The Outlook 1916-09-13
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~The Outlook SEPTEMBER 13, 1916 Offices, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York THE STORY OF THE WAR: THE TWO RUMANIAN FRONTS Rumania followed her entrance into the war, reported last week, by energetic military movements. Her natural hostile fronts are at the north side of the western section of Ru- mania and at the south side, on the Bulgarian frontier. Her advance on the first of these fronts into Transylvania, the triangular sec- tion of Hungary which forms the south- eastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was rapid and successful. Appar- ently she was all but through the passes before war was declared; she quickly seized Kronstadt, and almost as quickly another im- portant town called Hermannstadt, later took the important town of Orsova, not far from the ‘‘ Iron Gates ” of the Danube, and appar- ently is already firmly established in Transyl- vania. What this means is evident in a glance atany map. ‘Transylvania is the nut between the two halves of the nutcracker made by the northern boundary of western Rumania, on Transylvania’s south, and the western boundary of northern Rumania, on Transyl- vania’s east. When we remember that this latter half of the Rumanian nutcracker almost joins the great Russian advance in Galicia, the parlous state of Transylvania is obvious. Russia and Rumania have every opportu- nity to actin concert. And not in one section only; for Russia is now free to send her troops south through eastern Rumania and Bulgaria in an advance on Constantinople—free, that is, except for the resistance which may be offered by Bulgaria and her allies. This resistance is evidently to be considerable, for large bodies of hostile forces are already reported as fighting against the Rumanian armies which aim to cross south from Rumania into Bul- garia. Fighting has taken place not very far from the port of Varna, on the Black Sea. What resistance may be made to the Ruma- nian and Russian advances—for Russian troops are already in this vicinity—remains to be seen. If Russia has armies to send along this line and also, perhaps, through Rumania to aid Rumania’s other advance, already described, the position of the Austro- Bulgarian armies in the Near East is serious. As we said last week, Austria-Hungary is now obliged to fight on several fronts— Trentino, Trieste, Kovel, Lemberg, Transyl- vania in two sections, and, finally, it faces the great army of the Allies now threatening to advance from Salonika. Moreover, the Teu- tonic Powers have to cope with the results of the Grand Duke Nicholas’s advance in Asia Minor. The situation in the Near East is such that it certainly lends coior to the argument of those who believe that either this year or next the decisive military results will be ob- tained in this field rather than on the western lines in France and Belgium. GREECE AND THE ALLIES Greece still remains in a confused political and international condition. ‘The wildest rumors were afloat recently about the King— that he was dead, that he was ill, that he had abdicated, that the Crown Prince was to take his place, that he was ready to submit to that part of the Greek people under Venize- los’s leadership who wished to enter the war on the side of the Allies. Almost anything might happen before these words are read, but as we write (September 6) the figment of neutrality is still maintained and Zaimis still remains Premier. Meanwhile the Allies in Greece have taken a firm stand to’ secure themselves from treachery and spying. They have seized several German merchant ships in the harbor of Athens, and they have caused the arrest and deportation of even diplomatic representatives of Germany and Austria who, as charged, have been guilty of underhanded agitation against the Allies. Greece seems to have accepted this action, and has insisted only that the actual work of arresting the wrong-doers should be made through Greek agents. ‘To a neutral observer it would seem that Greece’s only opportunity for undoing the ill-advised policy which has brought her into such a pitiable condition is to follow the 47
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48 THE OUTLOOK lead of Venizelos and the wish of the great majority of the Greek people. Revolutionary outbreaks have been reported from various parts of Greece. OTHER WAR NEWS The Russian drives toward Kovel and Lemberg appear also to have advanced ‘dur- ing the week. On September 5 General Brusiloff reported that nearly twenty thousand prisoners had been taken in three days. General Brusiloff continues his policy of striking at one point and then at another. The chief object of immediate attack seems to be the town of Halicz, to take which would bring the Russians within good striking dis- tance of Lemberg. In the great western conflict in the region of the Somme River the fighting during the week here dealt with (August 30 to Septem- ber 6) has been violent. Both the French and British have taken villages and positions of value in reaching their objectives. For instance, on September 5 the British are reported to have pushed a mile beyond the town of Guillemont and to have taken im- portant German defenses at the Falfemont Farm, while the French wedge, which has been driven forward so as to outflank andcom- mand the town of Combles, has been enlarged and extended. The French have taken twenty-nine villages in all since they started their Somme offenses, and in three days last week reported the capture of over ten thou- sand prisoners. Another Zeppelin raid on London and the eastern coast is to be reported. ‘The usual result is indicated by English reports, namely, that a few civilians. were killed and some small damage done to buildings. The spec- tacular feature of this attack was the destruc- tion, within full view of many thousands of people, of a Zeppelin by gunfire from an aeroplane. The sight of the burning dirigi- ble, which became a mass of flame and glow- ing metal before it fell, was terrible and mar- velous. English reports say that the total number of Zeppelins