. Just now there looms that costly desirability, the winter vacation. To bang the cover down on a hastily tidied desk, to wave good-by to town and trouble, to sail out of one of this world's most beautiful harbors into the most popular of oceans that is our wish. You see, we have been reading "tourist literature." Why did they send it to us ? Listen to this : The twin S. S. Aphrodite [we've changed the name this isn't a paid advertisement] is THE ONLY STEAMER on the New York-Bermuda route ESPE- CIALLY DESIGNED AND CONSTRUCTED FOR THAT SERVICE. Lovers find the sea entrancing, and married folk renew their love-making under the sea's influ- ence. A double bottom, which enables water ballast to be pumped out when the vessel sights Bermuda, gives pas- sengers an opportunity of enjoying one of the most charm- ing features possible to tourists. They can remain on the [204] WE EEL AX ship, and from the deck watch the navigation and maneu- vering of the steamship through the narrow channels, so close between the small islands that A BISCUIT CAN BE TOSSED TO THE SHORE from either side of the ship, while enjoying the greatest panorama of picturesque scenery in the world as the ship enters the harbor of Hamilton. Passengers, ESPECIALLY LADIES, have found it A GREAT CONVENIENCE. Why we should want to "toss a biscuit" from the deck we can't imagine we just do. That circular put it into our head. And listen to this insidious suggestion: The benefits and pleasures of a brief respite from the winter's storms and stress are so marked that thousands of business and professional men and women seek every year RENEWED STRENGTH AND ENERGY in a short trip to the tropics. Nothing will do for us now but a voyage to the land of "matchless beauty and boundless hospitality" (transient rates, $4 per day up- ward). Are not the Bermudas "living coral reefs, the existence of which is due to the prox- imity of the Gulf Stream?" The islands are "not mountainous, but undulating." The landscape is "nowhere marred by squalor or dilapidation." The climate is "the most agreeable and equable in the world." Hi! Fetch our golf clubs and tennis racquet! [205] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS LAUGHTER A CORRESPONDENT of the "Saturday Review" holds laughter to be "always vulgar and offensive." With thoroughgoing British disapproval, he quotes the stanza: Let us have wine and women, Mirth and laughter; Lemonade and soda water The day after. "Laughter is profane, in fact, where it is not ridiculous," is the absurd conclusion. Just as if wine were the only laughter maker ! For though the empty laugh declares the vacant mind, the laugh of resonance bespeaks the man of health. There is as much difference between the laugh which is only a noisy discord and the laugh which is an explosion of the comic spirit as there is be- tween a barroom joke and a comedy by Moliere. In our modern sophistication too few of us know how to laugh at all. We can only grin, giggle, or snicker. A hearty laugh does the body good, and what is really good for the body is generally good for the soul too. "He who laughs," said Goethe's mother, "can commit no deadly sin." [206] WE EEL AX TERPSICHOREAN EVERY dance has its day, passes, and is for- gotten. . . . Swift from shine to shade The roaring generations flit and fade, each capering to its own special measure and each piously reprehending the saltations of its succes- sors. Only the waltz eternally survives, and be- cause (for a guess) it has been the most rhythmic, the most poetic of all dances. For a like reason the one step, under some one of its many aliases, is here to stay. It is a prospect which we are un- able to view with any marked degree of horror. Doubtless the present innovations, with their pul- sating meter, are at times performed immodestly. But that there is anything inherently evil in them, one may, from the side lines, doubt. For one thing, they demand a sustained and considerable activity. Exercise is a powerful solvent of ill manners. More collars than high resolutions will be melted, one suspects, and shirt bosoms, rather than moral principles, succumb to the lure of the foot-fretting tempo. For our part we choose to be optimistic about the turkey trot, the one step, the tango, et id omne genus, holding that, in re- spect to the light fantastic toe, one may still trip without falling from grace. [207] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS BREAKING LOOSE OUR heart warms to that brakeman on a sub- urban train in Illinois. This brakeman revolted one day against the tyranny of routine. Instead of walking through the cars announcing the names of the stations at which the train would stop ("Four-forty-seven for Lake Blank; this train stops at Bushberry, Long Links, Putter- ville and Dawdletown") , he did it like this, using the proper official tone: "Weather report fair and slightly cooler." Imagine the dramatic ef- fect of this commonplace announcement on a ear- ful of Chicago commuters! It was as if con- ductor and brakeman had played leapfrog down the aisle, as if the newsman had conjugated amo, amaSj amat, instead of calling out the evening papers and Collier's. We never pulled just that trick, but maybe it is because we never were a brakeman. WE'RE OFF! THE flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, are showing up and so are the flowers of speech that bloom on the sporting page. Drama and baseball demand collaboration from all the seven arts as you will see illustrated in that [208] WE RELAX portion of Collier's which Grantland Rice and F. G. Cooper share on terms of amity. Rice has a rival, however, for our mail brings us from Boise, Idaho, a "baseball sonnet" by A. J. Priest : Baseball, thou art my god; I do adore thee. My soul is thrilled when I see Johnson on the mound, Or watch the runner's spikes tear up the ground: In good sooth thou dost stir me unto ecstasy. Impatiently I do await the coming spring, For basketball but poorly fills the interim, Utterly failing to appease the fan's fond whim: We do attend thee, baseball; we would crown thee king. Oh, Time, thy wings are leaden. Come, make haste And bring these winter months unto their close. Baseball's the only sport for my nice taste, Speed, Time, or I will yank thy wrinkled nose. Bring on King Baseball, crowned the greatest of them all; Bring on the bat, the glove, and last, not least, the ball. We are as glad to print these lines as theil! author was to write them. Their author is a high-school boy one of the ten million boys ex* cited at this minute over the new season. Wha future shall we prophesy for him? Will he write another "Casey at the Bat," or will he live to earn a bigger baseball salary than Tris Speaker's? [209] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS A BIT OF CONEY ISLAND IT was outside a show in Dreamland that you met that unusual barker. He was barking for the last show on the western tier the one next to the artificially continued infants. His show dealt with desperadoes. It revealed a gang of train robbers, dressed in striped suits, and doing an intricate lock step while they sang Sing Sing chanteys, such as convicts use at tea. Me- lodiously their voices rang out over the thunders of the scenic railway and the noise of many waters from the ever-bubbling chutes. There were six of these wild fellows who marked time and paced and halted in front of the ten-cent en- trance to their own show. Then, with a final roar of the chorus, they would foot it inside. Calm over the tumult, like Neptune exalted over stormy seas, stood the barker chanting his invita- tion to the ring of pleasure seekers. He said : This show is worth your attention. After a generous half hour with these jolly convicts, if you will come to me and state that the show has failed to please you, that it lacked ginger and uplift, I will place one dime, ten cents, in the palm of your hand. The show itself will exemplify to you how always the life of crime leads downward, how the wages of sin is death. It is moral. At the same time, it crackles with life and action. First, you will see these wicked men hold up a Southern Pacific express. Then comes retribution. [210] WE RELAX They are captured and clapped into prison. The next scene is the interior of the jail, where you will hear them singing their inimitable songs. Hence comes their name of Jail Birds. Now if you will pass inside the perform- ance will begin in just thirty seconds. His voice was rich and far-reaching. But the keen ear would glean that it was dead at the cen- ter. It sang out like a spent arrow the calm level flight of ennui. But never did his auditors diminish. Group after group heard him through his languid invitation. They listened almost rap- turously, and lingered after his lazily ringing tones had died out on the raucous air. Unwil- lingly they passed on to the impersonal Babies at the right or the Rocky Road to Cork on the left when the compelling barker turned his back on them all and followed the stock farmer and the rural lady inside. But it wasn't the voice of the man, or the words of the man, which threw a strange spell over each successive group. It was his imperturbable eye. It had the farseeing qual- ity which comes from practice on long remote horizons such far-flung sight as is the portion of sailors and plainsmen. It had the fearless scorn of one who could look into the barrel of a gun without wincing. He seemed to have found profound peace after a troubled journey. Surely here was a man who had killed his enemies in a fair fight without winking, whose speech was ironical. You wondered from what origins had [211] NATIONAL FLOODMAKKS come a person so much at home in life. Through what furnace of experience had he passed that the outer world seemed to him so cheap a byplay? ACROSS THE TABLE FROM MARSE HENRY THE high-browed Boston "Transcript" stim- ulated a round-up on the food question by disrespectfully defining potlicker as "the houn' dawg's ambrosia." This started them all up down in Kentucky till the matter came to the attention of Colonel Heney Watteeson of the "Courier-Journal," who shook his mane and de- livered an oracle, of which we can only quote one paragraph: Real potlicker, the only variety worthy of discussion, is distilled preferably in an iron kettle over wood fire from hog jowl and wild greens. It gets from the jowl the flavor of clover leaves and dew imparted to that part of the pig's anatomy during happy hours of grazing in rich pastures. There is also a suggestion of the fragrant leaves of sassafras bushes and the nutlike quality of flint corn. The commingled essences of wild greens dandelion leaves, lamb's quarter, "pepper grass," and a dozen other varieties with a bouquet added by the penetrant wood smoke that envelops the pot in which the greens caress the jowl, make the true potlicker of the South ambrosial to both the "houn' dawg" and the twins. That ought to settle the men of beans and pumpkins. What can a Bostonian know of food [212] WE RELAX anyhow, except from travel and hearsay? Who- ever yearned for the fleshpots of Memorial Hall, or made joyous pilgrimage to Washington Street's beaneries or to the Women's Educational and Industrial Union opposite the Common? The food of the South is real eating, food for men who have been on horseback most of the day, while Boston's merely carries over the cor- poreal entity from one deep thought to the next. Boston's sole contribution to the kitchen was Parker House rolls and they are gone forever. In the rich lands of the West, delivered from the tyranny of codfish balls and pie, New England cookery has become worth while. But Boston has a long way to go before pronouncing verdicts in these the higher arts. What is the best food region of the United States, and why? We do not live by ink alone. FOR THE GAME'S ACHE TWENTY years ago football was a game. To-day it is something else a technique, a show, a patriotism, a frenzy what you will, but it is not a game. At Princeton, then, for example, those who could not get on the college or class teams formed stray elevens of their own and played one another or contended against teams made up of active young fellows from [213] * NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS near-by towns. Some varsity material was de- veloped in these encounters, which were kept up through the winter until baseball began in March. These gladiators furnished their own clothing, were their own coaches and trainers, and played in the open fields for sheer love of the game. Be it remembered that these were the days when Princeton defeated Yale by the largest score ever made on the Blue, and that against an eleven led by the invincible Hinkey! The college student of to-day is smoother, more urbane, fonder of his bath and his profes- sors, an apter judge of fine linen. He shows no trace of the rough times that followed the Civil War, nor of the privations of the early and mid- dle nineties he doesn't know what "hard times" mean. Golf is his game. Football is something we flock to see exhibited as artificial as a four- teen-inch chrysanthemum. We of an older, more heroic age (our own) shake our heads and grumble especially when we can't get the neces- sary tickets. ROMANCE ON THE LINKS IN the amazing victory of our young amateur golfer, Ouimet, over the best professionals of Great Britain, Vaedon and Ray, are all the elements of an Oliver Optic novel. The boy who lives across the road from the links and [214] WE RELAX works there as a caddie, grows up to win an in- ternational championship over the same course, and caps his impossible achievement by telling his mother that he will be right home for dinner. How this lad has confounded the sociologists! Surely it is preposterous to dream that a French- Canadian could outdo the dogged pluck and res- olution of Englishmen at their own game and in their own weather. The French are notoriously a frivolous people, "fond of dancing and light wines," as the old geographies have it. Yet there is that name, Ouimet, staring us in the face ! It is indeed a wonderful world, and to the brave heart all things are possible. LEADING VS. DRIVING IN the reports of the "World Series" were recorded two incidents that go to the very heart of human relations. One is McGraw lavishing sarcasm on Marqtjard when he had foolishly pitched the wrong sort of curve to Ba- ker. The other is Mack sitting between innings by his boy pitcher, Bush, and putting into him the heart and confidence that enabled the kid to hold the Giants helpless. The contrast is ab- solute. Criticism in the wrong sense of the word, sarcasm and all other forms of abuse, may stir and rouse a man so that he will fight like a cor- [215] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS nered rat i. e., desperately. Method, discipline, authority, are all fine things and will accomplish much in the long run, but in the now-or-never time it is fatal to force a man's soul against itself. You must lead a man up and out of his own lim- itations to the heights of victory; you cannot curse him to that miracle. Heroism overthrows des- peration. The supreme achievement is to inspire a man so that he will surpass his best when more than his best is needed. Homer knew the secret of it; so did Garibaldi; so did Mike Murphy. SPORTSMANSHIP A YANKEE golfer has contributed an article to a London newspaper on "Games as Mathematical Problems," and one of the weekly reviews takes it as a text for preaching once more the fine old sermon on sport for sport's sake. Many an American subscribes to that theory of games and welcomes illustrations of it. Here is one from the history of cricket. A Philadelphia eleven visited England in 1884. One of the English players, Mr. G. F. Vernon, was declared out by the umpire, and took up his march for the "pavilion." But the man who was supposed to have caught him out his name was J. B. Thayer, and he went down with the Titanic announced that he had [216] WE RELAX not made a fair catch. This particular American was not "playing the game to win," but happened to be what every cricketer is supposed to be: a sportsman. Now baseball is a much livelier game than its British prototype; and the more intense a sport, the stronger are its temptations. These are, of course, all the greater when a man earns his liv- ing by play. Will the time come, all the same, when baseballers will consider their honor in- volved in actions on the field as well as in actions off it? In the last analysis, it may depend upon us fans. . . WORK AND PLAY THERE are times when one thinks that the only thing that really matters is making the essentials of life better for one's neighbors above all, perhaps, in working to right industrial and social wrongs. Everything else in our lives and most of the articles that go into the making of a magazine, and most of the words on these pages seems at such times froth, redundancy, trifling. And then one smiles in realizing that without redundancy and trifling, in word and ac- tion, we should never keep sane or whole; we should never understand or sympathize with fel- low mortals ; we should never be able to add our modest effort to the world's work. [217] XIII WE STOP AND THINK ROUTINE DON'T be utterly discouraged because you have to do the same job over and over again. Nature has been staging sunsets and sunrises for some eons now yet we remark no deterioration in their quality from year to year. DREAMERS AND SLEEPERS ON a suburban trolley car we met a pleasant faced butcher who ascribed his success in life to the fact that he sleeps soundly all the time he is abed, except sometimes for the first three minutes. Successful men in this world might be divided into two sorts the dreamers and the sleepers. The success of a nation de- pends indeed upon the right proportion being maintained between these two classes in the com- munity; if the sleepers achieve too complete a dominance, that nation becomes Boeotian in its stolidity and conservatism prosperous, perhaps, [218] WE STOP AND THINK in the things men buy and sell, but without lead- ership or initiative or beauty. If, on the other hand, your nation runs to dreamers and even your plodding clerks and butchers may dream o* nights instead of sleeping all but the first three minutes then, as the old-fashioned almanacs used to say, look out for storms, revolutions, up- heavals in art and letters, the invention of new forms of depravity, excess in everything except, perhaps, well-doing. It is a curious business, this matter of dream- ing. If we dreamers succeed we owe it to "su- perior imagination." If we ignobly fail we are visionaries and unpractical idealists and well- meaning theorists. The child is a dreamer; as we grow older and approach more closely the beasts of the fields or the king in his counting-room, counting out his money, the far- ther we get from childhood and from dreams. And yet it is only the imbecile or the hardened criminal that does not dream at all and this is not an editorial theory either, but science out of a book. THE SAMARITAN RELIGION THE Philadelphia "North American" has sent to a number of persons letters, the gist of which is the following questions : [219] NATIONAL FLOODMABK8 1. Does your observation of the present time lead you to believe that some sort of spiritual awakening, or up- heaval, or fresh expression, is impending or imminent? 2. If so, what form, in your judgment, is the revival, or experience, or manifestation, likely to take? Some of the answers published have been rather hectic, to say the least. But one, the letter of Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard University, is worth reproducing if only because it presents (in fewer words than any one else could put them) the state of mind of many Americans to-day: A new religious sentiment seems to me to be gradually spreading throughout the world, and especially among young people in the United States. It is a sentiment which takes small account of cere- monies, rites, sacraments, creeds, and dogmas, but inspires an enthusiasm for the service of family, neighbor, and society at large. Guided by the modern scientific spirit, this sentiment is developing a new kind of Christianity, based on the ethics taught by Jesus, and particularly on the command "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and the parable of the good Samaritan. In their youth fulness of spirit these three sen- tences are worthy of their author. Though Dr. Eliot's religion is not orthodox, it is sincere. Dr. Eliot is, incidentally, our candidate for the big- gest man now living in America. Hardly a week goes by but we get, out of some of his public [220] WE STOP AND THINK utterances or activities, a fresh conception of the loftiness and breadth of his view of our contem- porary civilization and the things that are need- ful for its richer development. THE SOUL NEW-FOUND BERGSON'S election to the French Acad- emy gave opportunity for the repetition of the fine phrase that the greatest of recent dis- coveries is not radium or flying, but the redis- covery of the soul. All honor to Professor Henri Beegson, and any number of green coats he likes but he is not the only discoverer of the soul. In a thousand places on the habitable globe men of late have been making precisely that discovery. A quarter of a century ago, when the great wave of German materialism was at its height, idealism seemed overwhelmingly buried, hardly showing a vestige above the flood. Souls were a dead and outworn fashion, a gro- tesque fancy of poets, fanatics, and divines. Our lives under the sun were merely a matter of cell growth, osmosis, and a set of chemical reactions. Haeckel, that master mind of fact, still lives to deny recognition to anything like an immor- tal soul, in the name of nineteenth-century science. But for all that, the wave has broken into an infinity of fragments. A thousand [221] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS watchers in a thousand places have rediscovered the soul and heard its voice in their own inner silences. Eucken in Germany and Bergson in France have made their voices heard above the din, and once again Psyche comes into her own. RESURRECTION MOST of us ought to be keenly interested in death, for we never have been really alive. We have never reached our height, never measured up to what possibilities are within us. The proof is a matter of common observation. A big company gets into serious business diffi- culties, and the officials, who had been fussy, vain, and pompous, become men again, call their subordinates in and plan the campaign so that every one goes out a hero to win. Like Kip- ling's gluttonous old Roman general, they be- come "young again among the trumpets." In flood time a telephone call may mean safety or destruction to many people, and a naturally care- less and flippant girl becomes a heroine, stick- ing to her switchboard all night to send the mes- sages through while a rising river gnaws at the building's foundations. Caught by a cave-in, a foul-mouthed old miner walks off into the gas to die alone so that his younger comrade may [222] WE STOP AND THINK have what air there is and the chance of getting back to his family. Some rough fishermen stranded on a perilous reef haul down their sig- nal of distress because they know that a small boat cannot live in that mad sea. So it goes year after year these people might easily be thought of as ordinary, dull, and mean, the com- monest human animals, but when the hour strikes life flames up within them and they rise to meet their fate with as calm a soul as one who goes to pick flowers in his mother's garden. What will this world be like when we get into the habit of living up to something near the best that is in us? DEATH THE ADVENTURE YEARS ago Maeterlinck wrote a poignant little drama, "The Death of Tintagiles." Yet the play never reached the stage in New York till the other day. Probably the chief rea- son is that death is therein symbolized as an in- exorable and frightful monster. And the world has come to esteem as more precious the poets and philosophers who have passed over the sin- ister side to dwell on death with resignation and even exultation. It is the true Easter spirit that Stevenson voices when he says of one who dies young: [223] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS In the hot fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land. Turn back a few centuries and listen to the similar note in John Donne's noble words: The sun is setting to thee, and that forever; thy houses and furniture, thy garden and orchards, thy titles and offices, thy wife and children, are departing from thee, and that forever; a cloud of faintness is come over thine eyes, and a cloud of sorrow over all theirs; when His hand that loves thee best hangs tremblingly over thee to close thine eyes, ecce Salvator tuus venit, behold then a new light. . . . Though in the eyes of men thou lie upon that bed as a statue on a tomb, yet in the eyes of God thou standest as a colossus, one foot in one, another in another land. There is a real bugle call of triumph in those four Latin words: Lo! thy Savior cometh! Browning over and over spoke of death as some thrilling hazard against which the brave soul may prevail. From Browning to Barrie seems a long step, but no one can forget how Peter Pan, in the play, summarized his conception of death. The rising tide was creeping up to him; he was told that he had to die. To die! he cried, and there was the thrill of anticipation in his voice ; to die! That'll be a pretty big sort of an adven- ture! [224] WE STOP AND THINK MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER A GREAT lesson for us all is that of the hu- man unity. The world-old tendency is to split off, to form ever-new groups and orders and combinations, to reject all those who will not subscribe to some formula or see life from some one point of view. This bent is encour- aged by the modern craze for specialization with its liking for specific societies for specific pur- poses. The result seems at times a wilderness of particularities ; no human beings left, nothing but crusaders for this or that, each rejecting the other man's accomplishment because it does not attain his end or meet the requirements of his private philosophy. The wisdom of this matter was stated some forty years ago by Benjamin Jowett, master of Balliol College, Oxford, in a letter to Sir Robert Morier, diplomatist: Don't let us complain of things or persons, or of the nineteenth century, or of the indifference of the country occupied in making money, but simply say to ourselves: "These are the things and persons through which and with which we have to work, and by influencing them or man- aging them or forcing them, the end must be attained or not at all." Why not paste this sentiment on your desk and live up to it? [225] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS THE WORLD IS YOUNG AGAIN THE central fact of our times is the spirit of faith and aspiration which youth has kindled in the world's great heart. Never was cynicism held cheaper than to-day. The nine- teenth century was an age of scientific conquest but spiritual depression. That century's more thoughtful poets Alfred de Vigny in "Moses," Matthew Arnold in "Obermann" and "Dover Beach" phrased a woeful sense of emptiness: The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round Earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. To a generation "brought forth and reared in hours of change, alarm, surprise," the world Had really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. Man's faith in man has been wonderfully re- stored since that era of jaded disillusion chiefly through action. For a generation we have rather illogically made a cult of force however di- [226] WE STOP AND THINK rected. Our only justification is this: a greater reverence for life, a finer ideal of service, a quicker enthusiasm for social progress, have re- newed the world soul and wondrously refreshed it. Men feel that Right is not forever on the scaf- fold. More disappointments are in store for us, but in the meantime we are grateful for this gift of courage for striving. GREED WHAT is that sickness of the soul called greed? Is it truly mastering us, as mor- alists and prophets have been telling us, or can we rid ourselves of it, at least gradually? Very evidently we are aware of the disease, which is surely the first step to its eradication. Sir James B aerie, in a powerful one-act play, called "The Will," that takes forty minutes to act, briefly tells the story of a young office clerk who comes to a lawyer's office to make a will. His youthful wife is weeping hysterically at the mere sugges- tion of any instrument so grisly and harrowing as a will. Success comes with the years, how- ever, and wealth in abundance, but all that was best and sweetest in the lives of that young couple has perished utterly and left two hard, cynical worldlings, mere shells of the souls that are dead. We go to see the play; we delight in it; we [227] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS applaud. We give high wages to Sir James for his work in writing it, and to John Drew for his work in acting out the play. That is to say, we want, we demand, this sermon, and we are ready to pay for it. We desire to be ever ad- monished to pause in our headlong career for wealth. Yet always the scramble con- tinues, the old point of view returns, and again, in Dante's phrase, Christ goes on being "daily bought and sold." What cataclysm, what social revolution, is needed to show us once for all how to turn our back upon greed? If the Socialists have a cure, let them, in Heaven's name, come forward. The trouble is that modern reformers talk like the old economists without allowing for the religious, the spiritual element, in human nature. Mankind are not economic or political machines not even Aristotle's "political ani- mals" but passionate beings with higher natures ever anxious to be guided upward. Sir James Barrie is a greater reformer than all politicians put together. But if only a man would arise who could make Sir James's preachment effective and really rid our lives of greed, really simplify them, he would be the great liberator whom all the world waits to acclaim. And yet that man is slumbering or stirring in the heart of each of us. [228] WE STOP AND THINK WINDS OF DOCTRINE SOMETIME before the war of many nations tumbled all things down into a chaos of intellect and instinct, George Santayana opened his book, "Winds of Doctrine," with these thought-engendering sentences : The present age is a critical one and interesting to live in. The civilization characteristic of Christendom has not yet disappeared, yet another civilization has begun to take its place. . . . Our whole life and mind is saturated with the slow upward filtration of a new spirit that of an emancipated, atheistic, international democracy . . . and a philosopher in our day, conscious both of the old life and the new, might repeat what Goethe said of his successive love affairs that it is sweet to see the moon rise while the sun is still mildly shining. . . . But how shall we satisfy ourselves now whether, for instance, Christianity is hold- ing its own? Who can tell what vagary or what compro- mise may not be calling itself Christianity? A bishop may be a modernist, a chemist may be a mystical theologian, a psychologist may be a believer in ghosts. For science, too, which had promised to supply a new and solid foundation for philosophy, has allowed philosophy rather to under- mine its foundation, and is seen eating its own words, through the mouths of some of its accredited spokesmen, and reducing itself to something utterly conventional and insecure. An example of science "eating its own words," of physics and chemistry, through an accredited spokesman, allowing philosophy to undermine the [229] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS supposed foundations, appears in the recent pres- idential address of Sir Oliver Lodge, F. R. S., before the British Association at Birmingham. The great physicist makes statements best un- derstood when one remembers that he has, for thirty years, followed with fascinated eyes the progress of "psychical research." The teachings of the pragmatists in philosophy Avenarius, James, and Bergson have not been without their effect upon the experimental scientist, who now declares that either we are immortal beings or we are not ; that we may or may not know our destiny, but must have a destiny of some sort; that those who deny are as likely to be wrong as those who assert; that, in fact, denials are mere assertions cast in negative form. Here are a few isolated sentences from what seems certainly a strange address for a man of science to be making before a strictly scientific body: Mysticism must have its place, though its relation to science has so far not been found. If the voices of Socrates and of Joan of Arc represent real psychical experiences, they must belong to the intel- ligible universe. The methods of science are not the only way, though they are one way, of arriving at truth. The prescientific insight of genius of poets and proph- ets and saints was of supreme value, and the access of those inspired seers to the heart of the universe was pro- found. [230] WE STOP AND THINK Is it indeed a scientist or a mystic poet, a Brit- ish Maeterlinck, who speaks thus? One stands confused upon the threshold of Truth's throne room. Intuition sits on the dais where skepticism once ruled so harshly. Science abdicates dogma, just as so many religious teachers have, and has turned amateur impressionist, along with all the arts including the art of the dance. Quite as substantial as Sir Oliver's address on "Continu- ity" is Alice Meynell's "Song of Deriva- tions " that commences : I come from nothing; but from where Come the undying thoughts I bear? Down, through long links of death and birth, From the past poets of the earth. My immortality is there. DESTINY DESTINY has two accepted meanings in the popular mind. For the man of will, the man who is going to succeed, it means to-day; to-day as the nucleus of to-morrow, and so on to the logical development of each day's meas- ured strength. To the man of no will power, who will probably never succeed, it means to- morrow; to-morrow in which he backbonelessly hopes and, while doing so, accomplishes merely [231] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS graceful feats on an inclined plane verging to- ward success. These alternative viewpoints stamp a man or woman. There are those who walk hand in hand with the present, who rec- ognize and greet destiny every day, snatching the best the moment has to give. Others have a vague idea that the present is simply a make- shift, not preparatory but precedent to some fate that awaits them in a beneficent future. This fate they believe will arrive with much the charm- ing unexpectedness of a fairy godmother. Their awakening is short and sometimes tragic by rea- son of their irresponsible optimism. Thus the conception of destiny in each individual mind be- comes the strength of man or the despair of man, his blessing or his curse. Destiny is to-day, this moment ; it is every act that is slipping into time, as well as the ultimate development of those acts. The very things that we encounter in seek- ing to avoid so-called destiny become destiny. TIME AMID all the welter of talk about the new year the pretty-pretty sentimentality, the ponderous preaching about good resolutions and swearing off one great fact remains. That is Time. Time passed, Artemus Ward once wrote; it's a sort of way Time has. Here is one [232] WE STOP AND THINK thing which no cynic has ever been able to deride successfully. Ideals, innocence, love, even death, have been targets, but no sneer has ever touched Time. On and on stalk the years the most in- exorable of marchers. Time treats all alike pugilist and debutante, king and gutter snipe. It plays no favorites. With each revolution the creeping minute hand puts one more hour be- hind. Perhaps it is well that no normal mind dwells on all this. It is better to realize that the marching morrows have their glories and in- spirations. What is past is past; but the future is always just ahead, and it is ours. WORRY CONCENTRATED thought is virtually irresistible. All the vast edifice of modern science and industry is obviously the product of thought, much of it of our own time and observa- tion. The birth of an idea in the human mind is clearly the one and only dawn of empires and revolutions, of engines, philosophies, trade routes, civilizations. To class worry under the head of thinking, therefore, seems a glaring sac- rilege. Yet worry is thought, for all that dis- eased, impure, adulterated thought. It means an admixture of emotion, of the worst of all the emo- tions fear into one's thinking. Instead of [233] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS concentrated, clear, serene thinking on the prob- lem in hand, worry is thinking, muddied black with fear. It is about as helpful as clapping the brakes upon wheels toiling uphill. Yet all the world is laboring under that Egyptian heaviness of the wheels, and almost every spirit is a spirit in the dark prison of fear. But once we grasp this truth clearly, once we convince ourselves that we can rid our thought of emotionalism, of fear, the day of our deliverance is at hand. There may be failures and backslidings, as is customary in all mortal effort and human endeavor. But fear is weakened like a choking thing, and more and more clear and unimpeded becomes our thinking. For we realize at last, once for all, that where thinking cannot help us, fear certainly will not. And then we have worry by the throat. [284] XIV THE LAND WE LIVE BY ONE AMERICAN FARMER WE who to-day preach the religion of the back-to-the-farm movement ought not to forget the delightful book entitled "Let- ters from an American Farmer," first published in 1782 and now made accessible to the general public in a low-priced reprint. The author of the letters was a Norman who came to America as a military engineer in the army of Montcalm ; his name was St. Jean de Creveccetjr, and he was naturalized as an American citizen under that of Saint-John. The style of the "Ameri- can Farmer," as he calls himself, is distinctly of its time, yet the book is certainly one of the three most valuable which we produced in that century, the others being Franklin's "Autobiography" and John Woolman's "Journal." Says Creve- cceue: When I go abroad it is always involuntary. I never return without feeling some pleasing emotion, which I often suppress as useless and foolish. The instant I enter [235] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS on my own land, the bright ideas of property, of exclusive right, of independence, exalt my mind. Precious soil, I say to myself, by what singular custom of law is it that thou wast made to constitute the riches of the freeholder? What should we American farmers be without the distinct possession of that soil ? It feeds, it clothes us ; from it we draw even a great exuberance, our best meat, our richest drink, the very honey of our bees. . . . This formerly rude soil has been converted by my father into a pleasant farm, and in return it has established all our rights; on it is founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens, our importance as inhabitants of such a district. ... It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no counts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of wealth. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. Conditions in America have changed, but the love of freedom remains. So do the pleasures of the farmer who mixes intelligence and senti- ment with his efficiency. The world is altered from century to century, decade to decade, but mankind changes less rapidly. If you ever en- joyed reading Thoreau or Ik Marvel or Rich- ard Jeffries, you will find your reward in mak- ing Crevecosur's acquaintance. One. of the cheerful facts about America to- day is the certainty that all our economic changes, now causing such unrest, tend to with- [236] THE LAND WE LIVE BY draw the unwholesome stimulus that factory life has had, and to restore and increase the number of persons who will possess their own small pieces of land and raise wholesome families upon them. . . WHEAT PRICES AND BREAD THE wheat in the hands of the American farmer is it to be seized by the Govern- ment to depress bread prices? That is practi- cally what an embargo on its exportation would mean. Before taking so unprecedented a step, even when suggested by Mr. George W. Per- kins and Mayor Mitchel of New York, it will be wise for the Government to stop, look, and listen. The farmers, as this is written, receive at their railway stations from $1.40 upward for their wheat. In Chicago May wheat has sold at $1.4114 after touching a point almost twenty cents higher. This should be considered by those who fix their eyes on the price of bread only. We have just weighed a "pound" loaf bought at the corner grocery. It weighed three-quar- ters of a pound in its sanitary wrapper. How much are city people paying for the bread in a bushel of wheat at this rate? Good milling will convert from 70 to 73 per cent, of the wheat into flour and we have good millers in the United States. A bushel will yield about forty-four [237] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS pounds of flour. Seven pounds of flour, ac- cording to the requirements of the best bak- eries, must yield nine pounds of bread, or fifty- seven pounds of bread to the bushel of wheat. This means seventy-six loaves of the size now sold in our neighborhood. Mayor Mitchel was justly concerned, for in New York City the loaf sold for some days at six cents. The city's poor were, therefore, paying $4.56 for the flour in a bushel of wheat! When the by-products are taken into account, the ultimate consumers are paying more than three times for their wheat what the farmer gets. If the Government will attend to the grocers, the bakers, the millers, the railways, the elevator men, the Board of Trade, and all the others who are getting more than $3 out of a bushel of wheat, and then stand before the farmer with proof that the pound loaf cannot be sold for five cents, the farmer will take his medicine. And not until then. For until the Government can do this, it cannot come with clean hands before the man who produced the wheat in the sweat of his brow. The best solution of what- ever wheat scarcity there may exist is to let only the law of supply and demand send up the price of wheat. Under such conditions the farmer will sow in wheat every available acre everywhere, fertilize it, care for it, garner it in, and place it on the market. [288] THE LAND WE LIVE BY DON'T LEAN AGAINST THE BREECHING IN our editorial "Wheat Prices and Bread" we pointed out the wide difference between farm prices and what the consumer pays. Mr. M. G. Nixon, a farmer of Waterford, Ohio, now writes that "sorted apples sold here last fall for from 25 to 30 cents a bushel; yet we are told to increase production as the greatest thing we can do to alleviate farming conditions." And the Jackson (Miss.) "News," commenting on a report that "potatoes selling on farms in Wis- consin for 25 cents a bushel cost $1.03 at retail in Chicago," adds: In Michigan live many farmers who get even less for potatoes. Many can't sell their spuds at any price, and are feeding 'em to the pigs. But in Chicago, a few hours' ride away, the price is half of the average man's daily wage; and while very many men aren't getting any wage, the price of spuds is steadily going higher. Of course everybody knows that this isn't a local but a widespread condition, applying to most food products and almost every large community; yet here's the queer part of it: Though everybody knows of it and is grouching about it, that old scoundrel, Nobody, corrects it. A few good souls are trying hard to bridge the chasm, but they aren't succeeding. The main reason why the farmers of this coun- try suffer so much from extortion is that they [239] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS fail to grasp the tremendous power that is within their reach. They have the sympathy of the great mass of consumers fellow victims of middle- men's greed and the law recognizes their right to organize and fight for their rights. All that farmers as a class need do to become far stronger than the biggest trust is to get together and pull together for their common cause, to put their shoulders to the hames of progress instead of throwing their weight against the breeching. THE BEST PLACE TO BE POOR A MICHIGAN woman is married to a man who came from a farm to Pontiac when he was fifteen years old and went to work for $2.50 a week. He makes $15 a week now, in an automobile factory; he has five children; his health is not good; he says that factory work is killing him; and the wife, who cooks for him and takes care of his children, says that at home he is "as cross as a bear." Although she has never lived in the country, the wife wants to go to a farm; and the young children "talk farm all the time." There is a pathetic irony in what the husband and father says when the issue is joined: "Now you just shut right up about a farm, because I have no intention of going to starve my life out on a farm." He tells his wife [240] THE LAND WE LIVE BY that she would be lonesome, that she would get sick of the farm. "Maybe I would," the woman says, "but it couldn't be worse than it is now it couldn't be as bad as this struggle to keep body and soul together on my man's wages." These two Americans of Pontiac have raised a question which is troubling their fellow Ameri- cans all over the country. What can I do to get away from the city? Can a city-bred man with a capital of $1,000 or less succeed on a farm? Where can I, a salaried man of thirty- seven, making $1,800 a year, go to find a farm? Doubtless there are some sophisticated souls who think these are humble questions. It is one of the fortunate facts about the future of this country that a regime like Woodrow Wilson's recognizes questions like these as being close to the foundations of statesmanship. WILL $1,000 DO IT? SOME weeks ago we asked if a city-bred man with a capital of $1,000 or less could suc- ceed on a farm. That the question is one of much popular interest is indicated by the num- ber of letters we have received in reply. While these letters are interesting, they do not make a sufficiently definite answer to the question. They tell of the cheap lands and the general advan- [241] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS tages of many sections of the country, and of the need for more and better agriculture. One writer says that professional men, clerks, and those untrained in farming make the best kind of farm- ers after they get started. Another writer says that in his section $1,000 "will go a long ways." Is "a long ways" far enough so he can go the rest of the way alone? We think it would be a great service if some one of our readers could describe with careful devotion to details just how it can be done. Remember, the man with the $1,000 is a city-bred man, lacking experi- ence with farm life. Take him from any city you please and locate him on a farm in any sec- tion you please with a reasonable assurance of a sound roof over his head, and food and clothes for himself and his family. Formerly, our best farmers started with less than $1,000 in most cases with less than $10. They were the Irish and German immigrants who went straight from the ship to work as hired men on farms. Out of the $15 or $20 a month they got in addition to their board they saved enough to buy a few acres of land. Is the city man of the present generation too weak in fiber, too infirm of purpose, too lacking in endurance and initiative for this process? [242] THE LAND WE LIVE BY DO YOU BELIEVE IN FARMING? LETTERS which have come to Collier's from those who have moved from the city to the farm are convincing on one point. Unless you take to the land a firm faith in its power to heal your harassed spirit, harden your muscles, and supply your table with plain and nourishing food, you had better not make the change. "There is more in the man than the land," a landowner who has many tenants in southern Georgia quotes. "I find that some of my tenants make money every year, regardless of the seasons, while others make money only in the favorable seasons." On another point agreement is not general: What is the best preliminary training for the man with a family and a capital of $1,000 or less who makes up his mind firmly to go to the farm? It is a point on which we should be glad to have more light. Should the city man work for wages on a farm while he is learning? Should he go to a rented farm for a year or more before in- vesting his capital in farming land? Or should he take the plunge at once, acquire a very small patch of land, plan a budget of living expenses which he can certainly supply for a limited pe- riod, and be his own boss from the beginning? What help can he get before he is ready to quit his job in the city? What books and bulletins [243] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS are worth getting? How can he get them ? What colleges and experiment stations can help him to decide upon the location and soil best adapted for the kind of farming he wants to do? Where can he get reliable figures on the price of land? You who believe in farming as a way out of the thicket of rising prices and inelastic wages, help us to answer these questions. THINK OF A $25,000 COW! HERE is another example of efficiency and devotion. May Rilma, an American-bred Guernsey be- longing to Major Edward B. Cassatt of Ber- wyn, Pa., has completed a year's test in which she has established a record for the production of butter fat 1,073.41 pounds, equivalent to al- most 1,300 pounds of butter. The ex-champions are Holsteins Colantha IV's Johanna, the property of W. J. Gilette of Rosendale, Wis. ; and a cow owned by F. F. Field of Brockton, Mass. ( Owners' names are worth repeating, too, for the human factor counts even in cow cham- pionships.) Nothing that experience or science can offer was neglected by the Pennsylvania cow's ambitious master. May Rilma has enjoyed absolute comfort: a roomy box stall kept clean; wide windows screened with muslin to prevent [244] THE LAND WE LIVE BY direct draft; a carefully groomed coat that any race horse might envy; an even temperature, as near 60 degrees as possible (no wasted effort in resisting cold or heat) ; a scientifically balanced ration of grain, vegetables, ensilage, and alfalfa the last two always before her, but removed from the racks at the end of the day and re- placed by fresh. Nothing has broken in upon her perfect peace. She has the absolute devo- tion of one attendant, who sleeps in an adjoin- ing box stall fitted up as a cell-like room. Here stands the stove that regulates the evenness of the winter temperature. No cow likes to change milkers. This one is milked (always by the same man) at eight-hour intervals: 4 a. m., 12 m., 8 p. m. And over and above earning for herself this luxurious living and paying for a quarter of one man's wage, she nets her owner an actual cash profit. After all, though, it wasn't only Major Cas- satt and Queen May Rilma who won out. Much credit belongs to Albert Van Tuinen, first gentleman in waiting, who did the milking. REALLY LIVING PIERRE LOTI has gone back to the old house in the shadow of the tomb of the Sultan Achmet, where the nightingales sing and [245] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS the sleepy fountain plays, and, although he speaks kindly of us, he doubts that he will ever visit America again. Some of the newspapers had a good deal of fun with the distinguished French- man. Reporters who saw him when he came up the bay stated that he blacked his eyebrows and "touched up" his complexion phenomena which were not observable when he sailed away. The same reporters would give their eyeteeth to write any one of a hundred chapters in Loti's books. Fashions have changed, to be sure. The velvet coat and flowing tie have gone out. The author now is a good citizen as well as artist, and lives, like enough, in a noisy apartment house. Our late visitor belongs to another generation. And if, in his middle age, it should please the author of "Pecheur d'Islande" and "Les Desenchantees" to wear a belt of shells or put feathers in his hair, like a red Indian, has he not earned the right? Loti was impressed with the tremendous "ac- tivity" of New York, but not so sure of the value of this hubbub in terms of the eternal veri- ties whatever they may be. And this is a com- ment, especially as it applies to our accomplish- ment in the art to which he has devoted himself, that is not so easily disposed of. There is plenty of clever writing in this country, but not much literature, and we think it safe to say that litera- ture is precisely what Loti has written, even if he appears to the average American a [246] THE LAND WE LIVE BY cranky esthete several centuries behind the times. Our always entertaining friend, the New York "Sun," which writes of "this town" in the quaint Queen Anne vein, and nobly endeavors to main- tain the illusion that New York is as much a place for people really to live in as the London of "The Spectator's" time, avers that a permanent establishment in the shadow of Achmet's tomb would be inconceivable for any New Yorker, however it may suit "an indolent fancy approach- ing the vanishing point." Mr. Loti's fancy may be indolent, yet he has produced a shelf- ful of novels and made himself one of the greatest descriptive artists of his time. New York is one of the most stimulating environments in the world, but something besides stimulants is needed for real living or the best work. For that purpose the sleepy fountain and the nightingale may be even more useful than the cold shower and the roar of streets. Emerson's is perhaps the most virile and authoritative voice that has spoken in America, and Emerson lived in a little New England village. THE GOOD FIGHT IS it, as most writers assume, much easier to be good in the country ? We doubt it. Morality is still a matter of the individual soul, not a by- [247] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS product of topography, race, or social position. The struggle against temptation is not over when you have attained a minimum wage, put some- thing in the bank, or bought a house of your own. Those who lose the fight against animalism lose it as disastrously in the most beautiful orchards and meadows as in the garish shadows of South Clark Street or Broadway. Other things help or hinder, but salvation is individual to-day just as it always has been. WOMAN'S "NEW FREEDOM" FALSE as a wig." That is the way a corre- spondent of ours disposes of an account of "The Breakdown" that Collier's published a few weeks ago. The letter is worth quoting: Have you any idea of moral conditions as they are in the average dull small town? Morals are personal. Eternal vigilance is the price of decency: keep boys and girls busy at something interesting. In a small town a lot of people sit round and stew in a slow, dirty, stupid mess of sexual corruption. Have you ever heard the talk in a small coun- try bar or barber shop? In the city men have to meet and overcome their job every day, and the blood must circulate in brains and muscles. The animal incidents of life are not so grossly in evidence. Have you read Zola's novel, "La Terre"? What you need chiefly to get hold of is the fact that there is a selective process going on in this world. Some [248] THE LAND WE LIVE BY go to the city to die (more or less slowly), but more go there to live. The girls of the city see the facts of prosti- tution more clearly than you writers; they know harlotry to be less a matter of champagne and fifty-dollar hats than one of helpless exposure to the beastly and brutal whims of the fellow who has the price. It means lingering death. Matrimony pays much better dividends. Working girls hang together in all ways: please notice the protective de- meanor they use when on the street. If allowed free effect the sentiment of the girls will force the "tough ones" out of the average factory or office. Ask any man who is fa- miliar with conditions in the telephone central offices of the large cities ten years ago and now. We are hindering sex oppression, and will make it in- creasingly difficult and dangerous, but we can never make empty sacks stand up. Women are, as your editorial on "The Breakdown" suggested, freer now to live their own lives and to make their own choices. They are less and less under tutelage and guardianship. We thank our critic for pointing out the brighter side of this brand of the "New Free- dom." He exaggerates his point, but is justi- fied in urging that the towns and villages have no monopoly of virtue. The city's test consists in cruelly seeking out one's weaknesses weak- nesses that might have gone unsuspected and undeveloped at home, on farm or in village. The young man or young woman who has purpose and self-respect, and something beyond that an idealism that has assumed many forms, but always makes for character need not fear the