lost by Germany in the war is not very far from thirty. CONGRESS AVERTS THE RAILWAY STRIKE ‘The news that Congress, at the earnest suggestion of the President, had passed a law dealing with the railway strike situation was undoubtedly received with a sigh of relief from immediate danger the country over. This 13 September was so almost regardless of the widely varying opinions passed as to the justice of the law itself and the desirability of a settlement by Act of Congress. Some of these diverging views, as shown in the press of the country, will be found elsewhere in this issue, together with The Outlook’s own expression of opinion on the matter. The law, which had already passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 239 to 56, was assented to by the Senate Satur- day evening, September 2, by a vote of 43 to 28, and was signed by President Wilson as soon as his temporary absence from Wash- ington allowed. Only forty-eight hours were required for action by Congress on this im- portant topic. Amendments offered by Sena- tor Underwood, of Alabama, which gave the Inter-State Commerce Commission general power to fix hours of labor and wages, were defeated in the Senate by an overwhelming majority, as were also other amendments. The pressure of immediate action was every- where evident. This also appears in the first provision of the law, which consists of a sentence of about two hundred and fifty words very clumsily expressed and without a single period from beginning to end. Briefly summarized, what the law accomplishes is to establish eight hours as the standard day in railway work; to direct that the pay for a day’s work should remain as it has been, despite the change from ten hours to eight hours in the standard; to leave the pay for overtime as it has been (or, as it is called, pro rata), and not “time and a half,” as the brotherhood demanded—that is, a man who works an hour overtime will now receive an eighth of a day’s pay for that hour ; to pro- vide a commission of three to be appointed by the President to investigate the operation of the new system and report to Congress after ten months ; and, finally, to fix penalties for violation of the provisions of the Act. The law goes into effect on January 1, 1917. It applies to all employees of railways doing an inter-State business, and also to employees of electric street railways and interurban railways the lines of which cross State lines. The commission to be appointed by the President is to carry on its observation for not less than six months or more than nine months. ‘The law, of course, provides appro- priation of funds for the expenses of the commission. The leaders of the railway unions at once took steps to countermand the call for a = ©} a ae ae ae ae a ee ee. ee. oe! | ee a ae
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_——_— > 1916 THE Nation- wide strike which had been previously sent out fixing the day of the strike as Mon- day, September 4—that is, Labor Day. It was made known almost at once that the railway companies will fight the law on the ground of unconstitutionality. This will be based, presumably, on the claim that the law is class legislation, and perhaps also on the question whether Congress has the right by legislation to fix hours and wages for labor in one industrial field and not in others. Rail- way Officials assert that the new law will cost the railways something like $60,000,000 a year in increase of wages, while brotherhood officials put the actual increase at not over $20,000,000. THE PRESIDENT SIGNS TWO BILLS During the week ending September 6 the President signed two bills, the passage of which must stand very distinctly to the credit of the present Administration. Both bills had their genesis under Republican Adminis- trations, but the Democrats can claim the honor of transmuting the hope of their enact- ment into law. Both bills have been repeat- edly discussed and recommended in the pages of The Outlook; one, the Child Labor Law, provides adequately for the pro- tection of children who are employed directly or indirectly in inter-State commerce. The other provides that compensation shall be paid for Federal employees disabled or killed in the course of their work for the Govern- ment. Under the new law,as The Outlook has already pointed out, thirty-five per cent of an employee’s salary is to be paid to the heirs in case of death, within six years after the injury or the beginning of disability. Ten per cent is to be added for each dependent child of such employee, not to exceed a total of sixty-six and two-thirds percent of hiswages. Furthermore, this law, in addition to giving medical attend- ance for an injured employee, grants to the employee a monthly two-thirds of the wages during total disability, and during partial dis- ability a monthly two-thirds of the difference between his monthly pay and his monthly wage-earning capacity. Finally, the law ap- propriates half a million dollars to be set aside as a separate fund in the Treasury, and to be known as the Employees’ Compensation Fund. To administer it there is to be a United States Employees’ Compensation Commission, to consist of three men drawing salaries of $5,000 each. WEEK 49 THE REVBNUE BFLL It is interesting to compare Mr. Wilson’s statement of the Democratic attitude towards the tariff (made in his address formally ac- cepting the Democratic nomination) with the attitude of the Democratic Congress on the question of the duty on dyestuffs. Mr. Wilson said of the Republican party that it ‘‘had framed tariff laws based upon a fear of foreign trade: a fundamental doubt as to American skill, enterprise, and capacity.” Of the record of the Democratic party Mr. Wilson said : ‘“‘ The tariff has been revised, not on the principle of repelling foreign trade, but upon the principle of encouraging it.” Now, despite the President’s words, the Democratic House and Senate have passed a revenue bill containing a protective duty on dyestuffs which, to quote Senator Underwood, of Alabama, one of only seven Democrats who voted against it, ‘makes Schedule K