city. It is the drifter who throws up her arms [249] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS and goes down in mid-channel. But the drifters are many, and they do not always realize their own impotence. QUALIFICATION OUR remarks on being good in the city and the country were thought, by at least one reader, to have an odd ring after what we have iterated and reiterated in comparison of the two for the last decade. Perhaps we ought to be more explicit. What we meant was that high enough individual resolve could not be thwarted by any environment. Of course, to the normally constituted, Nature and the beauty of the coun- try have a tendency to inspire and purify. Sages and poets alike have recognized this. Old Abra- ham Cowley, hymning rural joys, voiced the selfsame thought: Well then: I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree; And they, methinks, deserve my pity, Who for it can endure the stings The crowd, the buzz, and murmurings Of this great hive, the city. I should have then this only fear, Lest men, when they my pleasure see, [250] THE LAND WE LIVE BY Should hither throng to live like me, And make a city here. It was Ruskin who spoke of mountains as the great maker of nobility. And Wordsworth's whole philosophy is rooted in the way Nature is eternally aiding mankind to be good : Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; . . . well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. If anyone ever wrote thus of the city, we can- not now recall it. OPPORTUNITY WHEN J. Sterling Morton began life on a Nebraska homestead he built his house with his own hands. He was a college graduate and the son and grandson of men with intellectual occupations. The young wife who did the cooking in the house had a similar culti- vation and ancestry. In this home Morton had the career which ended in a Cabinet office, and raised a son who was also a Cabinet member. [251] NATIONAL FLOOD MARES What young couple is so poor to-day that such a home is beyond them, granted the willingness to work with their hands and granted that edu- cation and city life have not made them effemi- nate? Granted the same endowment of charac- ter and mind, a career of equal dignity and ful- fillment is as possible to-day. Much so-called social reform is governed by a spirit which puts the mark of intolerable burdens upon those con- ditions which call out initiative and hard work. Most of the city dwellers, whom the reformers seek to mark as objects of pity and governmental solicitude, could cure many of their own ills by a thirty-mile walk into the country. A wholesale exodus of the kind would do much to restore the economic balance, solve the question of the unem- ployed, and mend most of the troubles about which Socialists and philanthropists lie awake. It would insure generations of clean bodies and sound minds, just as surely as keeping them in the city, coddling them there, and putting pre- miums on the absence rather than the presence of initiative and self-reliance, will breed a poor race. Says Debs, the Socialist candidate for Presi- dent: "Had Lincoln been born in a sweatshop, he would never have been heard of." Had Lin- coln's ancestors, or Lincoln himself, been of the lax fiber which sticks to the sweatshop because of the light, the crowds, and the steam-heat, prob- ably they never would have been heard of. But [252] THE LAND WE LIVE BY they had the self-reliance and self-sufficiency which make the more solitary life of the farm en- durable. Any sweatshop worker can give his children much more than Lincoln's start by a two days' walk in the country and a self abnega- tion sufficient to deny himself Coney Island and the corner saloon. CORN ONE ear of Pascal corn has been sold for $150. The grand sweepstakes ear of corn at the National Corn Exposition at Chicago last year sold for $250. To the farmer the dif- ference between good seed and bad means a profit in the bank or another year of nose to the grind- stone. Of 7,978 cars of corn sold on the Chicago Board of Trade last June, 4,332 more than half were "low grade." The corn-belt farmer should be ashamed of this. The American oat crop has so degenerated that the breakfast-food makers lack raw material. It is all a matter of good seed. County and State fairs give $2,000 in prizes for trotting horses, and $10 for ears of corn. The National Corn Exposition, to be held at Omaha, December 9-19, will give a $500 prize for the best bushel of corn seventy ears and a $410 prize for the best twenty ears. Good seed is corn that has vitality to resist disease and [253] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS drought, rich in the oils and protein that make the layers of lean in bacon. It takes as much land and hoe-wear, as much horse-sweat and el- bow-grease, to grow poor corn as the best. THE CONNECTING LINK THAT back-to-the-land idea is going to be- come a reality if certain energetic people have their way. A number of highly qualified men and women are organizing the National Forward-to-the-Land League to bring together the man, the money, and the land. All the de- tailed information now on file in the Federal Departments of Labor and Agriculture is to be made directly available by means of a clearing house for such data in New York City. The league's purposes are : To give the man without a cent a chance to earn the first payments on his farm; to give the man who has no knowledge of farming a scientific training; to help men to help themselves. This work of hitching up is just what has been needed, and we believe the league will be a real factor in building up the United States. [254] XV MONEY TALKS THE TACTICS OF THOMAS AS a man and a brother, Tom, we like you. You are more generous and more amus- ing, have more the light and wonder of the circus and the stage, than anyone else who plays with us. For the exuberances of your likable personality, upon any sub- ject from China to Peru, this paper has an engulfing welcome. It's only when you approach us weaving masks of flying ticker-tape that we have misgivings. Of course we knew, when you asked to jab pens with us, that you were going to revel in the chance to tell our read- ers about the wonder of your tips on the market. And when we were guileless enough to practice that trite evasion of "pressure on our space," of course, you knew we meant that we didn't like the role of introducing you to a good many thousands of depositors in savings banks. Equally, of course, you knew that an appeal to fairness was the weapon for the opening we left. There won't be any bill for the advertising, Tom; [255] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS on the contrary, you shall have a check at some- thing more than our usual rates. But we hope the glamour of your personality won't daze our readers, nor your Anaconda eloquence lead them into the very quicksands out of which you prom- ise, some day, with that mysterious "Remedy," to lead them. DON'T BUY! HAVE you bought mining stocks? Sell them. Offer them back to the man who sold them. Offer them at the same price. Offer them at ten per cent less. Offer them at twenty per cent less. This will accomplish your own disillusionment, and save you money, for you might have bought more. It will also effect ex- posure of the person who sold you the stock. Are you thinking of buying shares in Poodle-dog Inflated or Hoptoad Jump Along? Don't. And this "don't" is without qualification of any kind. To women chiefly, wives of husbands of the higher wage-earning class, this paragraph is com- mended. Not that it is their folly we inveigh against. They are the ones who know the value of savings, and they may be in time to save a fatuous husband from an act of inexcusable folly. If you are tempted by the full-page advertise- ments published by the newspaper partners of [256] MONEY TALKS mining swindlers, don't! If some acquaintance is urging you to buy shares, he either profits by the sale or is himself deceived. Daniel Guggen- heim is the greatest miner in the world. He and his six brothers own mines that aggregate a bil- lion dollars. That family knows more about mines than most of the rest of the world com- bined. The other day Mr. Guggenheim uttered a solemn warning against "the flimsy character of the mining stocks now finding a ready market." "One in three hundred," he said, "is a conserva- tive estimate of the proportion of prospects that eventually fulfill their promise." Within a week after he uttered that warning Mr. Guggenheim made public announcement that he had himself been caught. He had bought a famous and widely talked-of mine; and when he discovered he had been deceived, he backed out of the trap at a cash loss of $2,500,000. When Mr. Guggenheim said one in three hun- dred, he referred to the more or less reputable mines whose shares are sold on the regular ex- changes. If he had included the mines whose shares are advertised at five and ten cents in the Sunday papers, he would have said one in thirty thousand. If this paragraph prevents the swin- dling of a few uninformed persons, preserves the savings of a few families from the adventurers about to acquire them, it will have done well. [257] NATIONAL FLOODMARK NATIONAL AND STATE FINANCE WE are now witnessing an event which is sure to follow the close of each and every Congress: a confused row as to how much money- was spent, who spent it and why, and what our future national financial situation will he. There is no standard form of report, and it is no simple matter to compare the spending of each Congress with that of its predecessors; so the argument becomes very involved. The experts exclude and include and make allowances and come triumphantly to the end that they had in view from the first, viz., that one party is right and the other wrong, that Congress did well and that the Executive did badly, or vice versa. Now all this is mere partisanship. It may be that Democrats are congenitally economical while Re- publicans are chronically extravagant, or the re- verse, but the one sure fact is that no one knows. No one is responsible for the Government's ac- counts. There are no accounts. To be sure, there are plenty of records of different sorts kept by the different departments and bureaus in different places and using various methods, but there is no one set of accounts in which all the figures are summed up, and there is no gen- eral auditor responsible for such summaries. If a board of directors (or receivers) tried to get a [258] MONEY TALKS view of our national finances as a whole they would very likely go crazy. It is worse than idle to blame parties when businesslike organization is what is needed. Congress will be in money troubles as long as it appropriates money by a mass meeting of some five hundred-odd men, each of whom is interested very keenly in getting certain specific amounts spent, while only a few have any but a lip interest in economy. No rail- road, factory, or other enterprise could keep sol- vent if it followed this course. The same is true of the States which use the same obsolete methods, and the condition resulting is shown in the recent absurd argument as to whether New York State did or did not need a new $18,000,000 tax levy. THE NEXT STEP AND yet our National and State Govern- ments prescribe very good systems of ac- counts for railroads and other public utilities, and enforce their observance. Public opinion must be brought to bear to compel our governments to do the same thing for themselves. At present the average voter hears these huge figures hurled back and forth, and gets only a disgusted im- pression that both sides are juggling the facts for campaign purposes. This condition is in- [259] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS tolerable. Public opinion rules our country in the end, but it cannot rule well unless it knows. It is important that we know how the railroads get their money and what they do with it, but it is vastly more important that we know clearly how our governments get their money and whether it is well spent, because the power to tax is arbi- trary and its exercise is too often indirect. What a storm there would have been in New York State if the public utilities had proposed to raise their rates by $18,000,000 in one year! Tax in- creases are not so keenly contested because of the vagueness surrounding the whole matter. The only way to get our work of government on a solid basis of merit is to have clear records showing and comparing the operating facts from one administration to the next. This can be done by adopting the much-discussed budget sys- tem and by prescribing governmental accounts. It will be done only when it becomes impossible to continue the present haphazard condition, for politics gets very little nourishment out of sound accounting. The problem is being persistently studied, and its solution can only be delayed, not prevented. Responsible finance is the next great step in giving the American voters control of their government. [260] MONEY TALK S ANY CURE FOR TAX EATING? WE commented last year on the way in which Mr. A. V. Donahey, Auditor of the State of Ohio, attempted to get the facts as to Ohio's finances into the hands of her citizens. It appears now that this attempt was decidedly successful. The 1912 report contained some 900 pages of endless detail, and less than 50 copies were requested out of an edition of 1,200. The 1913 report was boiled down to some 250 pages of usable information, and an edition of over 11,000 copies was exhausted. This shows how to interest people in the actual results of their government, and the lesson is clear for every State and city that has sense enough to use it. But Mr. Donahey is not satisfied. His clear- cut figures prove only too well that the tend- ency in Ohio, as elsewhere, is to swell the gov- ernmental activities, to hide costs in indirect taxes, and to multiply expenditures. The show- ing of specific facts is unanswerable. Is there any remedy? Critical, constructive publicity of the sort that Mr. Donahey's work supplies is the first requisite. The second is, probably, to have the State body responsible for raising money (preferably such a body as the Wisconsin Tax Commission) given some sort of limiting power in respect to spending money. [261] NATIONAL FLOOD MARKS WHERE THE MONEY GOES MR. BRYAN, in his "Letters to a Chinese Official," describes as the "crying evil of the Western World" the fact that "we have al- lowed capital to absorb more than its share of the products of human toil." Stated thus baldly, this is one of the assertions which conservatives look upon as radical and demagogic. Yet many cases seem to prove it. To capital the posses- sion of any sort of public franchise has always meant more than the most fabulously rich gold mines. It is the commonest saying in the vicinity of mines that more money has been put in, in the way of fruitless prospecting and the like, than has ever been taken out. But rare, indeed, is the holder of a public franchise who has failed to make profits beyond all ordinary rates. It has been estimated that a man who, in the early nineties, subscribed to one share of stock in Mr. James J. Hill's Great Northern Railway and has kept it ever since has made, in the intervening fifteen years, in cash dividends and stock divi- dends and "privileges," a profit of over nine hun- dred per cent. The best that could have been done by a workman on Mr. Hill's railroad, who put his earnings in a savings bank for the same period, would be less than one hundred per cent. Mr. Fobbest F. Deyden, a son of the President [262] MONEY TALKS of the Prudential Insurance Company, stated under oath that one of the owners of that com- pany who, in the late seventies, paid in, in cash, $2,200, had made a profit, twenty-five years later, of $327,163.60. The rate of profit in this case is 14,800 per cent a rate which must seem colossal to the policy-holder who has taken advantage of the savings feature of that company and bought an endowment policy. For the policy-holder has never received as much as four per cent. A FINE THING RECENTLY a young and successful banker withdrew from his firm to accept an ap- pointment as an assistant in a department in our oldest university. The banking career, of course, would have been vastly more remunerative, in money. Moreover, the bank was a family institu- tion, and there was every inclination of pride and tradition against leaving it. It strikes us as a fine thing to have done. Possibly we would all be better off if business in this country were less remunerative as compared with other ca- reers. If business did not offer a reward so vastly greater in money, young men choosing their careers would feel more free to follow their natural talents toward the arts or toward other careers. One of the most successful bankers in [263] NATIONAL FLOODMARES the United States would have been a very great musician if he had felt free to follow his tastes. In spite of the disparity of the money rewards, more and more men are realizing that money is not to be weighed against what President Eliot once called "the durable satisfactions of life." Among these durable satisfactions, congeniality of work is one of the most important. THESE ALTERED TIMES A LOT of us get discouraged with the United States because we do not keep up with it. We hold in our minds some depressing fact or conclusion, and never stop to find out whether or not it is still true. For example, a good many politicians and some editors keep harping away on the assumption that all business men must be carefully watched and regulated lest they "do" the community for their own benefit. Of course the professional Jeremiahs are fact proof, but the amateurs ought to note a certain change now going forward. The editor of a na- tional coal-trade journal expressed the matter very well when he pointed out that a few years ago "we simply gave the news of the trade, some personal items, a few editorial paragraphs, and the like" but that nowadays his readers want practical suggestions on such points as these: [264] MONEY TALKS "How can I give better service? How can I re- duce costs ? How can I please the public better?" No doubt some of our bright young journalists will be able to prove that a malign purpose must animate anyone who asks such questions, but the editor quoted above claims that his readers "are eager not to fleece the public, but to give more value, more service for a dollar, than ever be- fore." The coal trade is not alone in this. Everyone who follows the numerous business and profes- sional conventions that are held all over our country every year must note that these are very serious affairs, held primarily for the exchange of useful ideas, and that social and other forms of enjoyment are now altogether secondary. The hard-drinking business getter is not what he used to be. The modern method is to analyze the customer's real needs and then sell him what he really wants not what he can be wheedled or bamboozled into buying. The effort of the normal trade or professional journal is to in- crease the usefulness of those reading it. With all its faults, ours is an age of progress, and much of it is progress toward service and justice. It has been very well and truly said that the promise of the twentieth century is not to entertain peo- ple nor to move them to tears or laughter, but to persuade them to understand. [265] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS THE BASIS OF BUSINESS J P. MORGAN once testified that to him character was the bottom fact in busi- ness; that he trusted a man and dealt with him primarily on that basis. This aroused a great deal of carping comment, but it always seemed plain to us that Morgan knew what he was saying. And now we find the "Wall Street Journal" predicting the coming of a great re- ligious revival as one result of the European war, and insisting that this possibility is of infinite concern to business men. The "Journal" believes that nine-tenths of the evils from which business suffers can be ended by religious feeling, though beyond the reach of law. Religious faith is a "better remedy and a better promise for future business managed under the best standards of honor and humanity than anything Congress can enact or the Department of Justice can enforce." This is the final truth about our trade and indus- try, and it is most clearly seen and surely held by those who know most about business. OUR OWN WALT MASONRY SAID Farmer Hicks: "You want to know just what my feelings are for this new- fangled thingumbob that's called a motor car? [266] MONEY TALK S Well, friend, I'm glad to tell yer: I may be out of style, but, anyhow, there's just one thing that always gets my bile a-bubblin' like thunder, and that's the way folks talk, from down in San An- tonio clear over to New York, about their pesky autos, and all such stuff as that how much they cost, how well they run why, I can tell you flat, I wouldn't give an old straw lid or pair of cast-off boots for one o' them contraptious, smelly, gasoline, galoots." Hicks made these wise remarks of his about a year ago, but when I met him yesterday he hollered out: "Hello, old friend, come here a minute. I want to have you see the auto I've been running. There ain't but two or three in all this State or county that have the consarned crust to try their speed with me. No, sir! They have to take my dust. There ain't a niftier little car in all this town than mine; she does just what I want her to, the same in rain or shine. She's slick as any whistle ; she's steady and she's strong. Those folks who till knock autos are in all-fired wrong. I've saved more time, I've made more cash, I've had more fun by far, than in my fifty years of life before I owned this car. If any mossbacks doubt my word, they'd better stow their kicks, go buy a car and learn the truth as sure as my name's Hicks 1" [267] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS TIGHT-WAD LAWMAKERS UP in Boston the electric light company is modern enough to construct some buildings for the welfare of its employees. These buildings are permanent improvements such as will be use- ful for many years to come. The company's finances are later passed upon by the Board of Gas and Electric Light Commissioners, which is set up to look after the public interest, and these bumbles turn out the following verdict: The board sympathizes with every humane effort of a company in behalf of its employees, and recognizes that its extent must depend upon circumstances not readily de- fined. But when directed beyond suitable provision for the health and safety of the employees, and if so substan- tial in amount as to tend to add an extra burden to the consumer or to take from the stockholder the full measure of his right to a fair return, the representation of such expenditures in permanent capital becomes of doubtful propriety. Stripped of its hot air, this means that the board approves welfare work provided it doesn't cost anyone very much. These commissioners, in denying that the apparatus for such work is a proper part of the capital of a public utility, sim- ply show that they do not know what the welfare movement means in health, happiness, efficiency, permanence of employment, and, therefore, bet- [268] MONEY TALKS ter service to the public. It is unfortunate that the question of building or not building could not have been put squarely up to the commissioners for decision. Their statement has that unpleas- ing note of expediency without responsibility which is characteristic of the sham regulator. But the betterment of conditions will go on just the same, for the people are backing it, though the politicians are not. WHAT UNEMPLOYMENT MEANS MEN out of work drift into our big cities as casually and normally as water drains downhill. It's the last place they ought to come, but that is what they do. Probably they think, somewhat blindly, that it's the best place to hide during a period of hard luck. The problem then becomes visible and organizations are formed to solve it. The situation does not call for this sort of special effort, nor charity or relief of any sort, but for certain changes in the way in which the work of modern communities is carried on. Our industries are very largely run in close connec- tion with the markets which they supply. The output is adjusted as market conditions change; the ablest and shrewdest men try to see into the future and to anticipate it, with the result that the amount of day's work available in a given [269] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS town at any time fluctuates enormously. Along with this has grown up the notion that labor is an article to be bought or not bought as needed. Now, the unemployment problem means that men have come to look at the work of a commun- ity as a matter of making salable goods rather than as a matter of serving the community's life. The way out is to get the men in immediate eco- nomic authority to plan for spreading work through the entire year, and for distributing slack time instead of lumping it, so that our in- dustries will be more nearly continuous. If this can be done, a vast deal of unemployment will disappear for good. New York City has made a start on this through the appointment of the Mayor's Committee on Employment, headed by the chairman of the United States Steel Cor- poration. The men composing it are mostly of- ficials in large companies, and any action which they may take can be put into effect by means of the regular operations of industry instead of by temporary and artificial makeshifts. As Mr. Henry Bruere, the originator of the plan, has pointed out, it may be necessary to supple- ment this with some form of labor insurance, but the first step in preventing unemployment is to regularize industry. New York's experience will be watched with interest. [270] MONEY TALK S MOBILIZING FOR FOREIGN TRADE? IN an address at Philadelphia, Secretary of Commerce Redfield gives out this statement as to the possible future of our country's foreign trade: No one, I think, would be surprised to find the United States second in the world's competition, nor, if the war shall long continue, be astonished to find her first. It depends, of course, not merely on what is destructively done yonder, but on what is constructively done here. If we are willing to lay aside passion and prejudice and par- tisanship, to look at things with an international instead of a parochial viewpoint, to realize that effectiveness is patriotism and that inefficiency is unpatriotic; if we are ready to give up inertia and take a step forward out of ourselves to the help of others; if we remember that com- merce is mutual exchange to mutual benefit and not a spe- cies of industrial war; if we can learn the lesson that the well-paid workman is the cheapest producer and that science must be applied to industry if we are to win: if these things can be done, I see no reason why, with our resources and intelligence and organization, we may not become the first among the world's great trading nations. This is good, but incomplete. Secretary Red- field might have told us more definitely what he means by "organization." In Europe it has meant the active use of governmental power to strengthen those working to enlarge a given country's foreign trade. It has meant permitting and encouraging certain forms of business com- [271] NATIONAL FLOODMABKS bination for which, in the United States, the Gov- ernment tries to put men in jail. The prelimi- nary work of the Federal Trade Commission makes this contrast very clear. Chairman Davies of this commission made an address at Chicago while Secretary Redfield was at Philadelphia, and had a good deal to say about these European "cartels," as they are called. It seems that Eu- ropean governments permit these organizations to fix prices, control output, and divide territory in domestic as well as in foreign business, and Chairman Davies made the significant remark that "it would be a confession of unfitness if this country should be unable to meet conditions such as these in international trade." This, from an ex-secretary of the Democratic National Com- mittee, comes close to indorsing the economic teachings of Mr. George W. Perkins and the Progressive party. Thus it becomes more and more evident that much of our trade develop- ment must wait upon the determination of our Government's basic economic theory regarding the control of such business. The European method is not likely to change, and ours must meet the resulting conditions. Secretary Redfield and Chairman Davies must come to an agreement if the United States is to have a policy that will get foreign trade. [272] XVI WHAT ABOUT BOOZE? THINK IT OVER IF there were no whisky in the United States nor any other liquor except beer, would there be a prohibition movement? If no saloons sold any beverage except beer, would there be an antisaloon movement? The brewers of the United States ought to think long and hard on these two questions. INCOME ONE thousand dollars a day is a fairly good income. It is the calculated return from the estate of a Missouri brewer. Now, what every tradesman or manufacturer accumulates in this life he must get from someone else ; and un- less he gives value received, he is not, no matter what his benefactions, a truly good citizen. Pon- derable arguments may be advanced for tolerat- ing St. Louis beer, but what about whisky and its makers? Can any thoughtful or well-mean- [273] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS ing man hand down to his children a fortune founded on other people's waste and debauchery without a sense of shame? Can his wife and children be happy in a prosperity capitalized, to their knowledge, out of their neighbors' weak- nesses? This drink problem is intricate, indeed. But it is most distinctly a social problem, and must be solved by the exercise of that social spirit born of civilization. CAUGHT GARBLING is the pettiest form of literary chicanery. The sorry pirates who practice it generally escape detection through their ob- scurity ; but occasionally one is caught in the act, as in the instance of the "News and Register- Tribune" of Roswell, N. Mex. In its zeal for the liquor interests, this newspaper quotes, giving credit, an editorial from Collier's, which it heads, "Lincoln no Prohibitionist," and which has been used as campaign material by the sa- loon politicians of the State. The quotation is accurate except that it omits one brief but signifi- cant passage. From its mutilated form the reader might well derive the impression that Collier's was exploiting Lincoln as an out-and- out advocate of the whisky party. He could hardly have supposed this had the newspaper [274] WHAT ABOUT BOOZE? misquoter not carefully blue penciled the follow- ing sentences : Abraham Lincoln believed drink to be probably the greatest single curse upon the earth. How it should be decreased was a question of reason and experience. If he lived to-day our guess is that he would, like most wise men, approve of prohibition in certain neighborhoods, condemn- ing it in others. Such was our guess then; such it still is. And, for a further surmise, if the liquor advocates in New Mexico have so bad and weak a cause that they must serve themselves by such disreputable journalism as that of the "News and Register- Tribune," that State would, in our opinion, be one of the localities in which Lincoln would be found in the Prohibition ranks. TIMES DO CHANGE! KEEPING guns and going skating, one shilling. That was the fine Harvard Col- lege imposed by way of discipline as late as 1750. What was the fine for dancing, one wonders? Nowadays even the "modern" dances are taught to Harvard students in the college "gym." Some of the other eighteenth-century penalties are listed by Mr. A. S. Pier in his diverting book, "The Story of Harvard": [275] NATIONAL FLOODMABES t. d. 9. d. Going out of college Lying, not exceeding 1 6 without proper Going on top of the garb, not exceed- college .......... 1 6 ing . . 6 Refusing to give evi- Playing cards, not dence 3 exceeding 5 .. Drunkenness, not ex- ceeding ......... 1 6 As the cartoonist notes, "Those were the days !" But to-day college authorities regard drunken- ness ("not exceeding one shilling sixpence") as considerably more offensive than playing cards ("not exceeding five shillings"). Even colleges grow more intelligent, it seems. HELPS TO COLLEGE TEMPERANCE APATHETIC old graduate, signing him- self '89, has written the Yale "Daily News" a poetic exposition of the contempt which, in his opinion, former Yalensians have for the present undergraduate body. The "high point" of the piece is its melancholy recollection of the good old days When rolling down to Mory's The sweatered seniors came, Roaring with booze and victory After the Harvard game. [276] WHAT ABOUT BOOZE New Haven's latter-day degenerates are ac- cused of drowning their numerous athletic de- feats in tea. There are things too deep for grief, as another poet has said, and no doubt "roll- ing down to Moby's" was a notable stage in the development of Connecticut civilization. It oc- curs to an unsympathetic bystander that Haugh- ton, Wbay, and the other Harvard coaches might very well be described as the men who took the ale out of Yale. More power to them! There are many ways of cutting out the drink at our colleges, and any method which does the work is a good thing for the future of the country. DECADENT DRINKERS OUR drinking population has become fear- fully decadent. Men used to be willing to battle for the drinking privilege. Once the dis- tillers could count on an unbreakable phalanx of booze fighters at the polls, shouting "Personal liberty forever !" and full of the thing for which they voted. Those good days are over. The bartender in these degenerate times listens un- protestingly to prohibition conversation from serried ranks of lips moist with the aromatic cock- tail and the cool highball. More horrible still, the barkeep sometimes drops a remark showing that he is himself a "prohib" in sympathy. The [277] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS average drinking man either does not care a con- tinental whether prohibition carries, or plumps his vote for it. Antisaloon sentiment has broad- ened tremendously. Nobody can be counted on to respond to the old wet slogans, simply because the number of Americans who feel any deep in- terest in their grog has diminished until it is practically confined to the more recently arrived foreign element and to certain groups with whom drinking is a cult. Once Emerson expressed re- gret at the fact that certain great lights of Eng- lish literature were frequenters of drinking places and passed their leisure hours in orgies therein. "Don't be distressed," said Lowell. "No doubt their standards of inebriety were miserably low !" From the standpoint of the rum interests, that's the trouble with a large and important part of our drinking population. Drinking is no longer, as Haeey Laudee would say, a "geeft," and considered as a talent, even, it is becoming rare. The old thirst isn't what it used to be. DROPPING A PARTNER PENNSYLVANIA is in the grip of a lively local-option campaign. Local option in a State containing two very large cities and a great number of small ones is far from meaning pro- hibition, yet the liquor interests fight local option [278] WHAT ABOUT BOOZE? quite as if the two things were synonymous. No- where in America has the alliance between cynical business interests and corrupt politicians with their booze-dealer connections been closer. So it is peculiarly interesting to see how big busi- ness lines up in the local-option fight. Philadelphia has large locomotive works and shipbuilding yards; where do their directors stand? Alba B. Johnson, president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, goes so far as to say that "no manufacturer can consistently advo- cate measures for continuing the sale of liquor while discriminating against men who use it, as the majority of employers of labor do." (We quote the "Public Ledger.") An officer of the Cramp Ship and Engine Building Company notes the development of employers' liability legislation and declares that so many industrial accidents result from drinking that large employ- ers of labor may soon have to refuse to give work to any drinking man. The general manager of a great manufactory of plumbers' supplies says: "Our company has not suffered greatly from the use of liquor among employees because we have weeded out the alcoholically inclined. We had to, because in a factory filled with flying wheels and exposed belting the worker who is not alert is in great danger of being injured." These are samples from interviews with the employers of that one city. They all point the [279] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS same way. This liquor business is no longer solely a moral issue; it involves efficiency and self-protection. Of the partners in Pennsylvania big busi- ness, politics, and booze one member is going to be dropped from the firm. POETIC JUSTICE ACCORDING to Mr. Thomas Dreier of Cambridge, Mass., when a man is found drunk in the streets of Copenhagen he is placed in a cab, taken to the police station, examined by a doctor, and then sent home in the cab. Next morning the bill for the doctor and the cab is sent to the publican who served the victim with his last drink. This is all very well, but our smart lawyers would make short work of such a statute. They would prove: First, that the man was in a twi- light state of illness ; second, that he had had an- other drink later; third, that the barkeeper was trying to sober him; fourth, that the fine amounted to an unconstitutional confiscation of property; and fifth, that two commas were mis- placed in the roundsman's report of the affair. That cab-and-doctor plan may work very well in Copenhagen, but the United States is dif- ferent. [280] WHAT ABOUT BOOZE THE WHOLE STORY FOR a complete statement of cause and effect, you cannot beat this headline in the New York "World's" account of one of these modern road-house and roadside killings: DRUNK UP BY AUTO PARTY BEFORE GIRL WAS KILLED Booze and machinery will not mix, never have mixed, and it is no use trying to make them mix. Ask any coroner. RAILROADS AND RUM A CERTAIN railroad announces with par- donable pride that it carried last year on its 26,000 miles of track 188,411,876 passengers and not one of these passengers was killed in a train accident. "That," says the Canton (Ohio) "Daily News," "is one of the biggest zeroes, one of the mightiest noughts, that the year has to boast of." Another newspaper, the Butler (Pa.) "Citizen," writes: "There is no doubt whatever that this condition was rendered possible only by the company's insisting on strict sobriety on the part of its employees. With [281] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS drunken engineers, drunken dispatchers, and drunken conductors, accidents and deaths would have been common." Drinking on the part of employees used to cost their employers a lot of money one way or another. Nowadays it only costs the railroad man his job. THE STORY OF ONE TOWN COATESVILLE is the town in eastern Pennsylvania that most people heard of for the first time when a mob raided the hospital, took a negro murderer from his cot there, and burned him alive. Yet the people who live there are not, at most times, very different from those in other American towns. No one was punished for that hideous lynching, but a county judge got back at Coatesville by withdrawing the liquor licenses. Later, the Chester County Grand Jury noted a marked decrease in crime. Says the Grand Jury: The debasing influence of the saloon has been so ap- parent in a majority of the cases that we feel compelled to make the observation that the general public must pay the price for permitting the existence of these highly objec- tionable sources of crime. After almost a year of drought, the merchants of Coatesville are outspoken in declaring that the [282] WHAT ABOUT BOOZE closing of their five saloons has not been the detri- ment they feared. It has boosted business. The local trust company has had more deposits than ever before in its history. The 1913 Christmas funds of this trust company and of the national bank (made up of small deposits during the year, drawn out for Christmas money) amounted to over $50,000. More small accounts were opened than ever before. Though the mills which em- ploy most of the inhabitants have not greatly prospered, no one seems particularly hard up tariff or no tariff. Three or four businesses, however, have really suffered from the closing of the Coatesville saloons: the charity business there haven't been so many "cases" to cover; the police business there haven't been so many arrests to make; and a few side lines, like wife beating, murder, and burning negroes alive. THE MAN WHO MADE MONEY OUT OF IT ONE November night John Nance went to Spokane from his home in the outskirts and bought three one-gallon jugs, one of whisky and two of alcohol. He consumed all the whisky on the way home (all he didn't spill) , and once there set to work with his brother Mitch on the two gallons of alcohol. In the drunken quarrel which soon broke out John was instantly killed, and [283] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS his brother Mitch was placed on trial for the crime. Here is part of a letter about it which we have received from John A. Houston of Spokane: Yesterday I sat in the court where Mitch Nance is on trial for murder. By his side sits his wife, bowed with grief, while in his arms coos and plays his infant son, born since the father's arrest. Only one more victim of this hellish traffic, but to my last day I will remember that little family the father on trial for killing his brother, the wife and mother crushed and numbed with grief, the baby wondering why its daddy is so solemn and whisky did it all. But why not make the man who manufactured the whisky and the man who sold it also suffer for the murder of John Nance? The liquor was purchased from a saloon keeper in Spokane who blatantly advertises: "If your children need shoes don't buy booze." And yet we do not feel as bitter against this saloon keeper as toward the man who supplies him with bad whisky. Probably he is some highly respected citizen whose wife is one of our best people and whose check book is at the service of so-called charity. The law may better conditions in some respects, but whether it is bad "booze" or poison- ous patent medicines that are dispensed, the only way really to accomplish anything is to bring shame into partnership with the man who makes money out of it. XVII SHOP TALK ON BREAKING INTO COLLIER'S EDITORS sometimes wonder why an offer of special prizes for stories draws manu- scripts from a vast number of persons who have never written professionally, persons who indeed often show unfamiliarity with the pen as an instrument of any kind of communication. Various letters received at this office on the sub- ject of our Prize Contest throw light on this point. It is the anonymity of all the contestants, the chance for all the writers concerned to make an equal start on the crack of the pistol, that raises hope in those who think there is no hope for their unknown names on ordinary occa- sion. One correspondent goes so far as to urge anonymity of residence. He suggests that the postmarks on all the envelopes received be ob- literated, so that writers resident in such literary centers as Boston, New York, and Indianapolis may enjoy no handicap at the expense of story- tellers hailing from Kokomo, Red Oak, and Bel- lows Falls. This is madness. Editors may be [285] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS silly, but if they were so silly as our correspond- ent imagines they could not keep their magazines off the rocks a year's time. We recognize in this office and are on guard against influences that tend to bring certain groups of writers and cer- tain kinds of stories into undue prominence in- fluences from behind the scenes. We think some editors succumb unduly to such tendencies to get in a groove. Yet a study of the current maga- zines will at any time reveal the names of a large proportion of newcomers. We in Collier's office are continually on guard against the dry rot of "professionalism," striving to please, not primar- ily the literati, but intelligent folk folk too in- telligent to be treated with names alone, and more appreciative of a good "first story" than of an in- ferior story signed by a well-known name. Col- lier's has published a number of "first stories" lately, among them Miss Sawyer's "Paddy the Gander," Mr. Whitfield's "Taking Life," Mrs. Davis's "Geraldine's Education," and "A Quiet Life," by Herbert Test. Two others "The Angel," by R. N. Wall, and "Helen Duffy of Troy," by Edmond McKenna are to appear soon. Probably within a month or two we have published or bought still others without knowing it, their authors! not happening to give us the in- formation, and no one in this office knowing any- thing about it one way or the other. [286] SHOP TALK COLLIER'S IS UNJUST ONE of the best magazine stories published in 1914 was James W. Fitzpateick's prize story in Collier's, called "The Hospital Ticket." We should like to print on this page some of the letters we have had about this story, including the indignant one asserting that the man who wrote it is no author at all, but (so perfect is the local color) a "woods boss." "The Hospital Ticket," written about lumber-camp life in the good old, rough old times, has for its scene a town in Minnesota Bemidji and now listen to the Bemidji "Pioneer": Collier's Weekly, in publishing the five-hundred-dollar prize story, "The Hospital Ticket," dealt Bemidji a severe blow and in a most unjust manner, and its editor should not delay in informing subscribers, and they total about one million, of the true conditions which now surround this city. Come, brother, do not be like the rest of them. It seems to be impossible for anyone to write a good story and give it a local place and habi- tation without stepping on tender toes. Why be offended because Mr. Fitzpatrick tells about Tickle-the-Wood-Box and his fish-berry knockout drops? It is a good story, isn't it? Several of those "one million" subscribers had * [287] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS never heard of Bemidji at all till Mr. Fitz- pateick came through with his story, so have a heart I However, according to the "Pioneer," the Bemidji of to-day has "paved streets, beauti- ful lakes, wonderful scenic surroundings, and substantial homes and business blocks," and has been selected "as the proper place for a Sixth Normal School." Bemidji to-day is dry. So much the better for the editor of the "Pioneer" and the editor of the "Sentinel" but will Be- midji ever be the scene of another story half so exhilarating as "The Hospital Ticket"? ON SPELLING AS YOU PLEASE THE recurrence in our correspondence of letters in which "thru," "bot," and some- times "husht" and "diminisht," and the like, are seen reminds us of the fact that the flag of spell- ing reform is still nailed to some faithful masts. May not the whole matter be solved by applying the doctrines of the philosophical anarchists? Why observe any laws in spelling? Why not throw down all regulations ? Mr. Samuel Wel- ler told the court that the spelling of his name depended upon the taste and fancy of the speller. Sam is the true reformer, and at the same time the true conservative. In the spacious times of great Elizabeth, spelling was altogether a mat- [288] SHOP TALK ter of taste and fancy. There was no need for the Elizabethan child to pore over the spelling book. As he pronounced, he spelled. John Lyly he of euphuistic fame wrote "neyther." Why should not the Bostonian write "neyther" now, and the Chicagoan "neether"? The dif- ference would disclose to the historian of the future one of the last vestiges of local color in American life. We are glad to know that Mar- lowe sounded the "b" in "Tamburlaine." Why should not the man from Posey County be per- mitted without reproach to disclose his "r" in "dorg"? We don't know whether to write "Wiclif," "Wyclif," "Wyckliffe," or any one of several other ways, but we do know that he put in his Bible "In the biggynnynge Godde cre- ated." He probably spelled his own name in different ways at various times. It is cast up against Shakespeare that he didn't know how to spell his own name. As a matter of fact, there was no established way. Wyckliffe spells Judea "Judee." Probably he pronounced it in that way, as did Hose a Biglow. Caxton refers to "the generall destruccyon of the grete Troy," and we know perfectly well what he means. In the olden time we had initiative and originality in literature as well as in spelling. The present uni- formity in orthography is a badge of slavery slavery to the printed page, to Noah Webster and Dr. Worcester. Spellers of the English- [289] NATIONAL FLOOD MARKS speaking world, arise! You hav nuthing to lose but your chanes, and a werld to gane ! OH, SHUCKS! ONCE in a blue moon we take an editorial day off from that stern schoolmistress, Logic. And it is on this, our day of heresy, that we receive a too intelligent inquiry from a cor- respondent who writes, apropos of our defense of tobacco: Won't you please toss this factor onto one pan of your "balances" and supply for the other pan an equally logical reason why mother, wife, sister, and daughter should not enjoy "the benefit of recurrent pleasure, the benefit of that subtle and philosophical calm which helps to dissipate petty troubles and annoyances with smoke as it rises, fades, and is gone"? No ; we won't. In fact, we can't. There isn't a logical reason on the premises to fit the case. If man may smoke, so, logically, may woman. Moreover, she does, in increasing numbers ; gen- erally a cigarette. But if she can smoke a ciga- rette with propriety, there is no reason why, logically, she shouldn't smoke a cigar, a meer- schaum, a clay pipe, a hookah; or why, we painedly suppose, she shouldn't chew a plug. [290] SHOP TALK YET (and we print this qualifying word in em- phatic type) we would much rather she didn't. Most illogically, it is true, but most powerfully. We may be fubby conservatives, soulless reac- tionaries, fossils, stultified mummies, Pagans suckled in a creed outworn, contemporaries in thought with Rameses or Tiglath-Pileser; but the sight of any one of several hundred women whom we know and admire walking down the street with a pipe between her lips would go far toward reconciling us to ground glass in our soup. It may be unreasonable, it may be illogi- cal, it may be unjust and indefensible to the last degree, this feeling. But it's there! Amid the crash of dogmas and the wreck of creeds we shall be found, at the last, passionately upholding the thesis that what's sauce for the gander is not always and of necessity sauce for the goose. A FRIEND WHO STICKS FROM a big hotel in Washington comes a letter to the editor, suggesting that Collier's discuss the operation of the Workmen's Compen- sation Law in Ohio. "Every day about four hundred claims are settled under the provisions of this law," runs the letter, "and the scale of compensation is higher than in any other State, and yet the employers are beginning to under- I291] NATIONAL FLOODMARK8 stand that the cost to them is less than it was on the old plan." There are details in this let- ter that we have not room for here, but this is the way the last paragraph runs: I am an old resident of Columbus, with offices at 8 East Broad Street, but am detained here on account of illness. I am also a subscriber to Collier's Weekly, and have read it since the first number, which I bought at L. C. Collin's news stand, on South High Street in Columbus. Collier's Weekly has been published under this name only since 1895; it is possible Mr. Claude Meeker, in referring to having read Collier's since the first number, has in mind the weekly newspaper called "Once a Week," the acorn from which Collier's oak tree has grown. Who else has read this magazine every week since 1888? FROM THE MORNING'S MAIL SOMETIMES we like to yield the floor to one of our friendly correspondents: Spokane, Wash. I delight in your editorial references to Emerson and to the friendship of good books that have stood the acid test without tarnishing. The editorial sugar-plum seems particularly sweet after the spanking of some of your other comments. I also love to dig a fossil remnant out of the near past and to compare it to existing forms as a means [292] SHOP TALK of measuring the speed and quality of present-day prog- ress. An editorial by the Rev. Davis W. Clark, D.D., in the "Ladies' Repository" for April, 1853, touches upon two editorial items of a recent Collier's: Ralph Waldo Emerson We spent an hour, not many evenings since, listening to a "lecture" from this celebrated pantheist. Were peculiarly struck at the self-complacent and oracular manner of the lecturer. He seemed to regard himself as the very embodiment of all reason. This at first offended our sense of propriety. When, however, we came to reflect that this man, according to his own theory, is God "a manifestation of the Infinite in finite forms" our wonder ceased. Why should not a man who conceives himself to be a part of God be oracular? This modern divinity, however, does not appear to have many features of resemblance to Jesus Christ. Were rather pleased at the thin attendance. . . . For a long time these two men Emerson and Parker have been sowing "dragon's teeth" upon the soil of America. Were the result "armed men," we should have comparatively little reason to fear. It is pleasant to hear from Mr. H. C. Haze- lett, who sends us this letter and this quotation from the "Ladies' Repository" of sixty-one years ago. It is well, too, to be reminded of the failure many people make to recognize good encount- ered at first hand. All of us are broad-minded about Emerson and his heterodoxies to-day; our narrowness is, in the main, reserved for our own contemporaries. [293] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS THE OMNISCIENT ONE \\ 715 have always felt safe. If by any un- V V happy chance Mexican invasion, small- pox, or act of God we were cut off in our prime, there would be a man to step right in and fill our shoes to overflowing: the proofreader. Now, the careless reader might infer that this is irony ; that we are trying to "get even" because the proofreader "queries" our colloquialisms on the galley proof; underlines the words when we write "Can you beat it?" or "low-brow," and, with gentle reproachfulness, writes "slang" in the margin. But it is not irony. The proofreader is an abler man than we. Whether he has read more books, we know not ; he seems to remember more of them by name or to remember those names more correctly. Dates and figures are our plague, but the proofreader has them all cold. Once we came within an ace of making out Char- lotte Bronte to be Jane Austen's contempo- rary; it was the proofreader who saved us from that disgraceful error. The proofreader is a su- perior grammarian; he carries round the rules for "should" and "would" in his head, whereas we must always consult A. S. Hill's "Principles of Rhetoric" in complicated cases. Either the proofreader is cleverer than we are with the "World Almanac" or he has a miraculous mem- [294] SHOP TALK ory for Congressmen's middle names and the way to distribute French accents. The proofreader knows the score of yesterday's baseball game, the time the sun got up this morning, and the probable result of to-morrow's vote on the River and Harbor Bill. He knows the more essen- tial facts of Assyriology, bacteriology, and cera- mics ; he is not ignorant of the xanthoptera, Yid- dish, and zanyism. We have a high regard for the proofreader; it is he who saves us from mak- ing more breaks than we do. The proofreader is much more critical than any of our other friends; we are sure of one reader at least, and are duly grateful; thanks to him, we mind our postminimi and our quadrates. OUR MOST FAITHFUL READER MR. WHITE has left us. When we missed him the other day they told us he had to leave hurriedly because the Govern- ment unexpectedly required him to enter at once upon his homestead claim in Washington State, and so he started across the continent with only twelve hours' notice. He had been with Col- lier's for twenty-six years, all that time as proof- reader, and head proofreader for the last ten. Heaven only knows how many errors of ours he caught. When we wrote "woollen," he wrote [295] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS on the margin of the proof, "Standard Dictionary- spells with one !' " If we wrote "Saturday, July 4, 1776," the proof would come back with a pencil observation, "July 4, 1776, was Thurs- day." Long devotion to the business of being strictly accurate had developed in him a gentle but determined opposition to our occasional lapses from literalness. To be sure, he was not infallible. We blush even yet when we think of that old Collier edition of Browning in which these two lines are supposed to rime: Lest you should think he never could recapture That first fine careless rupture. Sitting in a corner of the crowded