of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill blush with shame.” Mr. Underwood said on the floor of the Senate: “ This schedule deliberately proposes to give a special interest between two and three million dollars. You will not have any revenue from dyestuffs from the custom-houses after this war ends. The imposts on dyestuffs levied by the present law were bringing in more than $2,000,000 in revenue a year when the war broke out. You are drafting a prohibitive tariff, which will cut off all revenue from this source.” We believe that the provision for duty on dyestuffs is a protective measure which even the most ardent advocates of tariff for revenue only can afford to accept without undue qualms. The dye industry is so closely con- nected with the question of National defense and the production of high explosives that the country cannot certainly afford to remain dependent upon foreign nations for its sup- ply, even at the cost of losing all our revenue from duties on foreign dyestuffs. The Revenue Bill, of which this dyestuff schedule is a part, has now been passed by the Senate. It retains the provision for the tariff commission of six members, not more than three of whom shall be of one _ political party, which has been actively recommended by President Wilson, and also a section de- signed to prevent the “ dumping ” of foreign goods in the United States at cheap prices after the war. This section would make it unlawful to import goods at a price substan- tially less than the actual market value or
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50 THE OUTLOOK wholesale price in the principal markets in the country of their production. The Senate has added three amendments designed to strike at the blacklists and the system of mail seizure established by the Allies. One amendment provides that the President may withhold clearance either from particular vessels that discriminate against any American citizen or firm, or from one or more vessels of any nation that restricts the commerce of American ships or citizens. Another amendment empowers the President to deny the use of the United States mails, telegraph, cables, wireless, and express serv- ice to foreign subjects or firms if their gov- ernments persist in measures restricting American mails or trade. The third amendment is the result of the protest of our tobacco-growers. Great Brit- ain had discriminated against so-called luxu- ries, tobacco included. The amendment provides that where a foreign belligerent, during the existence of a war in which the United States is not engaged, discriminates against the importation of any of our prod- ucts, not injurious to health or morals, the President shall have power to prevent the importation into the United States of similar articles from the belligerent country, and if there are no similar articles exported to the United States, then he may prohibit the im- portation of other articles from the belliger- ent country or its dependencies. THE COMMISSION ON MEXICO The Mexican question is firmly fixed as an issue in the Presidential campaign, and it is proper that it should be so. But every Ameri- can who puts his country above his party will agree that the sessions of the American- Mexican Commission at New London ought to be unhampered by political entanglements. Republicans ought to unite with Democrats in insisting that the Commission be exempt from political attacks. Attempts to work out a solution for the Mexican problem by conferences have failed in the past; little was accomplished by the so-called “A B C Conference” at Niagara Falls two years ago or by the recent confer- ences on the border between General Obregon and Generals Scott and Funston. There may be some ground for the pessimistic forecasts of political croakers who predict that the pres- ent Commission will accomplish nothing. But let us give the Commission the benefit of the 13 September doubt. Perhaps the most plausible reason for disbelief in its ability is the apparently well- founded suspicion that the Mexican delegates have not been given by their Government power commensurate with the importance of their duties. But there is good reason to hope with Secretary Lansing that their ** sphere of discussion will widen from day to day.” Secretary Lane, the first member ap- pointed to the American Commission, has predicted that the conferences will last more than a month, and they may last two months. But in attacking this important problem, so vital to the welfare of both Mexico and the United States, the American Commissioners have aright to expect from their countrymen a free hand and no criticism until the con- ferences are ended. MONGOLIA Recently, in a brawl at Changchitung, on the border between Manchuria and Mongolia, some Chinese soldiers killed some Japanese. Japan hastened to send a couple of thousand of her soldiers to the district, and, according to the newspaper despatches, has now de- manded as reparation : 1. The dismissal of the Chinese officers in command of the troops at the scene of trouble. 2. The withdrawal of the Chinese garrison. 3. The indemnification of the families of the Japanese killed. 4. The right of Japan to police Inner Mongolia. The first three of these demands are per- haps not unreasonable. The trouble is as to the fourth. Mongolia is a huge country, an empire in itself, half desert, lying north of China proper, and forming one of the four great outlying provinces where the Chinese Government operates somewhat indefinitely, the other three being Manchuria, Tibet, and Chinese Turkestan. History has shown that the five million Mongols are not arace to trifle with. To-day they may seem simple enough, mostly stock- breeders and caravan drivers. The native princes of Outer Mongolia, however, along the Russian border, hold their’ heads high, and during the anti-Manchu revolution (1911) declared that their country had severed its connection with China. But as_ directly thereafter they requested help from Russia in framing a new government, it was natural to assume that Russia had instigated the change, hoping to gain control of the country.