composing- room and bending close over his desk, Mr. White had read, in the course of his work, every word of Dickens probably twenty times ; Shakespeare, line by line, over and over again; and so of Balzac, Thackeray, and many other great authors. It is a big and sudden change of environment to an apple ranch on the Pacific Coast ; but the home, and forty acres of his own, will be the consummation of an intelligent ambi- tion which other city men well might emulate. [296] SHOP TALK THE BEST THE fiction we publish serves to pass the time; the articles on politics and personali- ties and current conditions have dynamic power; these paragraphs express our reflections on the passing show. But neither Collier's nor any- other magazine offers in itself alone a substi- tute for the best in permanent literature. Late at night, when the house is still, we choose from the bookshelf a volume of Emerson, and spend an hour with the enduring problems and achieve- ments of life. We reread the essays or cut the crisp pages of the newly published "Journal." Emerson is not the most original of thinkers but he dwarfs the sages of modern journalism. [297] XVIII HERE ARE LADIES MATCHING THE MEN EORGE ELIOT'S Mrs. Poysee said: "There was no denying the women were fools ; God made 'em to match the men." G THE GOLDEN HOUR PSYCHOLOGISTS have scrutinized it, philosophers have discoursed upon it, cynics have sneered at it, bigots have thundered against it, artists have painted it, poets have rhapsodized over it. Yet no one has ever com- pletely caught it this hour of radiant girlhood. And naturally enough, for it is the most intangi- ble and fleeting hour in all life. It marks the passing forever of the days of dear mud pies and dolls. And a great poet has hinted that with the relinquishment of childhood come the shades of the prison house. But was he not wrong? Is not rather this young girlhood the span which seems to catch and mingle for one magic in- [298] HERE ARE LADIES stant the unreasoning blitheness of childhood with the tenderness of maturity? And the vivid and vital young girl herself what shall be said of her? Shall one emphasize the mere external details the lengthening of dresses and the loop- ing up of hair, or the host of interchanged con- fidences with girl friends, or the comradeships with boys which now suddenly become tinged with all manner of moonshine and innocent co- quetries, or the romantic dreams, or the first actual romance in truth, a passing trifle, but filling the sky for the moment and never quite forgotten? No one of those will make the pic- ture: it needs a little of all. Neither poet nor pedant can analyze the fragrant charm of girl- hood, and in that very fact lies the real secret of its charm. Surely here is the quintessence of all living beauty, this golden instant when the dreams of youth come their nearest to fulfill- ment. By the mere sight of it the whole work- aday world is enriched. ON GOING COURTING IN Boston they talk about "limiting by law the length of courtship." A bill fixing two years as the maximum legal limit of engagements is, says the dispatch, scheduled for appearance in the Great and General Court of that great [299] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS grandiloquent Commonwealth. Everyone knows that the proportion of males to females is pe- culiarly inadequate in Massachusetts hence the stir on Beacon Hill over the term of wooing. "If they can't marry all of us," one seems to hear some philandering spinster explaining in the lunch room of the Educational and Industrial Union in Boylston Street, "they can anyway give each of us a turn at being engaged." It is, all the same, a grave subject. Being en- gaged is in some ways more serious than being married. Personally, we reckon two years rather too long a time to allow by law. Mrs. Kath- leen Norris, author of "Mother," thinks six months long enough "if a young man calls two or three times a week during that period." But is it possible that marriages ever result when he calls so often? It is risking a good deal letting one's sweetheart know one that well before it's too late. But that is a side issue. Engagements were never all of man's making, and are less so than ever at the present time. Though the pa- rental referendum has passed into innocuous desuetude, the girl in the case has the initiative nowadays, just as she has always had the re- call. Perhaps the high cost of amusements may, in our larger cities, serve to shorten such court- ships as it does not wholly wreck. Certainly a new law is not called for here new light being quite another matter. [300] HERE ARE LADIES By the way, at just what stage does courting begin, anyway? A PLEA FOR STEW WRITING in a daily newspaper, Mrs. Christine Frederick asks why we Americans haven't any national dish. The Italian has spaghetti, the Hungarian cooks his goulash, the Russian offers us his shchee and borsh, the Frenchman brings the pot-au-feu and all the ragouts, but if you ask Yankees what their national dish is, one will say "corn pone'* (leave out the sugar!), another "turkey and fixin's," a third horror of horrors! "Boston baked beans." People talk about the high cost of living one explanation is the fact that America has no national stew. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, lecturer on "The Larger Feminism," prophesies that private cookery is going out anyhow, and that we shall soon regard cook stoves as no more modern than the Puritan mother's spinning wheel. Perhaps. And yet if we can only arrive at that degree of civiliza- tion which expresses itself in a good stew we shall indefinitely postpone Mrs. Gilman's mil- lennium of community kitchens and homes with- out housework. [301] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS WHAT WOMEN EXPECT IN his able report on "Prostitution in Europe," Abraham Flexner gives this explanation of an evil situation which the suffragists wish to change: Europe has been a man's world managed by men and largely for men, for cynical men at that men inured to the sight of human inequalities, callous as to the value of lower-class life, and distinctly lacking in respect for womanhood, especially that of the working classes. One is grateful that this cynical attitude on the part of men holds less true in America. A mid- Western weekly sheds an illuminative ray on this question in telling of a Bohemian who remarked: "I would not marry an American girl! They expect a man to be true to them!" The American wife does take marriage seriously; she does expect her husband to be true to her. More than anything else, this expectation of hers tends to make the man regard intentional infidelity as something preposterous. The sur- est way for woman to be held at a high valua- tion is for her to desire and claim such a valua- tion. [302] HERE ARE LADIES THE MILITANTS AND "SEX ANTAGONISM" THE difference between fanaticism and heroism is largely a matter of success. If the leader of a rebellion against tradition or government succeeds in establishing the princi- ple for which he commits outrages against the public calm, he is acclaimed by posterity as a hero and a martyr. If he fails, he is remem- bered, when at all, as a slightly deranged per- son who ought to have been put in a sanatorium and treated for neurasthenia. The present meth- ods of Mrs. Pankhurst and her followers will be judged in the future by their results. The question is not one of ethics, but of efficiency. In America, where coeducation, democracy, and the good-fellowship of the West have developed a sympathetic comradeship between the sexes which is equaled nowhere else in the world save possibly in Australia and New Zealand, it is dif- ficult to understand the form of protest in which these women are indulging. It seems to us that such methods only make more difficult the at- tainment of the suffrage, or any other end. But the English gentleman, who is the law giver, is not so open to conviction on questions which seriously affect his ideas of the fitness of things. He stands by his prejudices as he does by his guns or his principles, and it may be that Mrs. Pankhurst is right in her declaration that mili- [303] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS tant methods are the only ones sufficiently vio- lent to get under the hide of the Englishman and make him realize that these people are not to be satisfied with bows and smiles and plati- tudes, but are human beings demanding what they consider their rights, and ready to make any sacrifice to get them. Suffrage will come eventually, and whether it is because of, or in spite of, militancy, the militants will claim the victory. Posterity will have to do some nice judging. Whether or not the English suffragists are right about militancy, there is just one way to insure their continuing in their present attitude. That is to persecute them. Every cause, right or wrong, since the world began has had for its best friends those foolish persons who believe that violent physical suppression can kill an idea. Treat malcontents with justice, with mercy when possible, with gentleness always, and the fanatics on a given subject will be reduced to inconsider- able numbers. The surest way for the English Government and the police to keep anger alive and outrages constantly on the increase is to abrogate their policy of tolerance and make mar- tyrs of the suffragists. One thing more is sure: there is no such thing as the sex antagonism about which some French writers talk so much. Among sane and healthy people the sexes do not repel; they at- [304] HERE ARE LADIES tract. What antagonism does exist is class re- sentment, class hatred. Under a social system where one sex is the ruling class and the other the loved but distinctly subordinate one, there inevitably arises an attitude of distrust, of mu- tual self-defense, entirely unjustified by nature. The woman resents the unfairness, the domina- tions, the ruthless suppressions of a man-made world, colored and given personality by mas- culine self-assurance. The man resents the pet- tinesses, the meannesses, the duplicity, that are the weapons of helplessness and impotent an- ger. Everything has been done in the name of differentiation of charm and division of labor to make the gulf between the sexes as wide as possible. In France, where this aspect of civili- zation has been carried furthest, there has now developed this strange, unnatural sentiment. There is just one remedy, an exactly equitable division of power and privilege between the sexes and the understanding that comes of mu- tual work and similar ideals. When the war of the sexes ceases to be the rebellion of an op- pressed class against which all the odds are placed, and becomes an equal fight on equal terms with all the artificial handicaps removed., it will simply cease to be. When men and women look straight into each other's eyes as equals, so-called sex antagonism will vanish from the earth. [306] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS THE CERTAINTY OF SUFFRAGE WITHIN ten years or less women will be voting on the same terms as men in most of our States, and the backward remnant will be hustling to catch up. The movement has passed the stage of doubt and ridicule, and has almost passed the stage of argument. The change from the indifference of twenty years ago is amazing. Women vote in eleven States now, against four then, and the issue will be up to the voters this fall in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Tennessee, and perhaps other States. The affirmative side is active, aggressive, and confident, and includes many men who have gained their faith by fighting for better politics. In comparison, the mental bankruptcy of the antis is fairly pitiful. The suf- fragists can rest their case on the plain fact that women do participate in the life of our modern communities, and should, therefore, participate in the business of government. The antis can reply only with solemn and pathetic foolishness about "disorganizing society," "advanced theo- ries," "new evils," and the like the stale harp- ings of prejudice and timidity. In a contest be- tween such forces the outcome is certain, for the United States is neither timid nor silly. [306] HERE AEE LADIES SCIENCE AND LOVE IT was Byron, whose experience was not slight, who said that love was woman's whole ex- istence. Certainly an existence without relation to love can never bring out what she has of best. Consciously or unconsciously, deliberately fol- lowing a definite decision, or blindly falling in with nature's larger plan, the finest women choose - the path of sentiment, and when intellectual life lies in another direction they pass it by. The greatest woman scientist who ever lived was Sophia Kovalevsky, who received from the French Academy the Prix B or din, and an additional prize "on account of the ex- traordinary service rendered to mathematical physics by this remarkable work." The award y was made by the Academy in complete igno- rance of the fact that the winner was a woman. Naturally, Mme. Kovalevsky's triumph was tre- mendous. "She was," says Mr. R. C. Duncan's account, "feted, honored, and everywhere greeted with ovations. Her lover witnessed all this J . 4 from the edge of the crowd, and, unable to ac- cept his subordinate position, retired from his suit. The affair literally killed her, for she never recovered from the blow, and died, a broken creature, two years later." We don't think much of Mme. Kovalevsky's [307] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS lover, but the story shows one reason why women have not done much in science, and why their work has often been so mixed with that of some male as to make it impossible to say which was whose. Perhaps Caroline Herschel did discover five new comets; but would she have been a great astronomer if her brother had not been a greater one, and she his secretary? How much of Fanny Mendelssohn's work ought to be credited to her more famous brother Felix? The discovery of radium was the joint work of Mme. Curie and her husband; now that he is dead and she has his professorship, the world may learn how much she is capable of without the assistance and inspiration of a man. "Couldn't I do Euclid if you were to teach me instead of Tom?" exclaimed Maggie Tulliver to her brother Tom's tutor. And the indignant Tom broke in: "No, you couldn't. Girls can't do Euclid, can they, sir?" The tutor solemnly affirmed that they could not. If they can't, it is because they are engaged in a work even more important to living beings than squaring the hypothenuse or crossing the Asses' Bridge. [308] HERE ARE LADIES WOMEN'S WORK IT is now two years since the women of Cali- fornia were enfranchised. Says the "Home Alliance" of Woodland: In California now there are 108 "dry" supervisorial dis- tricts, 45 "dry" incorporated cities. More than 300 towns have voted "dry" since January 1, 1912. Within the last two years 818 saloons have been closed by ballot in 80 supervisorial districts in this jurisdiction. Two years ago, in California, there were 200 "dry" towns; there are now 682 "dry" towns, and more than one-half the territory of this State is free from saloons. This is now a part of what men used to call contemptuously "women's work." No wonder the liquor interests of the country bitterly fight every extension of the suffrage in the direction of sex democracy ! The battle for social betterment is not always won when saloons are legally abol- ished. But who doesn't find California better off to- day than two years ago, when the accident of sex made and unmade voters? GUARDING THE GIRLS FIFTY thousand girls drop out of sight every year," a famous newspaper an- nounces in huge type. A mere student would [309] / NATIONAL FLOODMARKS ask what percentage this is of all girls between, say, fifteen and twenty years, and whether such loss is possible. The article apparently is based on the fact that 600 girls disappeared in twelve months between New York and Chicago. This is bad enough surely. The remedy recom- mended is to copy after an English association which publishes protective rules beginning as fol- lows: 1. Girls should never speak to strangers, either men or women, in the street, in shops, in stations, in trains, in lonely country roads, or in places of amusement. 2. Girls should never ask the way of any but officials on duty, such as policemen, railway officials, or postmen. S. Girls should never loiter or stand about alone in the street, and if accosted by a stranger (whether man or woman) should walk as quickly as possible to the nearest policeman. 4. Girls should never stay to help a woman who ap- parently faints at their feet in the street, but should im- mediately call a policeman to her aid. Possibly these restrictions are colored by the moral overstrain apt to characterize a reformer's zeal, but it is fair to ask whether a land in which they are necessary is either civilized or Chris- tian. Nothing Bernard Shaw says of English hypocrisy and sensuality is half so striking as this proposal to put everybody in social quaran- tine. If the facts sustain such contentions, the sooner we have an ironclad etiquette the better. [310] HERE ARE LADIES But what a ghastly commentary on our "prog- ress," how our cities sink their pride and be- come mere traps of lust and death! What is the truth of all this? LEADERSHIP JANE ADD AM S has more than once been named the First Citizen of Illinois. Re- turning from the Women's International Con- gress at Budapest, she was promptly inter- viewed on the Illinois Legislature's action in en- franchising women and on the suggestion that she herself run for Mayor of Chicago. Said Miss Addams: We must not jump into politics haphazard, now that we have won the suffrage. If we do, we will be likely to find that we have jumped into deep water. It is my advice and I am sure that it is the settled policy of the Illinois suffragists not to go in for officeholding at once. It would be unwise to do this until we have become familiar with the power that has been made legally ours. Words like these gain woman suffrage as many supporters in America as the burning of a fifteenth-century castle or the assault on a cabi- net minister loses to the cause in England. In her equipment for exercising the ballot, and for [311] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS the leadership of men and women alike, Miss Addams includes the rare gift of tact. THE OVERPAID GIRL A REASONABLY good-looking young woman is hurt in a midnight automobile accident which involves the usual accessories of the millionaire's son and the bottle of wine. On investigation the ordinary data of such cases are ascertained: irregular schooling, casual work on the stage, and boarding-house life. The reader inclines toward sympathy, begins to release the minimum-wage argument, but encounters this confusing item : She receives $100 a month from the estate of her grand- father, the money being sent to her by the treasurer of the American National Exchange Bank in , Texas. The girl is now twenty-two years old. We are going to have justice in this matter of women's wages. The misery of oppression by pay is going to be ended just as we ended the misery of oppression by slavery. But the lives of those who have more money than character will be very much what they are to-day. The process of selection is eternal. [312] HERE ARE LADIE THE WORLD MOVES AND WOMEN HELP TO MOVE IT THE Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, said to be the first woman minister regu- larly ordained in this country, has celebrated her eighty-ninth birthday. She was ordained in 1853 after a struggle of some years. To-day more than twenty-five hundred women are preaching in the United States as regularly or- dained ministers. When she sought a college education in 1843 there were only two or three higher institutions of learning open to women, notably the Collegiate Institute, now Oberlin College, at Oberlin, Ohio. To-day in the uni- versities, colleges, and technical schools of the United States there are over five thousand women serving as professors and instructors and more than one hundred thousand woman students. There are over two thousand woman lawyers, more than seven thousand women physicians and surgeons. All this change is part of a great progress toward freedom and a better social organization. It will go further. [313] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS SUFFRAGE HEROES TEN years ago believers in votes for women were accounted freaks. They were the proverbial "short-haired women and long-haired men." When male suffragists marched up Fifth Avenue in the first suffrage parade, bright young men asked them: Who would cook dinner to- night? To-day, so far have conditions changed, it takes a confidence in one's convictions almost approaching courage not to be a suffragist. BABIES AND "HELP" RESENTING certain remarks in this paper about one of President Roosevelt's hob- bies, an exceptionally intelligent and earnest woman complains with spirit that the subject should be treated more thoughtfully than with "mere wails and vituperation." Her letter covers, not only the main question of "race sui- cide," but the whole of a matter upon which we should like to see more thought focused; and covers it with such breadth of view and so much stimulating suggestion that we print it at length. Her home, a small town in Illinois, makes her problems typical of fully three-fourths of the households of the United States: [314] HERE ARE LADIES There are undeniably many women who are more inter- ested in bridge than in babies. Is utter selfishness, mere frivolity, the only cause? The fact is that the growing unwillingness of women to accept positions to work in homes, even at the exorbitant salaries which they can now command, is working a silent revolution, one result of which is race suicide. People cannot have large families unless they have stable homes, and it does not take much of a jar to upset the equilibrium of the modern household helper. The ad- vent of each successive child is as a volcanic eruption to the domestic arrangements, and after the birth of the third child it is practically impossible to get any help at all, short of establishing a regular servants' hall. In Zola's "Fecondite," that lovely idyl of a family of twenty-two children, he introduced a magic factor that made his story possible, the faithful servant who, when the twenty-two came, stayed! Her like is not to be had in this country for love or money. The problem does not so disastrously affect the very rich, who can keep up practically a separate establishment for a large household of servants, and thus furnish them the social life which they demand nowadays. Nor does it affect the very poor, but it does most grievously affect the so-called middle classes ; that is, men with incomes of from $2,000 to $15,000 a year, including practically all the young, well-educated men who do not have independent fortunes the very ones, in short, among whom race suicide is so deplored. In the days when our grandmothers had their famous large families there were maiden aunts and grandmothers and various unattached females who could be relied on in time of emergency to turn to and help out. But the maiden aunts of to-day are bachelor maids, and the grand- mothers are running charities and various institutions for [315] NATIONAL FLOODMAKKS the public welfare, and to put their shoulders to anybody's domestic wheel is farthest from their thoughts. So it be- hooves the wife and mother not to assume a bigger burden than she can bear alone, alone without help from family or servants. And unless she is a great exception she can not care unaided for more than two or three children with- out injury to her health, which is a mother's only capital. I would like to see more of the able thinkers, some men, for instance, seriously turn their attention to this domestic- service problem, trying to realize its full significance to society. The women alone cannot solve it. The very ones who suffer most are too busy to try. Meantime, I can't help wondering if President Roose- velt or the editor of Collier's ever tried in the absence of "help" to soothe a colicky baby with one hand and prepare the family dinner with the other. I have, and it is no joke. No thoughtful person will fail to share with en- thusiasm the conviction that the making of smooth-running and comfortable homes is a good deal more important than most of the subjects of politics and affairs to which men consider it more dignified and masculine to give their at- tention. President Roosevelt has, and exercises, an unparalleled capacity for usefulness in his ability to give importance to simple human prob- lems, and direct thought to them, and we wish he might thrust this one into the foreground. One obvious aspect is a fundamental error in the public schools. To "keep house" in one way or another will be the career of probably ninety girls out of a hundred, and ought to be the career of [816] HERE ARE LADIES nine of the remaining ten. That every one of them should, at the age of sixteen to nineteen, put on a white dress, read an essay on "The Heroines of Shakespeare," and go through the form of being "graduated" without knowing as much as a cave-dweller about the simplest ele- ments of domestic work, is a folly made possible only by viciously wrong conventionalities. A young woman who has more experience and more skill in bridge than in cooking or in housekeeping is a pathetic failure, for which the responsibility is divisible between a mother who has pitiably failed to understand her duty, and a school sys- tem which has not had intelligent public opinion directed on its curriculum for more than a cen- tury. COOKING SCHOOLS AND BRIDGE SIMPLE living, of course, will help. Elabo- rate entertaining, which is, as a rule, with- out reason, except to serve the vanity of the hostess, entails that extra work and the up- setting of order and routine which most often causes domestic servants to prefer the fixed hours and regular routine of factories and stores. A child, after the age of six or seven, should be of small demand on the time of a servant; it can care for itself, and will be the better for [317] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS being required to. And a daughter of twelve is not being properly trained if she is not contrib- uting to the household what would be half the work of a servant. A girl of that age ought to be learning at school the elements of cooking and housekeeping, just as a boy should be busy, not on the fads which go by the name "manual training," but on real work corresponding to ap- prenticeship to a sustaining trade. For bridge there is no palliation. The mother, whose faults of early training have left her with a vacuous mind, causes by her playing no more loss to the world than the waste of her own time more or less valueless at best. But to teach her young daughter to play, in order to make up a four and minister to her own dissi- pation, is a selfish crime. To take for this pur- pose evening hours that might be given to music, which makes for a softer and finer humanity ; or, worse still, daylight hours which might be spent in that outdoor activity which is essential to fit her for her most important business in life, is a wrong for which no amount of training in empty conventions can atone. [818] XIX MATTERS OF BUSINESS ROOM AT THE TOP OF the 170 ranking officers of a certain rail- way system, 163 (including the presi- dent) started at the bottom, sweeping out cars, carrying water for laborers, working on the right of way, and other like jobs of the very commonest kind. Please note that 142 of the 170 have been in the service over twenty years. One essential to success in any business is to remain in it. A LESSON FROM BELOW VASTLY overquoted, we think, are those catch phrases of biology, "the struggle for life" and "the survival of the fittest." Usually the service they yield is in defense of something otherwise indefensible an act of heartless ag- gression offensive to the moral code, or a bit of selfishness that ignores all of a man's decent obligations to his neighbors. Those most apt [319] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS to fly for refuge to the phrases know little of the very biology upon which they affect to rely, for they ignore the very essential fact that Na- ture's creatures hunt in big units as well as small. Whenever a tribal line is established, Nature enforces a rule of service within the tribe, or the pack, or the herd, as rigorously as the moral code is buttressed about and enforced among men. The wolf may do what he will with the rabbit, but among