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1916 THE This assumption was confirmed when Rus- sian troops crossed the frontier and occupied strategic points. Then followed an agree- ment by which Mongolia was to be free to make industrial and commercial treaties with any nation, but subject to Russian approval, the Mongolians pledging to Russia certain agricultural and trading privileges. Thus Russia obtained all the benefits of a “sphere of influence ’’—that is to say, pre- dominating influence—without the evils of actual administration. Mongolia is really a buffer state between Russia and China. In 1913 China recog- nized the autonomy of Outer Mongolia, an agreeable circumstance to Russia, since Outer Mongolia is next to her. Not so Inner Mongolia, and it would seem as if, so far as it is concerned, Russia had given way to Japan. The Japanese contend that China has never really conquered Mongolia, and that the shrewdness of the Chinese traders in the province has furthered the discord. Perhaps Japanese traders, backed by Japanese police, will succeed better. We shall see. LINCOLN MEMORIALS Last week the attention of the country was drawn to two Lincoln memorials. One is two miles from Hodgenville, Kentucky, where the rude Jog cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born has now been housed in an impos- ing granite building, a gift from the Lincoln Farm Association, together with a large en- dowment fund. Mr. Robert J. Collier, of New York City, is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association. The chief feature of the ceremony of turn- ing over the deed to the property to the Nation was an address by President Wilson. In it we have Mr. Wilson at his best. We quote here and there: This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upon the great stage of the Nation’s history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men... . ; Whatever the vigor and vitality of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor and soundness do not explain where this man got his great heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sympa- thy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, whose vision swept many a horizon which those about him dreamed not of—that mind that comprehended what it 51 had never seen and understood the language of affairs with the ready ease of one to the man- ner born—or that nature which seemed in its varied richness to be the familiar of men of every way of life.... In the case of a man—I would rather say of a spirit—like Lincoln, the question where he was is of little significance, but it is always what he was that really arrests our thought and takes hold of our imagination, It is the spirit always that is sovereign. .. . There is a very holy and very terrible isola- tion for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for indi- viduals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. This strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was born into no intimacy but that of its own silently assembling and deploying thoughts. . The only stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right and codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to transmute these into the life and action of society, the self-denial and self- sacrifice of heroic men and women willing to make their lives an embodiment of right and service and enlightened purpose. The commands of democracy are as impera- tive as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. It will be great, and lift a great light for the guid- ance of the nations, only if we are great and carry ‘that light high for the guidance of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of the great Nation which shelters and nurtures us. WEEK The other Lincoln Memorial is the still more imposing temple, nearly two hundred feet long by a hundred wide, rising on the banks of the Potomac at Washington. The marble blocks of the exterior are said to be the largest ever employed in any quantity on a public building. The steps extend four hundred feet from the edifice and the retain- ing wall is one hundred and eighty-seven by three hundred and twenty-seven feet—di- mensions which may give some idea of the proportions of the monument. All of the exterior columns in the Doric colonnade have now been completed and half of those in the interior have been placed. The structure will be finished, it is now announced to our grati- fication, in June, 1917, a year ahead of time.