his fellow wolves he must beware of the law of the pack and the power of the pack to turn and rend him. We think some of our plutocrats are finding their riches a heavy load. While they are quoting the biological catch phrases about the "struggle for life," they are actually passing through some such experience as the drone bee faces when the hive has turned upon him, or the decrepit buffalo bull feels when the herd turns and drives him out. A very use- ful thing for those to remember whose business game has been to scalp the people among whom they dwell is that however much the old-time Sioux was feasted for the scalps he brought in from without the tribe, he was promptly and efficiently tomahawked whenever he tried to gather his loot too near home. A little study of a withering influence that David Starr Jor- dan has described in a biological treatise as the "Social Chill" would help a great many of our citizens to understand that their only hope of [320] MATTERS OF BUSINESS future survival lies in large-geared service to the big units in which the social conscience is now remorselessly at work. THE HIGHROAD OF all the recipes for success boomed last June in the usual profusion, only one sticks in our memory. It is that of John G. John- son of Philadelphia, now said to be the greatest lawyer in the English-speaking world. It is in- deed simple: He found out that very few lawyers really knew cor- poration law. And he made up his mind that he would learn it. A RAILWAY THAT KNOWS HOW ON a smoothly running express train be- tween Washington and New York we found an illustrated circular called "Informa- tion," issued by the Pennsylvania Railroad sys- tem. This issue tells what Italians are doing for the railroad, and says that of 140,000 employees on the lines east of Pittsburgh and Erie, 11,000 are of that nation. Twenty years ago there were very few, all of them "laborers"; to-day [321] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS Italy is represented in practically every department of the railroad, and each day these men are making their impres- sion. . . . Many of them hold positions of trust and re- sponsibility, due possibly to a great extent to their learn- ing the English language. . . . Promotion is always open to the man who works hard and improves himself. We are glad to believe that this is true. We are glad to read of "the Italian-English corre- spondence course which the railroad gives to all who apply for it." The Pennsylvania is ex- ceptionally fortunate as a corporation and em- ployer of labor if its employees really believe promotion "always open to the man who works hard" and the public will share the benefit. The spirit of loyalty, confidence of receiving jus- tice : no dollar-and-cent value can be placed upon these factors, but their absence is none the less fatal to successful organization. The men who have made the Pennsylvania Railroad have not always measured up in all regards (civic virtue, for instance) to Saint Louis and George Washington but somehow they have managed to instill a notable morale into their men, and the traveling public knows their conductors and brakemen for courtesy and intelligence and a general air of self-respect. Some of the railroads realize that they are public-service corporations, and act accordingly in those human relations where this service is apparent. But cheerful, hopeful employees are essential to creating really [322] MATTERS OF BUSINESS cordial relations between the public and the cor- poration. The Pennsylvania was one of the first railroad systems to apply this fundamental truth. THE BASIC SERVICE OF RAILROADING ONE of the most impressive sights of our time is that from a wagon bridge over a four- track railroad. You may be a day's walk from the nearest city, but the fact of the city's ex- istence is plain in the endless movement of goods and people. It is plain also that the railroad is not so much a business as a gigantic underlying service. This service moves human beings and things from place to place. We get used to it, depend on it, and in time come to shape our ac- tions very largely by what the service makes pos- sible. It follows that the cost of this transpor- tation becomes embedded in thousands and thou- sands of prices. It is desirable, therefore, that its cost to others be stable, so that passengers and shippers can be sure of their plans. Fur- thermore, the railroad must be made to feel that success depends on doing a good job rather than on taking advantage of the public's necessities. Mr. Brandeis has given this point the clearest and most dramatic of statements in his famous aphorism about the "Million Dollars a Day" which efficiency ought to save for the railroads. [323] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS Our whole accepted policy of regulation and pub- lic control hangs upon these facts. The public must have real power over rates and capitaliza- tion, over dividends, and over purchases of other lines and utilities, or else the monopoly power of the railroad will be used in many cases for private gain and to the disadvantage of the com- munity. There have been too many instances of this. WHAT DO WE WANT? IT is not a matter of bargaining with an in- dependent power. It is a matter of deciding what we want to get out of a certain service. These railroad corporations are creatures of the State, and most of them realize it very clearly nowadays. It is the economic facts that are obdurate, and it is our own social purpose that is vague. Do we want to use the railroads so as to accentuate and emphasize the present domi- nance of the Atlantic Seaboard in the business life of this country? Or do we want to use the railroads so as to get a spreading of popula- tion and industry over our entire area? What towns and regions should be given a comparative advantage when rates are readjusted? There is no benefit to be had from merely throwing a bone in the shape of higher rates to those who [324] MATTERS OF BUSINESS own the railroads as property. What we must do is to strengthen and extend the railroads as a gigantic fundamental service, no matter how owned. This is the only control worth while, and to accomplish it will require the handling of the problem from the broadest standpoint of constructive industrial statesmanship. It will not be done by figuring dividends and costs. We must have a national plan. What, in the long run, do the American people want from their railroads ? STEEL CARS AND SLAUGHTER THE morning after the last big wreck the press was lurid with demands for steel cars. Steel cars are necessary, because they render accidents somewhat less fatal. But the hue and cry for steel cars may be very harmful, for all that, if it fills the public and the legis- lative mind with the foolish notion that such equipment will prevent railway slaughter. In- deed, in some future wreck these steel cars, which are conductors of electricity, may result, in con- nection with a third rail or an overhead wire, in a tragedy of wholesale electrocution not pleas- ant to think about. But that is another story. The only thing which will prevent that is good railroading. Wrecks happen on almost all rail- [325] NATIONAL FLOODM ABKS ways ; but wrecks on the shocking American scale of frequency and loss of life are caused by only one thing. That thing is railway incompetence. It may be incompetence in training and manag- ing men. It may be incompetence in allowing greed for dividends to forestall needed improve- ments in track and equipment. It may be finan- cial incompetence. But it is incompetence. These wrecks prove by ghastly and overwhelm- ing evidence that the railway managements of the United States have not had the brains and the integrity to develop their roads with the growth of the nation on safe lines. Railways in other lands have no such horrible array of deaths and wounds. Whatever may be said of the su- periority of the American railway in some re- gards, so long as this thing continues it is a fail- ure, and the system of private ownership stands hopelessly condemned. THE NEW HAVEN MESS THE report made to the Senate of the United States by the Interstate Commerce Commission recites a vast amount of detail con- cerning the most infamous financial scandal this country has had in years. The main facts were already so well known that the stock of the rail- road in question was selling at one-third of what [326] MATTERS OF BUSINESS used to be its normal value. But the full ac- count is appalling. The whole thing may be summed up by saying that the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad was engaged in every sort of business save that of railroad work. Juggling paper securities, creating public opin- ion, buying steamships and trolley lines, influ- encing legislation and greasing certain myste- rious politicians were a few of the activities to which this corporation devoted much of its best brains and a great deal of other people's money. The highly paid, highly trained, and well-reputed men at the head of it seem to have crawled through every sewer of crooked political finance in New York and New England. The usual chorus of apology and explanation is now being heard from the interested and sympathetic; the Interstate Commerce Commission is freely ac- cused of suspicion, prejudice, political aims, and so forth, but it is only common sense to insist that honest men do not burn the books, nor deal largely with mysterious forgotten strangers, nor willfully confuse their own transactions, nor pay trust money for mere water. Facts like these cannot be smoothed over. They must be refuted or confessed. [327] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS MONOPOLY AND EMPIRE YET this supposed railroad company was us- ing the money of thousands of hard-headed American citizens; its directors numbered many of the best business men in New England. What were they after? Allowing for waste, arrogant dictation, carelessness, and the false confidence of long success, it remains clear that there was a great plan on foot. It seems to have been in- tended to build up and consolidate a unified transportation system, a railroad empire which should serve and guard and profit by the indus- trial greatness of New England. Every chance of competition, every possible shifting of the tides of trade and the channels of transportation, was to be anticipated and held in line. It was a great dream of enduring power; it regarded neither law nor ethics, and went to wreck on facts. Such an enterprise is a carcass for all the vultures of business and politics. It must be kept secret and be put through in haste, there- fore it is blackmailed at every turn. Financial power can pay three prices for everything, but it cannot get three earnings. Receipts were fall- ing and expenses rising, yet at the worst the rail- road itself earned some twenty millions net. The old dividends could have been paid but for the $204,000,000 "invested" outside the steam- [328] MATTERS OF BUSINESS railway field. This water broke their backs and would have done so, investigation or no investi- gation. What next? The only certain thing is that the last ounce of political capital will be squeezed out of the incident. What we want is, on the one hand, enforcement of the law and, on the other, constructive work calculated to free and strengthen the vitally essential and truly na- tional service of railroad transportation. The reputation of the Attorney General and the pres- tige of the Interstate Commerce Commission will depend quite largely on how they handle the issue thus presented to them. Above all, it will furnish a very severe test of the economic wisdom of the Democratic party. REGULATION AND TAXES THE Public Service Corporation of New Jersey operates a system of trolley lines, gas works, and other public utilities in that State. During the year 1913 taxes paid amounted to 6 per cent of operating revenue i.e., every time a Jerseyman bought a dollar's worth of street-car tickets he paid 6 cents taxes. The Standard Gas and Electric Company owns a number of elec- tric and other utility companies, mostly in the States west of the Mississippi River. Last year [329] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS taxes amounted to 6.2 per cent of the combined income of all the subsidiary companies, a trifle higher than the New Jersey rates. Every tele- phone bill paid by subscribers receiving service from the Bell telephone system (and there are several millions of them) is over 5 per cent taxes that is, you pay a dollar to the company and a nickel to the Government. All these utilities are subject to regulation by public-service com- missions. Rates must be fixed high enough to cover operating expenses, and taxes are such an expense. It follows that in fixing the rates to be charged for gas, electricity, telephone mes- sages, trolley rides, etc., we are arranging to have these corporations collect taxes from us as users of these services. The effect is that the services cost more. How far do we want to go with this? Regu- lation gives us absolute power in the matter in the long run, and there is nothing to prevent us from making taxes 60 per cent, say, of operat- ing expenses instead of 5 or 6 per cent. The very proposition suggests what a crazy patch- work taxation is in the United States. During the thousands of years that human beings have been living together gregariously they have never arrived at a satisfactory method of assess- ing upon each individual what his subscription should be to the common fund. [330] MATTERS OF BUSINESS INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE HENRY FORD'S gigantic plan for an eight hour day and a minimum wage of $5 per day has been given the notice it deserves, but our journalists miss one of the more impor- tant economic points of it. The facts seem to be that the plant has been built out of earnings and that no securities have been sold to the public. The capital stock is $2,000,000 and there are no bonds. How foolish and wrong this must appear to the average Wall Street "operator" when he notes that last year's profits were about $35,000,0001 On this earning power as a base our talented "financiers" would easily build you a capitalization of at least $400,000,000. They would issue and reissue, sell and resell, incor- porate and reincorporate and concoct the old hodgepodge of preferred and common, bonds and debentures, holding companies and supply com- panies, that is so f amiliar a sight in our business history. The sponge of "securities" and "rights" which could easily be devised would absorb even these enormous earnings as the Sahara Desert sucks up the babbling brook. The business would stagger along and labor would be paid the "market rates" of wages. This is where Henry Ford is "utopian." He has refused to burden a great enterprise with [331] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS the false and parasitic capitalism which has blighted so many of our railroads and mills. The business is enormously successful so that the results are startling, but Mr. Ford's great departure lies in that he has given the enterprise the benefit of its own power. In doing so he has shown us what the business of the future is to be like. NOTHING IN IT ANDREW CARNEGIE, a successful busi- ness man of Pittsburgh, recently gave out four rather ordinary precepts under the heading : "My Rules for Manufacturers." The final clause of the second rule deserves attention: "Avoid resort to law; compromise." Remember that this comes from the long experience of a man of wealth and power who was able to enlist for himself litigation's every possible advantage. There is nothing in it. As applied to business, the whole apparatus of law, lawyers, and courts is slow, expensive, inefficient. We would like to hear some lawyers explain Mr. Carnegie's pre- cept in terms reflecting credit on the dignity and social service of the legal profession. Can it be done? [392] MATTERS OF BUSINESS OUR DEMORALIZED COURTS IN no modern country has technicality, sub- terfuge, and every legal tortuosity reached such a development as in the United States. In none is there such an utter lack of organization of the courts. In none is reversal, retrial, and every form of delay so prevalent. In none is it so difficult for a poor man to obtain justice. The condition amounts, as ex-President Taft so clearly said, to a practical denial of jus- tice. The scandal is great. Yet reform is slow. The myth of the sacredness of the law and the courts is strong, and very ably promoted by some hundred thousand gentlemen of the legal profes- sion who profit by these conditions. We must not lay tampering hands upon the Ark of the Covenant! It is, therefore, agreeable to see one of the ablest of writers on law reform, himself a lawyer, Mr. George W. Alger, writing in the "World's Work" a series of articles on what may be done in this country toward obtaining cheap and speedy justice. We especially commend these articles to the attention of our readers, of our lawmakers, of our law associations, and of our most recent ex-President, now professor of law in a great university, who has spoken so bravely in criticism of the courts in former days and who might now so fruitfully throw the weight of his [333] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS influence in the direction of this profoundly nec- essary reform. Justice in this world is at best a clumsy approximation; but the advantages of the law ought not to lie with the man who can hire the sharpest and most unscrupulous lawyers to play upon ignorance and prejudice. Justice can, as Mr. Alger is trying to show, be made rel- atively cheap and swift by the application of efficient business methods to an archaic system. THE DISCOURAGEMENT OF THRIFT THE people of the United States have now saved up well over a hundred billions, as measured by current money standards. The aggregate is amazing, and, while the amount per capita is not large, nothing like it was ever known before in any country. This saving takes on many forms the largest, of course, being in the rearing of children which shows itself in the steady increase in the value of land. The next is ownership of enormous amounts of securities, of railway and industrial companies, and the like. Then probably comes life insurance. The sav- ings in banks are relatively small. The incre- ment in land values goes to much less than one- half of the population, even in theory, and a comparatively small number get the benefit which is made up of the efforts of all. The [334] MATTEES OF BUSINESS larger amount of the securities outstanding represents a more or less fixed value. The eight- een billions of insurance is of absolutely fixed value. While these securities and insurance obliga- tions were being created, the relative worth of the dollar has been rapidly declining. The fore- handed folk who saved and loaned this money- get for it an average return of less than 5 per cent, and if they received back the principal now it would buy, of land or food, one-third less than twelve or fifteen years ago. This is a sav- age penalizing of thrift. We believe that events will soon focus public attention upon this se- rious problem. The procedure of the insurance companies, which in part is enforced by law, is of special interest. The companies collect above $600,000,000 annually from policy holders, and from this loan largely on long-time notes. They act simply as money brokers ; but with this effect, that with the rapid depreciation of the currency in the last fifteen years, they are now returning to their policy holders, on death claims or ma- tured policies, relatively far less than the aver- age amount of money which the policy holders have paid in. Roughly speaking, the policy holder has been paying in one-dollar bills; he will get back sixty-six-cent pieces. Theoreti- cally, the compounding of the interest on pre- miums ought to pay the companies' expenses and [335] NATIONAL FLOODMARK8 yield the policy holders a profit on the average payment. In point of fact, with the extrava- gance of the companies and the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar, there is a se- rious loss. This is not as it should be. A remedy might lie in a radical change in investment. A larger part of the insurance money is loaned directly or indirectly on land. Actual ownership of the land ought to be as safe as loans, and, if gold inflation is to continue, more profitable. It is something to think about. REAL CURRENCY REFORM CURRENCY legislation is promised, pro- viding a somewhat more elastic system, and aiming to prevent money famines in times of severe stress. The fundamental fact is that we have had an out-of-date and primitive system of banking: a system of forcibly separated and distinct units. Such a system prevails in no other highly developed commercial country in the world. It cannot be described better than by trying to think of the United States without railroads, and, in fact, with no better transpor- tation facilities than an oxcart or a Missouri River steamboat. The connections between the larger central banks and their scattered corre- [336] MATTERS OF BUSINESS spondents has been only a little better than in colonial times. The ideal banking system, it is needless to say, is one that will provide the smoothest and most facile flow of capital and of business exchange. In France, for example, a peasant in the most remote district may go to the little branch office of some great Parisian bank and invest his few hundred francs in securities recom- mended to him by the bank and virtually guaran- teed by it. He is thereby on a nearly equal foot- ing with the richest investor of Paris or Berlin. In Canada, with its amazing new development, there is scarce a hamlet of three hundred souls that has not at least an agency of one of the large banking companies, whither a man may go to borrow on his forthcoming crop or even to get money to purchase a cow. The notes of this bank circulate as money. A bill drawn by a shipper in the far Northwest on a Montreal or Liverpool assignee is put through with a minimum of ex- pense. How different it has been in the United States ! HOW MUCH PAY? IS any man worth more than $25,000 a year? That depends on how his abilities are applied to the situation in which he is working. Any- [337] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS one who has looked at the facts of modern in- dustry can cite any number of cases in which one man has made the whole difference between success and failure for a large enterprise. Whether or not it is advisable to pay him what he earns is another question. Successful vaudeville actors are very likely the only people who get approximately all they earn. "SHEER WEIGHT OF MONEY" THE advertisement of some articles on "Why Businesses Win" refers to the giant corporations which have won by sheer weight of money. It would be difficult to imply more bad eco- nomics, popular untruth, and baseless assump- tion in fewer words. If "sheer weight of money" could win, the New York, New Haven & Hart- ford Railroad's recently abandoned policies would have won instead of scoring disastrous failure. Weight of money cannot keep the big mistakes going. The smash is merely post- poned, as witness the historic failures of Over- end, Gurney & Co., Jay Cooke & Co., the great copper pool of the later eighties. Where now are the leading dry-goods firms of New York [388] MATTERS OF BUSINESS City before the Civil War? They had the cus- tom, the capital, and all else, but of the two biggest storekeepers of to-day one was then a hustling young Philadelphian with a wheel-bar- row and the other was an old German out in Vincennes, Ind., and neither "won by sheer weight of money." The plain fact is that behind all commercial forms and means, behind even the most glacier-like aspects of the market, stand the men and women who know, who bend indifferent nature and careless humanity to the purpose in hand, who get the work done. To dodge this fact and blame failure (your own) or success (the other fellow's) on the cash instrument is merely a business version of the old scapegoat fallacy. A fool with a bag of money falls fur- ther and hits harder that's all. PRICES STILL WILL SOAR THE great rise in gold production began seventeen years ago. Since then about six billion dollars' worth of this metal has been taken from the ground. It is very hard and durable. Little of it is lost. But the gold stock of the world shows no increase of six billions; perhaps not more than three. In all the previous cen- turies much gold was produced. The known stock in '96 could scarce have been less than [339] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS three billions. It is not much over six now. Where has the rest gone ? Hardly into the arts. India, Egypt, and like countries have been large absorbers. Much has been hoarded. The huge new gold supply, then, has had nothing like its full natural effect. But the great rise in land values is a strong discourager of hoarding. Spectacular profits make speculators of us all. If there should be less hoarding, and the present rate of production hold, the effect of the new gold on prices might be much greater in the next seventeen years than in the last. Something like this was certainly true in the fifties, when prices went on rising for ten years after the supply had begun to fall. A severe recession in business, causing a sharp curtailment of bank loans and hence of credit currency, may cause a temporary lowering of prices. But the long trend should be upward for years to come. THE GREATEST QUESTION A FEW shallow persons have panaceas for labor troubles, but thoughtful men, with- out exception, can go no further than to say that they do not see the ideal solution. Neither the closed shop nor the open shop is satisfactory, and unions, through mistaken loyalty to unworthy members, have it in their power not only to in- [340] MATTERS OF BUSINESS jure the public as a whole, but also to betray the best interests of the union itself. Take the re- cent strike on the Delaware & Hudson. There the railway management had discharged two men on charges of incompetency. The em- ployees struck until their presumably inefficient comrades should be reinstated. After a twenty- four-hour tie-up the railway management backed down. Of course this is only one case of many and we have no cure-all. The most distin- guished foreign commentator on American af- fairs is James Bryce, and one of his most im- pressive recent utterances is that America's greatest problem is the relation between capital and labor. GOMPERS AND PERSONAL RIGHTS MR. SAMUEL GOMPERS does not like one of our editorials, and he writes to tell us so. This editorial, he declares, finds us lined up with all the forces and organizations for greed and labor exploitation which are resorting to every means to defeat legislation which Ameri- can workers have declared necessary for the suc- cess of their organizations, Specifically, Mr. Gompers does not like what we had to say on the Bacon-Bartlett Anti-In- junction Bill. This bill seems to be dead, so that [341] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS as a subject for an editorial it is no longer impor- tant. We are sorry, however, to differ with Mr. Gompers. We do not propose to line up with anybody in particular in labor-law matters. We are in sympathy with the aims and purposes of labor unions and entertain no prejudice against them. It is quite true, as Mr. Gompers intimates, that the manufacturers' organizations are highly organized in their publicity work. They are not only highly organized, but as asso- ciations they are not always broad-minded and assume far too complacently that the whole fu- ture of American industry depends upon the substantial demolition of labor unions a propo- sition to which we most heartily dissent. We try not to belong either to the Montagues of capital or the Capulets of labor. It is impossible to please them both at the same time, and this seems to be one of the occasions when we do not please the Capulet party. Where Collier's and Mr. Gompers seem to differ on this Anti-Injunction Bill is mainly in this particular: Mr. Gompers considers that the right of the employee to work or not to work is a personal right, and the right of an employer to conduct a business is also a personal right. From this premise his logic then bounds and ours does not to the conclusion that a court of equity should be made powerless to prevent any act, not unlawful in itself, if done by one indi- [342] MATTERS OF BUSINESS vidual alone, from being done by a combination of workers, by which the right of the employer to do business is crippled, his property rendered idle, and his business destroyed. In other words, Mr. Gompers believes that the law should per- mit the boycott, the secondary boycott, and, in- cidentally, the lockout. We do not. Mr. Gom- pers differs from us upon the important ques- tion of what sort of weapons should be permis- sible in industrial warfare, considered not only from the standpoint of the contending parties, but from that of the community, which also has rights which someone ought to respect. We do not think that these particular weapons would prove in the long run to be essential to labor or even advantageous to it. THE CURSE OF SMALL BUSINESS THE attention of those who believe that big business is necessarily bad and that small units are preferable in the interest of the com- munity is invited to a report recently made to the London (England) County Council on Lon- don's electricity supply. Messrs. Merz & Mc- Lellan, a famous engineering firm which has built enormous plants at Newcastle and elsewhere, find that England's greatest city is now served by sixty-five companies which operate seventy [343] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS generating stations using thirty-one different systems of generation, eight different frequen- cies, twenty-one different distributing voltages, and fifty methods of charging the consumer for what he gets. The waste and vexation caused by this confusion must be incalculable, and the en- gineers propose to arrange for an ultimate sup- ply from one huge generating station and to re- tire the bric-a-brac as fast as possible. The trou- ble is that for the next fifteen years the savings thus effected must be spent in retiring the dead capital already invested, so that the consumer will reap no immediate gain. London is far off, but the example is a huge one and easily understood. The difficulty with small-scale business is that it thwarts the future. Business must be regulated, responsive to the public interest and the general conscience, but it must first of all be adequate or it is a fail- ure. Any service fit for our modern com- munities must be a service of foresight and lead- ership. A WAR OF OUR OWN AFTER having had a free hand at excessive rates for half a century or more, the ex- press companies were suddenly brought up with a very sharp turn. Under the new law the Inter- [S44] MATTERS OF BUSINESS state Commerce Commission was given power to revise and fix their rates, and, following an in- vestigation by the present Secretary Lane, that power was drastically exercised. At the same time came the new parcel post, which the express companies' lobby, under the late Senator Platt, had fought for years. It was time for humble pie. One of the companies, the Wells-Fargo, has left off talking of confiscations and murder, and gone practically to work to beat the Govern- ment at its own game. It has organized a su- perior parcels service, especially for the collec- tion and delivery of food products. This is a shrewd move. Industrial agents have been ap- pointed for the principal cities. And their busi- ness will be to bring the farmer, the dairyman, and fruit grower in actual contact with the peo- ple of the cities. It is the elimination of the middleman; the direct from-the-producer-to-the- consumer business gain. It is computed that, roughly, on every dollar of food products the grower gets a quarter, the companies twenty cents, the wholesaler five cents. And the retailer gets half. Now the expressman will call at your door, take your order for so many Sunflower eggs, so much Clover Leaf butter, so many Ra- mona oranges, and so on, and in due course these things are at your door. The company collects, takes its toll, and gives the balance to the pro- ducer. This is intelligent warfare. Here we see [345] NATIONAL FLOODM ARK S at work both private efficiency and collective ef- fort. Incidentally, governmental competition is already doing good. THE HOUND OF HEAVEN IN these days when the song of the effi- ciency engineer is loud in the land, let us beware of exaggerating his quality at the ex- pense of all else. Francis Thompson was per- haps the most "inefficient" human being in Eu- rope. To his dying day he was unable to acquire the slightest regularity in the mere business of living. His [says his biographer, Everard Meynell] was a long series of broken trysts trysts with the sunrise, trysts with Sunday mass, obligatory but impossible; trysts with friends. . . . Dismayed, he would emerge from his room upon a household preparing for dinner when he had lain listening to sounds he thought betokened breakfast. He probably never earned so much as $2,000 a year, and had it not been for his friends the Meynells he could hardly have existed even the half a life that was his: he died at forty-seven. Yet he wrote some of the finest poetry in the English tongue, including such a piece of genius as "The Hound of Heaven" the Odyssey of [346] MATTERS OF BUSINESS that divine love (of which human love is an as- pect) that pursues us all through life: So, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! . . . "Rise, clasp my hand, and come!" Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me!" What could the efficiency engineer have done for Francis Thompson? GETTING RID OF TOIL WE all know something of labor-saving ma- chinery in a vague way, but we are not likely to have any idea of the ceaseless, scientific, wide-reaching improvement that goes on in these devices. Magnet cranes that will pick up and carry five tons of loose scrap iron ; one-man coal- handling bridges that will unload five hundred tons of coal in an hour so that you can see the ship rise in the water; lathes in which ten tools cut into two pieces of steel at one time and one man runs two such machines these are only three of the new weapons we are now using to conquer the world of things. What are we going to do with it? [347] XX FORWARD LOOKING AHEAD ELECTRICITY is no more powerful to- day than it was in the age of Columbus. We have only put a saddle and bridle to it, and ridden it to market. The future may well smile at our clumsy horsemanship, and wonder why we were so slow about enslaving the ether waves to produce "cold light." BRIMSTONE UPLIFTERS WHEN the backwoods, hard-shell type of preacher found his flock getting listless, he used to rouse their zeal and restore his own self-confidence by venting himself in a real old hell-fire sermon. Very few of these men ever built up large churches. Their life work was to found and maintain the bitter little hating sects that did so much to distort and discredit religion among thinking people. Their modem successor is the brimstone uplifter. For instance, Messrs. [348] FORWARD ! Forgan and Reynolds are doing good work in the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Rep- resentative Lindbergh of Minnesota publishes the most childish nonsense about the "possibil- ity" of their abusing their trust to juggle prices. He cannot understand their work, so he vilifies it. Mayor Mitchel of New York City appoints an unemployment committee and gets various prominent business men to work on it. And Amos R. E. Pinchot (Gifford Pinchot is the tame one) writes him a long letter denouncing the men and the project and breathing fire and brimstone against whatever they may do. The Federal Government puts a tax of one cent on certain telephone and telegraph messages, and specifies that the user is to pay it. Thousands of notices to this effect, signed by a Government official, are posted by the public telephones, and the brimstoners at once begin to yell that the corporations have found a fresh pretext to rob the people for their own gain! This country needs all the fair and sane criticism that it can get. There is much to be done and many changes to be made. There always will be. But we will get no help from the men of littleness and hatred. They create only confusion and disgust; they help privilege, not progress. It is good will that is bringing about the better day. [349] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS "FALLEN ON EVIL DAYS" A KEEN observer tells us that "very sel- dom in the history of the world had the race for wealth been so keen, or the passion for speculation so universal, or the standard of pub- lic honesty so low." This is the verdict of Wil- liam Edward Haetpole Lecky in the thir- teenth chapter of his "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," and he is writing on the condition of what later became the United States in the year 1778. The point is of interest to all of us who are too apt to think that there once were good times. The golden age of honor and of achievement is now and it is ours. INSURANCE AND A SONNET IT is always difficult to keep in mind two thoughts on the same subject at the same time. That is why we deem it necessary while pointing out, with some insistence, various things which ought to be improved to reiterate often that the world is better to-day than it ever was before. Sixty years ago, in England, there was a Parliamentary investigation into life insurance. It uncovered conditions compared to which our present scandals are peccadillos. No one doubts, [350] FORWARD ! for example, the solvency of any of our com- panies to-day. Then practically none was sol- vent. Within twenty-five years three hundred companies had been chartered and two hundred and fifty of them had failed. The bankruptcy courts were clogged with them. "Life insur- ance!" cried Barry Cornwall to Elizur Wright, the father of American lif e insurance. "Why, it's the greatest humbug in Christen- dom." And for the most part it was frankly and intentionally a swindle, like bucket-shops, discretionary pools, and five hundred and twenty per cent "investments" to-day. Life insurance companies were what Wright called his book "Traps Baited With Orphan." The business was chiefly in the hands of avowed swindlers. Organizing fraudulent life insurance companies was the favorite device of the needy and con- scienceless nobility. The great modern principle of surrender values had not then been recog- nized; if you had been paying your premiums for twenty or thirty years and found yourself unable to continue, you could get nothing from the com- pany. Your course would be to go to the Royal Exchange on Thursday afternoon this sort of thing was a fixed institution, regularly advertised in the newspapers and "sell your expectancy." One of the gamblers who made a business of it would look you over, make up his mind how long you were likely to live, and buy your policy. [351] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS Thereafter he watched with eager hope for your demise. In the meantime he paid the premiums and at your death collected the principal. One who had seen both said that these Thursday af- ternoon sales at the Royal Exchange were a far more cruel and pathetic spectacle than the Ameri- can slave auctions. It was about this time that Charles Dickens, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," wrote his famous satire on Mr. Montague Tigg's "Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance Company," with a "paid-up capital of a figure 2 and as many oughts after it as the printer can get in the same line," with its imagi- nary list of directors, its costly furniture on the most lavish scale, its lunches and wines served in the directors' room, and for secretary David, tapster at the Lombard Arms, "at eight hundred pounds per annum and house rent, coals, and candles free" how like the McCuedys this sounds ! As Ho wells says, in one of the best of his sonnets: But still, somehow, the round Is spiral, and the race's feet have found The path rise under them which they have trod. Sixty years hence, doubtless, there will be an- other investigation into life insurance, when a more prosperous and happy people will grow in- dignant at things which seem to-day but doubt- ful ethics. [352] FORWARD ! FINDING OUT A BELLIGERENT apostle of peace and quiet calls for the swift and permanent elimination of all political and professional in- vestigators. "Whatever comes of an investiga- tion?" he demands. "Nothing is ever done. No- body is ever punished. Millions of useless and troublesome words get into print, and that's the end of it." Not quite the end. There is one result: in- tangible, immeasurable. The public gets infor- mation. When Congress investigates the lobby, and the lobby and its employers dig impas- sionedly into each other's mutual records, the man on the street sees a gleam of light shed on the underground government. When Tammany impeached Sulzer, the sheeplike voter learned a little something about the kind of men he has foisted upon him by the bosses and used his information at the polls. Information is strong meat for the human sheep. In the last few years America has been absorbing information in con- siderable dosage. The "investigation mania" is not purely a Congressional epidemic. Rather it is the voicing of a nation-wide desire to under- stand what's what in our Government, and why. [853] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS AN INTERLOCKING BOSS AND THE DIRECTORS LOUIS KUEHNLE ruled for almost twenty years as boss of business and poli- tics in Atlantic City. That makes his going to Trenton to serve a sentence in the penitentiary all the more spectacular. Says the Philadelphia "North American": He not only was genial in personality, but he had qual- ities of genuine warm-heartedness and kindliness. He con- tributed to every charity. It was a common thing for him to buy railroad tickets for stranded visitors. These traits gave him a strong hold upon the populace. But his political power came less from the voters than from the interests which he served. The system he ope- rated was created by special privilege; he was simply the instrument. Thus Kuehnle's conviction alone was not suf- ficient to teach the lesson of the supremacy of the law. Every bank and corporation in which he had held office promptly reelected him. No man shunned him. And when he appeared in court for sentence it was with petitions for clemency signed by hundreds of bankers, merchants, pro- fessional men, and clergymen. But the sentence was a prison term; and as the convic- tion was upheld by one after another of the higher courts, it dawned upon the supporters of bossism that the time when they could successfully defy the whole State had passed. What Kuehnle did was to plunge both hands into the treasury and (as a municipal official) [354] FORWARD ! award himself (as a contractor) contracts and cash. Now, the truth is that more than half the great fortunes in the United States, except those built up through manufacturing, have been made in exactly the same way. The easy way to big money has been for a man (as director in a rail- road or other corporation) to vote to himself (as a banker, or owner of a coal mine, or seller of equipment) contracts and cash. In ethics, in economics, the crime of Kuehnle is no worse than these performances of interlocking public- utility directors. Mr. Brandeis puts the ques- tion very simply in sixteen short Anglo-Saxon words : Can there be real bargaining where the same man is on both sides of a trade? These practices have always been morally wrong. By virtue of the present Administra- tion at Washington, they are to be made legally wrong and will be given the stigma that goes with a jail sentence. MILESTONES ONE thing that will make for clearness and sanity, and for charity where needed, is to recall how much has happened in ten years. In 1902 there was no Pure Food Law at all; [355] NATIONAL FLOODMABKS you could fill a can with common brown sugar, adorn it with a picture of a Green Mountain log cabin and a tree, and call it "Pure Vermont Maple Sugar." In 1902 there was no sentiment against cam- paign contributions, and the fat fryer was a na- tional hero. In 1902 half the public men in Washington were indorsing Peruna or other patent medicines in the public prints. In 1902 Collier's was printing beer and whisky advertisements (and a few years earlier patent medicines and palmists). In 1902 nine-tenths of the editors and public men in the country were riding on railroad passes and assuming the obligation implied. So let's be charitable. It's an age of quickly changing standards. What was merely a cry in the wilderness in 1902 is the criminal statute of 1912. Who knows but for what we do to-day in the bosoms of approving families we may yet be crucified by some austere young moralist of 1922? HEADWAY IN our judgment no more important headline has appeared in any American newspaper during the present year than this from the New York "Sun": [356] FORWARD ! DAYTON ASKS GOETHALS TO BE CITY MANAGER Panama Canal Builder May Name Hia Own Salary Up to $25,000 It matters little whether Colonel Goethals wants the job or whether the War Department is willing to release him to take it. The signifi- cant thing is that a fairly large American city has come to the point where it is willing to hire an expert executive to manage its affairs. It is many a milestone from this back to the system of partisan mayors and cumbrous partisan alder- manic bodies still obtaining in almost all Ameri- can cities. A LANDMARK THE election of John Purroy Mitchel and his colleagues to the government of New York City is a landmark in the regenera- tion of politics in our greatest State. It is a great event in the development of expert community administration in this country. The atrocious combination which infests New York and many other big cities the combination of those who live by "politics" with those who put property above human welfare, and those who practice crime has been signally defeated. New York [357] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS City is getting that greatest of all political as- sets, a group of able, honest men who are widely and accurately known and are judged at their real worth. Public opinion is here informed by a group of papers supporting these men which circulate over a million copies a day. Omitting the Hearst publications, the papers opposed do not circulate one-tenth of this number. Here we see the basis of knowledge and worth upon which a great community will build its future. The greatest city of the New World is going forward and the track ahead is clear. WATCH OREGON ONE advantage of our system of State gov- ernments is the opportunity for experi- ment. The younger States try out radical pro- posals, and if the innovation works, and is adap- table to other communities, it is only a question of time till it is adopted in the skeptical East. The Industrial Welfare Commission of Oregon has made a ruling, which becomes law on Novem- ber 23, fixing a minimum wage of $9.25 a week for adult women clerks who are not apprentices ; defining eight hours and twenty minutes as the maximum day's -work, and fifty hours as the maximum for a week; and establishing 6 p. m. as the latest hour at which any woman may be [358] FORWARD ! employed in a mercantile establishment on any day of the year. This order automatically elimi- nates Saturday night shopping and late hours of shopping in the Christmas season, and was re- sisted by most of the department stores. Keep your eyes on Oregon and on the workings of this new legislation. LUX EVERY generation raises its crop of fine old crusted Tories some of them in the hum- bler walks of life. And at all times, and instinc- tively, they oppose light even as they once tried to resist lighting what Longfellow called the "street lamps of the ocean." The instance we have in mind is noted in Emerson's "Journal." Sixty years ago the philosopher visited Nauset, on Cape Cod. "Collins, the keeper, told us he found resistance on Cape Cod to the project of building a lighthouse on this coast, as it would injure the wrecking business" Did you ever stop to think that our lighthouses have utterly ruined what used to be a vested in- terest? [359] XXI HOME MATTERS IS THAT SO? APROPOS of too many divorces, we find this key in "Thoughts on Various Sub- jects," by Jonathan Swift: The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, and not in making cages. CHILDREN YOU who have children are the blessed ones ; you who open sleepy eyes in the gray dawn of Christmas morning to see a small face round with excitement peering through the bedroom door and hear from the next room treble shouts of "Merry Christmas" and the scampering of little feet. You are the happy ones about whose Christmas tree the gifts are mostly toys. There are so many who have no children. So many [360] HOME MATTERS homeless people in city boarding houses, in vil- lage cottages, in mines, in camps, in offices; so many lonely women robbed of their heritage; so many barren in body or in spirit, to whom home is but a dwelling place and the future only a dream. You about whose skirts little hands are clinging are the ones to whom a Christmas really comes. When in the dusk of Christmas Day the curtains are drawn over the holly wreaths, and the fire throws a soft light among the yuletide evergreens, flickering on the shining tree around which the gifts lie scattered, when a little head rests wearily against the father's knee with the utter trust of childhood, and a soft, tired body snuggles up against the mother's breast, then is life justified. The memory of a hard and lonely past may bring unnoticed tears, the fear of an uncertain future may sober the smile, but this moment at least is a perfect one. The world may roll on with its wars and wickedness and misery, kingdoms may go and governments may come, philosophies and religions may wax and wane, but to you at least is this life worth living, and to you is immortality assured. [861] NATIONAL FLOODM ARKS 'ARE YOU CHEERFUL TO-DAY? OF course the trouble is that room in which you started the day's grouch with break- fast. For "if the family dining room be large enough to be appropriate for the serving of large dinners, it is likely to be too formal and a bit lonely for breakfast for one or two persons." We grab this life saver from a softy-sweety page in the New York "Tribune," entitled "Woman's Varied Interests." What is the solution of this problem? Can one seek companionship in an eggl The "Tribune" gives the answer: Have a breakfast room! Have it as different as possible from the dining room ; small, intimate, cheerful, convenient to the pantry, not too far from the kitchen, full in the morning sun, and extremely simple oh, beyond words, simple! Gray or cream walls, "chiefly of glass," furniture and woodwork of the same select tints, a few quiet rugs, and nothing ornate about the linen, silver, glass, and china. Just the merest fresh little nook where one can spoon his mush and look over the scores with that unaffected brightness of heart which is so difficult amid tapestry and butlers. Lest one's imagination fail to get it, the artist offers a four-column cut of a radiant cor- ner about fifteen feet high and chastely furnished with palms, orchids, etc. The bright vista pre- [362] HOME MATTERS sented is labeled enticingly: "This loggia is but an elaboration of the use of an inclosed veranda as a morning room." No doubt it is the log- giacal next step, but we can't decide whether to have our breakfast room in the closet or on the fire escape. The first is more intimate, but the second gets the morning sun. It is rather a puz- zle, and we hate to bother the "Tribune," but we do want to get that "certain brightness of out- look." Please advise. MATTERS OF TASTE A BUDDHIST priest of the fourteenth century sums up the things that make bad taste : 1. Too much furniture in one's living room. 2. Too many pens in a stand. 3. Too many Buddhas in a private shrine. 4. Too many rocks, trees, and herbs in a garden. 5. Too many children in a house. 6. Too many words when men meet. 7- Too many books in a bookcase there can never be, nor too much litter in a dust heap. This author was a Japanese named Kenko, and he lived in the time of Chaucer and Dante. We have made improvements since then, but in matters of taste Mr. Kenko compares favorably with some housekeepers we know. There is a question about number five in his list of surfeits [363] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS but the birth rate was higher in the fourteenth century than it is to-day. UNION HOURS FOR THE WIFE FEMINISM by all means only that doesn't commit one to accepting every state- ment advanced by Mme. Inez Milholland Boissevain. Take her remark the other day about ten minutes in every twenty-four hours being enough for "keeping house." Now, ten minutes may do in a Manhattan apartment house where babies are against the law, but who calls running a Manhattan apartment "housekeep- ing"? In our town there are no uniformed hall- boys to fall back on ; no speaking tubes or dumb- waiters or "maid service included" in the lease. One cannot have breakfast brought to one's bed for the asking; some time, somehow, that break- fast has to be cooked. The housekeeper in our town is a home maker. She has mending to do, and stops letter writing or preparing a club pa- per on H. G. Wells to kiss a "hurted place" and make it well. Mrs. Inez's flippancy about ten minutes a day doing for keeping house is a crying injustice to the best, the most efficient, the most lovable of all "feminists." It isn't even on a par with the Kaiser's "three K's" in- eptitude Kirk, Kitchen, and Kids. We should [364] HOME MATTERS live divided between a very present fear of pto- maine poisoning and a recurrent dread of death by slow starvation if ours were a ten-minute-a- day wife. MOTHERS AS TEACHERS SCHOOL circles have been very much inter- ested in the recent decision of the Board of Education of New York City, which decreed that a certain Mrs. Edgell, an efficient instruc- tor in physical culture, should not be allowed a year's leave of absence to bear a child. This means that every teacher must remain either sin- gle or childless, or lose her job altogether, or re- sort to ridiculous subterfuges, such as a plea of ill health. The reasons for this decision reduced them- selves to two. One was the impossibility of modifying the red tape in regard to pensions and substitutes, a reason which caused many caustic comments from unsympathetic laymen on the pedagogue's worship of routine. The other rea- son seemed to be the conviction that maternity would so disorganize a woman's instructive and disciplinary faculties that she would never again make a good teacher. Also, what would happen if all the teachers did the same thing? The whole discussion, aside from its bearing [365] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS on race suicide, seems to be founded on two falla- cies. One is the assumption that the best teacher is the one who can inculcate into her pupils the greatest amount of routine work and discipline rather than the person who has the maximum of human understanding and guiding wisdom. Which would you rather have for your children's teacher, an efficient machine or an intelligent hu- man? What is more conducive to wisdom than maternity? The other fallacy is that the schools are for the teachers, not the teachers for the schools. Our present dollar diplomacy and con- sideration for impecunious young ladies has caused the education of the young, boys and girls alike, to fall almost entirely into the hands of young celibate women. And the above incident looks as if the condition were to be fostered by every possible device. It has sometimes occurred to us that if all the young women could be eliminated from the schools, and the teaching be put into the hands of elderly married women whose own chil- dren were safely launched, the real educative value of our schools would be increased. After all, the schools exist for the children. [366] HOME MATTERS SANTA CLAUS AND OTHERS THERE is nothing truer than a fairy tale. It is the quintessence of what Aristotle calls the probable impossibility. The best of the fairy tales are folklore, giving the boiled-down wisdom of centuries of experience, and the truths they teach are the old, old facts of human nature put into tangible form for childish minds to grasp. These tales do not teach morals by pre- cept, but truths by example. In "Snow White," now upon the stage, the selfish, jealous queen loses her beauty as a result of her wickedness. That she grows a long, crooked nose instead of hard eyes and a discontented mouth in no way changes the truth that ugly characters beget ugly countenances it merely makes it obvious to young, unsubtle minds. No amount of teaching about the brotherhood of man, and Christmas kindness, and the rewards of virtue, can have such an effect on the small, objective soul as is pro- duced by the vision of Santa Claus with his white beard and twinkly eyes coming with toys for good little boys and switches for bad little boys. Long years from now, when every in- cident of these stories is lost to the memory, the knowledge of fundamental human values will re- main. Teach the children fairy tales and you teach them the wisdom of the ages. [367] NATIONAL FLOODM ABKS HOW ABOUT SEX? THERE are many indications that the prob- lem of what to tell our maturing young people is going to be given an answer within the next few years. In current discussions the posi- tion taken seems to depend very largely upon the speaker's fundamental belief as to the impor- tance of chastity. This means that we are at- tempting to handle a practical problem from the most theoretical standpoint. It seems clear that experience so far shows that this whole problem of sex had better be approached in the spirit of personal reserve and reverence for personal re- lations that we associate with the better sort of home life rather than in the spirit of eager curi- osity and practical experimentation that we as- sociate with the schools. The psychologists are welcome to their endless wrangles as to the pre- cise extent to which sex discussion arouses, in those discussing sex, cravings which might other- wise remain dormant, but it is certain that the average young medical student's first acquaint- ance with obstetrics is not a force making for personal or social purity. The contrary is far too often the case. Any system of instruction which gives a knowledge of sex hygiene merely as me- chanical knowledge will be a gigantic mistake. Any instructors given this responsibility must [368] HOME MATTERS have the spiritual force to conquer the problem and the personality to compel their pupils to reverence. Anything less will be instruction for dogs, not for human beings. HOSPITALITY OUR way of living has changed, but through all the shifting phases of the human fam- ily, the essence of hospitality has remained the same to break bread and to converse. There have been hundreds of innovations in the way of entertaining one's guests monkey dinners, barnyard dances, vaudeville, amateur plays, and games but these are free shows, not hospitality. Hospitality is enjoying with others that which is our own; dividing with them bread for the body, sharing with them experiences and fancies of the mind. True hospitality is where one from the outside is welcomed into the home circle. He brings with him something of thought and fel- lowship which he leaves in that home; he takes away with him a share of the cheer and warmth of the fireside. To sit down together and break bread and then sit together before the fire and talk of that which has happened on pilgrimage, and speculate on what is yet to come: that, whether in an Indian's wigwam or a baron's castle, is the end and soul of hospitality. [369] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS A FEW OF HIM WOULD MAKE A MUCKLE A READER dug the following letter out of Brother Victor Rose water's Omaha "Bee," and sent it in to us in a recent morning's mail: To the Editor of the "Bee": It is a sad thing to see poor, silly people of the twentieth century complaining of the high cost of living and saying they can't live on salaries of $600 all the way up to $6,000. For fifteen years my salary has ranged from $30 to $60, and I have a good sum of money in the bank, a wife and six children. I manage things on a common-sense basis. No foolishness. Nickels spent on moving pictures and candy and ice cream are wasted. Money spent on finery is wasted. In my family we have nothing in the way of luxuries just the plain everyday food. I do the buying myself. Cereals, oatmeal, and similar foods form the bulk of our diet. We buy one pound of steak a week. I have a piece of it every day because I need meat to sustain my strength for my work. The rest of the family do not need meat in fact, are better off without it. The only luxury we buy is tobacco, and the cost of that comes to only forty cents a week. We save much on buying bread that is a day old, thus increasing the buying power of our money 100 per cent. Cheese I find a good substitute for butter and more nutritious, as well as costing only half as much. It is a very simple thing to raise a family on a small salary if a man just has common sense and doesn't leave the buying to his wife, and sees to it that tradesmen give him a dollar's worth for every dollar he spends. I have only been in [370] HOME MATTERS Omaha a year, but I guarantee I have made my money go further than any other workingman in the city, and I can prove it if necessary. A. B. Mickle. Our stenographer passed this in to us with the following comment: People read this sort of thing and then wonder why some of us prefer to remain old maids ! Well, there's a good deal to be said on that. In the first place, if our stenographer were Mrs. Mickle, we think something sudden and sur- prising would happen in the Mickle family. In the second place, a home and six children, even with Mr. Mickle thrown in, are better than be- ing an old maid. Finally, we want to know more about Mickle. Maybe he wrote the letter in irony. Maybe he doesn't exist. Maybe one of the "Bee's" bright young men invented him to add to the gayety of nations. Won't Brother Rosewater be kind enough, at our request, to send one of his reporters out to see Mr. Mickle and tell the world about him? If he is a real human being, there are a lot of things we should like to say about him, and not all of them to his discredit. His ideas are not all bad. When he eats all the meat in the family he may be doing the rest of the family a real service. The main point in which he is all wrong is his distrust of his wife in the matter of buying. His case may be an exception, but in nine cases out of ten the wife is a better buyer than the husband. [371] NATIONAL FLOODMARK8 After all is said and done, the outstanding fact about Mickle is that he went and did it. He did many and he did raise a family. For that achievement, compared to him, all the whining young men who complain they can't afford it are merely objects of varying degrees of con- tempt. [372] XXII THE PLAY-ACTORS A FORECAST INEXPRESSIVENESS is the cardinal fault of our theater. The typical "popular" play of to-day not only fails to repre- sent American life, but does not even mimic it successfully. At most it offers a patchy travesty of the paltriest phases of our national character : a sort of hodgepodge of incoherent Cohanism shot through with the strains of "The Star- Spangled Banner." For those who believe that the stage may rise from its present status of a dollar-in-the-slot machine without conscience or real intelligence, and become an educational and inspirational force, Percy Mackaye's vivid and suggestive volume, "The Civic Theatre," will stand at once as creed and guidepost. Repertory theaters, experimental theaters, and municipal stock companies have been tried with varying success. What Mr. Mackaye advocates is far in advance of these: a theater publicly and last- ingly endowed, under the management of a per- manent staff of artists, recruiting its forces from [373] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS the public which owns it, and giving the best at a price within the reach of all. Popular educa- tion, he believes, would create a popular demand for plays of genuine artistry and merit: From ocean to ocean a mighty chain of theaters, State and municipal. Forty or more State theaters from the Theater of California to the Theater of Massachusetts publicly endowed on the precedent of Wisconsin Univer- sity. A thousand municipal theaters from the Theater of San Francisco to the Theater of Boston publicly en- dowed on the precedent of the College of the City of New York. Leading and harmonizing these, one national thea- ter at Washington, endowed by the Federal Government. Thus Mr. Mackaye's vision. Would his plan, if established, supplant the commercial theater? He thinks not. But he believes the commercial managers would, by reason of improved public standards of judgment and taste, be forced to raise their own standards, both of art and ethics. Not the least interesting suggestion of the book is that, wherever possible, these theaters be en- dowed under the trusteeship of adjacent univer- sities. Since a college professor has become President of the United States, "academic" is less a term of derision than formerly. A future is well within the possibilities, wherein the man- agers who decide for us what plays we may have opportunity of seeing will be men of culture, reading, and trained thought instead of ex-prize- [374] THE PLAY-ACTORS fight conductors and graduates of the betting ring. THE NEW GENERATION IMAGINE, if you please, a tiny stage, with homemade footlights and a jerky curtain, across what used to be the back parlor of an old- fashioned New York house. Facing it from the front parlor, an audience from the neighboring tenements, Italian women mostly, mothers of many children; on the stage their sons, boys of fifteen or eighteen, acting Galsworthy's "Jus- tice." Stern and realistic modern drama does not seem to them ambitious they have already played "Julius Caesar" and "The Merchant of Venice" earlier in the year nor does it appear to impress the audience as high-brow, or "grim," as the critics say. They listen intently, applaud now and then, and when poor Falser is crushed by "justice" in the end, the two old Germans from round the corner who painted the scenery are mopping tears from their eyes. Such a scene a not uncommon one in settlement houses is merely one straw to show the direction of a wind which may one of these days become a hurricane. What do the "tired business men" of story know of the intellectual and temperamental back- ground of youngsters like these, who have the [375] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS sorrows and injustices of their lives worked into their very flesh, not merely in the actual business of living, but by the mordant words of artists for whom musical-comedy audiences have no time or taste? A MISSIONARY TIRELESS Sarah Bernhardt will essay this fall a comic role in a play by Tris- tan Bernard. In the meantime the great ac- tress is not averse to giving interviews. This is what she says of America: Thirty-eight years ago I found audiences there very attentive and full of respect for French literature, but far from familiar with it. I found that the majority followed my plays from printed books. Now almost no one bothers about books. Everybody seems to understand French and everybody knows the French authors. I am proud to have had a modest share in the expansion of French culture be- yond the sea. The impression is more flattering than just, though there is talk in New York of establishing a theater and a company to act in French exclu- sively. It is true, too, that our audiences are bet- ter able to appreciate a French play than they were a generation ago, and Mme. Bernhardt deserves some of the credit. Many the playgoer [376] THE PLAY-ACTORS who has brushed up his French by reading in ad- vance of the performance the piece he was to see her interpret; many the more proficient linguist who has attended her plays primarily to keep his ear attuned to the "golden voice" that has worn so surprisingly well and to the beauty of the French language which that voice has embel- lished. Our native speech and drama have no such foreign missionaries. Perhaps Sir Johns- ton Forbes-Robertson comes nearer than any other Briton to rivaling Sarah in the art of reading verse. SARAH SARAH BERNHARDT isn't just an ac- tress. She is an Old Master in that other art not wholly Yankee after all "publicity." She has never known fear, and at an age it would be ungallant to mention she has voluntarily un- dergone a grave operation. Though her best work for the stage was accomplished a dozen years ago at the least, she promises to return to it and we wish Sarah well. On or off stage, may that tomb of hers on Belle Isle, near the coast of Brittany, stand empty for many years to come; and may the monument for the tomb, to which she has given her vacation hours for she is sculptor too! wait on in the studio, draped [377] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS in its modest calico. She bridges French dra- matic history, does Sarah and, after the younger Dumas, what a debt do not Richepin and Rostand owe to her voice of gold! Just how old Sarah is we refuse to whisper; not so old as the ex-Empress Eugenie, whose physi- cian tells her: "But, your Majesty, you have al- ready lived long past the age at which anyone ever dies !" Sarah is the spirit of youth its fire and energy and imagination. She has carried beauty of word and gesture to the Antipodes. When De Lesseps started work at Panama a generation ago, Sarah came out from Paris to the French theater there, to glorify that fete of Great Expectations tragically betrayed. If we of the United States managed ceremonies as well as we dig canals, we should be giving Bern- hardt a warship to cruise through our great ditch, and San Francisco would build a theater named for her a theater for all time, like Sarah. HERE'S HOPING THAT delightful and gifted man, George Cohan, is soon to retire from the night lights, where he ties knots in his legs and wheezes out the zestful lines of his American comedies. Recent years have given us few youths of such [378] THE PLAY-ACTORS happy promise. He has caught a little of the es- sential truth about national character. He knows it loves to wallow in the exuberance of its patriot- ism, and then on a sudden to dance a clog in front of the flag for which it wept. He knows how it acts when deeply moved, how it stutters for words and selects the wrong ones. In his "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," a girl reveals the truth of her womanhood, and the astonished man, whose most real emotions have been reached, shouts out that she is "some girl." He means all that a man in love means, all that the poets mean, but his straitened language has the barrenness that comes where there is little emo- tional richness, where hurry is continuous, and financial success the test of worth. THE WILD WEST WEEN we were much younger the Wild West gave us our most delicious goose flesh. African and Arctic adventure charmed our imagination, "Marco Polo" made a wonder- ful Sunday book, but it was our own American pioneers, the mountain men who toiled with ax and battled with rifle to carry the East into the West, these and the Indians they fought with, who were our heroes. When we played outdoors we played Indians, and invented dramas of bor- [379] NATIONAL FLOODMARE8 der life in the patch of woods just off the old post road which parallels the railway line. Wil- liam F. Cody "Buffalo Bill" was meanwhile evolving a more elaborate pageant of border life, staging in his big tents not the aborigines alone, but cowboys, stage-coach holdups, and all the rest of it. And now, after prospering for years decades, even after addressing its appeal to the young and old of this nation and all the other nations, too, the Buffalo Bill show has failed. A change has come over us. Newer triumphs have obscured the triumph of the pioneers over wild nature. Small boys read less, and probably dream not at all, of the old contest between red- skin and paleface. They find Fenimoee Coopee dull. Thy are absorbed by baseball, by mechan- ical toys like the motor cycle, the motor boat, the motor car, the aeroplane; but they lack the his- torical imagination. We are sorry; and so, no doubt, is Buffalo Bill. WHAT IS IMMORAL? IF a play or a book or a form of amusement inflames the passions and encourages vice, it is immoral. If it makes sin repugnant and gives a reaction toward clean and wholesome living, it is moral, no matter with what subject it is deal- ing. This much few persons will dispute. And [380] THE PLAY-ACTORS yet it is only within the last few weeks, and after the most elaborate maneuvering for a theater, that Brieux's powerfully prophylactic play, "Damaged Goods," has been permitted to pre- sent in public its message that the wages of sin is death. While for years, in every city in the land, from every music-hall stage, the message has been sung and acted that immorality is a joke and the wages of sin is joy. There has recently appeared, also in New York, a short sketch en- titled "Any Night." It is a painfully realistic picture of the sadness and sordidness of prosti- tution. It is not high art, nor does it give any sociological solution to the problem presented, but it would be a callous and flippant soul in- deed who could leave this performance for that life of which it is a photograph. Yet the pillars of society are complaining of "Any Night" be- cause they say it is immoral. And if a similar play were put on in a popular-priced theater for all the public to see, or in any city not a metropolis, the thunders and lightnings of right- eous wrath would sweep it from the earth. In spite of the fact that the program especially suggested that daughters be left at home, par- ents say with horror that the young folks may drop in. Yet these same persons see schoolgirls and schoolboys flock to the nearest music-hall show by hundreds, and never turn a hair. In the light of recent revelations of the con- [381] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS nection between the police and immorality, it is not surprising that they should be loath to allow the truth to appear. What is amazing is that the good people of every city should make so slight an effort to put a stop to the stimulation of vice which is carried on by every device of music, color, and glittering seduction, and yet should combine in a complete conspiracy to keep from the young the truth about the sadness of immorality and the wages of sin. What a com- ment this is on the intelligence of the average middle-aged father! WE SEE "HAMLET" FORBES-ROBERTSON'S farewell has filled one of New York's too numerous new theaters, just as it will fill the playhouses visited "on the road." His repertory includes plays by Jerome, Kipling, Shaw, and other moderns, no less than "Hamlet" this spiritual actor's highest achievement. Here is a figure born to command and not only in such a scene as that with the strolling players (where some prefer Sothern), but in the tragic tenderness of the interview with Ophelia; in every passage expressive of poetry, philosophy, courtliness, or gusty whimsy. How maudlin seem to-day the old-style arguments: "Was Hamlet mad ?" Here is a filial Dane who [382] THE PLAY-ACTOR has indeed studied at Wittenberg with Horatio, who is indeed "Prince of Denmark." Three times have we seen Forbes-Robertson in the part once without the usual "properties" and each time his performance yielded riches for re- membrance. Fate is a member of the cast when this actor plays; the prince among men never lets us forget that he is a puppet of the gods. On the last occasion a young girl sat by our side and whispered afterward : "I never thought of it before as something that might have happened." Yet this is no "naturalistic" rendering, in the sense of Novelli's Shakespearean degradations ; it is shot through with the spirit of high romance. Forbes-Robertson's intelligence is as beautiful as his voice ; and he stands the test when he reads the most hackneyed speeches in the English language "To be or not to be," for example. Forbes-Robertson is incapable of banality; he brings to his task as an interpreter of great dra- matic literature distinction and nobility of char- acter. The sex plays mark a passing phase, but New York crowds not to musical comedies alone, and to crude sensationalisms like "The Fight" and "The Lure," but to this "Hamlet." The Sulzer case demonstrated once more that there is something rotten in the state of Murphy but since New Yorkers appreciate Forbes-Robert- son they cannot all be men and women of Go- morrah. [383] XXIII THAT MARRIED STATE A CERTAIN HUMAN RELATION AN old law Latin proverb, to the effect that "he who sticks in the letter sticks in the bark," is a neat description of much pres- ent-day discussion of marriage. In these books, plays, and tracts we get everything but the es- sentials of the matter. The ideal of marriage is not a technically equated and adjusted contract from which either of the parties can withdraw with the least possible loss. That would not be an ideal, but merely an expedient. Matrimony is nothing unless it is everything, unless it is based on "the uncompelled attraction of souls made free." Marriage as a worldly matter is not very important. It is important only when those contracting care less about their own ad- vantage than about their chance to live and prove themselves in duty and faithfulness and honor. If a husband and wife are not united to help one another in the war that time wages against the human soul, then they are not united at all, and it matters little what happens to their experi- [384] THAT MARRIED STATE ment in living double. The State and the churches are less interested in marriage as a decent and practical method of increasing the population than as the only way yet discovered of enlisting the strongest passions of the human heart on the side of order and faith. A society which does not achieve this will fail. Those who consider it only from the standpoint of selfish single people cannot understand; the truth is for those who care to see. ALONG TOWARD JUNE MANY a peaceful American household is to-day confronting the two great prob- lems as to whether the long black coat that father had built for his own wedding can be forced to fit him now and how to frame up that wedding- bell superstructure of green and white which is so becoming to beet-blushing bridegrooms. Spring is having its way again, and "it's as easy now for hearts to be true as for grass to be green or skies to be blue; it's the natural way of liv- ing." We hope so, just as James Russell Lowell did when he wrote that. The statisti- cians say that about every twelfth wedded couple is divorced, so our friends' chances of staying married to each other are eleven to one. This is as near a certainty as anything life affords, and [385] NATIONAL FLOODMAEKS any one pair can make that certainty absolute if they will. Our schools and daily life, our gos- pels of efficiency and success, all tend to build up a sort of shell of selfness, to interest people in their own selves and in their own doing. But the wisdom of marriage consists in knowing that there are others and in maintaining good will to- ward them. We don't know whether the diet sharps agree with the man who wrote "Better a dinner of herbs where love is," but the old say- ing is everlastingly right. There is no hardship in life that mutual good will cannot make blessed, and there is no ease or power that ill will cannot turn to bitter ashes. The greatest thing on earth is to be understood by those dear to you, and the world loves lovers because they have the courage to attempt that paradise. And we do hope the bridegroom's shoes don't squeak! ADOLESCENCE AND COLIC IN the "New Republic," edited at New York by bright young men, we find this sentence in an essay in dramatic criticism: In a civilization where the divorce between morality and instinct is pretty nearly complete, where vice and virtue are neatly tabulated, and the sexes decreed to observe con- flicting egoisms rather than accommodate inconvenient as- pirations and possibilities, it is well, though painful, to [386] THAT MARRIED STATE have a woman put before us who is acknowledgedly not persuaded by the standards which as children we ourselves were led to adopt. The main idea of this turgid sentence seems to be regret that America is so backward as not to regard chastity in women as a social limita- tion. We off er a prize of one Kansas sunflower to the reader who can as briefly condense more half-baked erudition about things that aren't so, more precious-precocious banality, more evanes- cent nonsense of the je-ne-sais-quoi aroma. The sentence quoted above from a criticism of a play written round a woman of notorious life, a play adapted from a novel of modern German author- ship, would hardly be worth reproducing here except that it is typical of quite a little group of intending liberals. We like so many things about the "New Republic" it grieves us to find these occasional signs of gastric storms in the editorial brain center. FATHERHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD SOMEONE ought to call the attention of the critics of the modern feminist movement to the fact that our civilization believes in children being born into families. A family consists of a recognized father, a mother, and a child or sev- eral children. Every form of legal and social [387] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS pressure has been exerted for centuries to make this the only accepted mode for carrying on the race. Its success is evident in the fact that the legitimate children are vastly more numerous than the illegitimate i.e., those born outside the family relation. In spite of all this we are hear- ing a great deal nowadays about women "shirk- ing motherhood," "refusing motherhood," or "escaping the duty of motherhood," as if a child were a sort of solitary indulgence on the part of the woman concerned. Anyone who knows the facts of modern life knows that in reality there are generally two people responsible for the childless family a man and a woman. If any blame is to be assessed, it must be put on both of them. The version which blames the woman only is no more modern than the third chapter of Genesis. If we are to do any clear thinking on this important subject, it is time we began to discuss the phenomenon of men "shirking fa- therhood," "refusing fatherhood," and "escap- ing the duty of fatherhood." This correction is true not only with respect to the institution of marriage, but also with respect to the economic basis of family life. The modern development of means of diversion and indulgence has af- fected men as well as women. Successful men are quite as apt to be absorbed in business and pleasure as women are in society and pleasure. They avoid and neglect the family with the same [388] THAT MARRIED STATE selfish facility. Both have made the same tragic mistake of preferring transient gratifications to the life's lasting satisfactions. Our country will not escape race suicide by talking as if it were sex suicide. The problem is to impress the ideal of family life upon people who have been so edu- cated and trained as to be centered wholly on themselves. OF LOVING AND TELLING IF only we human beings were obliged to ac- count for every idle silence at least as surely as we pay for idle words, how much more gen- erous we should be with our expressions of praise and affection! In our Anglo-Saxon tongue, originating as it does amid the snows and mists of the north, there is a spirit of reticence, incom- prehensible to southern peoples, of withholding praise till after the death of its object. Who does not remember the pathetic remorse of Carlyle that he was not more lavish in mani- festing love and affection to his wife when, after her death, he discovered how much and vainly she had craved them? Ronsard, the great star of the French Pleiade, protested in a famous stanza: "I do not wish that, as is the custom, incense and perfumes and essences be sprinkled [389] NATIONAL FLOODMAEK8 on my grave. But while yet in life I will anoint me and crown me with flowers." Under the clear skies of America we have no need of conforming to Anglo-Saxon reticence. We are a people composed of many races and, moreover, a people of the sun supported by sharp and rigorous winters against degeneration. In all the relations of life, of husband and wife, as of parent and child, of employer and employed, of citizen and public servant, a little more loving and a little more telling of our love and appro- bation would only enhance the joy in our lives. Surely the new year is still and always young enough to support a resolution upon that head. [390] NATIONAL FLOODMARKS All the brief essays in this volume were written by the present editor of Collier's or by the members of his editorial staff. [891] JIM 4- 194b NOV 2 3 1951* JAN 8 - 1952 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below REC'D LQ-URL SEP 1 6 ft* # SEP 5 1968 MAY 131963 REC ! % \o-u l MAY AM 7-* Form r.-o fSm-t.'ttMOOB) 1 121965 iA * PM 4-9 *- t0 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 056 810 5 illlfl 'll[: 1 1 1 'iil'l jijfll;'! III! I ; I illPli !!!! ii I It pi|| i 1 ! lb ! ;!il I hi III 1 lit 1 j