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52 THE OUTLOOK Both memorials will be National shrines. The interior of one speaks of Lincoln’s ori- gin. The interior of the other will speak of his life. It will contain the statue by Daniel Chester French; on the walls are to be engraved the Gettysburg Speech and the second Inaugural Address, and mural decora- tions are to typify some of Lincoln’s inspired words. REVISING THE TEN COMMANDMENTS A commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church will probably report at the coming General Convention a revision and shortening of the first five of the Ten Commandments for the use of the Church in its liturgy. It is possible that to some of our readers this may seem to be an unwarrantable change in the Bible; especially it may seem so to those who think that reverence for the Bible re- quires that its exact form, if not its exact phraseology, should always be used in quot- ing from it. In fact, however, the change proposed by this commission carries us back approxi- mately to what was in all probability the original form of the ‘Ten Commandments. Of these Commandments there are two forms: one in Exodus xx. 2-17, the other in Deuteronomy v. 6-21. The most impor- tant difference in these two versions is that, in the Exodus version, which is probably the older, the duty of Sabbath observance is based upon the statement that on the seventh day Jehovah rested, while in the Deuteronomy version it is made a memorial of the emanci- pation of Israel from Egypt. ‘* Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”” The statement that the Ten Com- mandments were engraved on two tables of stone which Moses was able to bring down in his hands, descending a somewhat steep mountain with no prepared path, furnishes one of the reasons for believing that the Ten Commandments in their original form were simple statutes unattended by reasons. or arguments for their observance, and that these were added later by way of comment to the original commands by the sacred _ histo- rians. The form of the Commandments which will be recommended by the commis- sion will be, we presume, substantially that given by Ewald in his “ History of Israel ”’ as in all probability the original form : I am Jahveh, thy God, who delivered thee out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I 1. Thou shalt have no other God before me. 2. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image. 3. Thou shalt not idly utter the name of Jah- veh thy God. 4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. II 1. Thou shalt not murder. 2. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 3. Thou shalt not steal. 4. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 5. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. We agree with our correspondent. Dr. Chorley, who, recently forecasting the ques- tions likely to come before the Episcopal Convention, commended the adoption of such a revision of the common form of the Ten Commandments. THE NATIONAL TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP One of the great events of the athletic year is the National Tennis Championship now played annually at Forest Hills, New York. This year’s contest was of perhaps more than usual interest, for, added to the keen rivalry between the:East and the West of the United States, there was introduced the possibility that the cup might even cross the Pacific to the land of Japan. Japan’s representative in the tournament, Ichiya Kumagae, whose record in recent tourna- ments raised the thought that he might be- come a real contender for the championship cup, failed, however, to endure beyond the early rounds of the contest. He fell before the racquet of George M. Church in the second round. In the fourth round of the tournament California’s brilliant McLoughlin, twice winner of the National Championship, also fell before Mr. Church. But Maurice E. McLoughlin was avenged the next day when Church was defeated by Robert Lindley Murray, of McLoughlin’s home State. The semi-final round found three representatives of. the West, Clarence J. Griffin, William. M. John- ston, and Robert Lindley Murray, still sur-
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it nh ne | vy Few SS Ww CO ~~ OS lee OOP ee Ed ol CARTOONS OF THE WEEK From Le Regiment (Paris) I’rom Le Rire (Paris) Chorus of Emperors: * We’re hungry and want to be fed! Our neighbor has plenty of bread.” Marianne: “Yes, but this is for France’s Joilus / _ “It’s a jewel! The more it covers your head, the better You’re what-do-you-call-it—just fous /” it becomes you!” NOT A COMIC OPERA THE NEW MILITARY FASHIONS IN PARIS Taylor in the Los Angeles Times Sykes in the Philadelphia Evening Ledger A CASE OF PROSTRATION “— AND BRING AN AX!” HUGHES SUNSHINE ON A VEXED QUESTION SOLVING THE RAILWAY PROBLEM
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CARTOONS OF THE WEEK From the London Daily Graphic MIND THE STEPS HALF-WAY DOWN THE KAISER’S PROGRESS AS THE ENGLISH SEE IT From Travaso (Rome) HINDENBURG’S NIGHTMARE After the nails of Berlin, the pincers of Russia! WILL THE HINDENBURG STATUE BE RELIEVED OF ITS ADORNMENTS?
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_ WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE 55 viving the contest. The only Easterner left was Richard Norris Williams, of Philadelphia, National title-holder in 1914. Of these men, Williams and Johnston, the present title-holder, came through into the finals. California’s hopes of again wresting the title from the East were destined, however, to be disap- pointed, for Williams won the final match by a score of 4-6, 6-4, 0-6, 6-2, 6-4. The match between Williams and Johnston was one of the most interesting in the history of the American game. In short, it was fully worthy of the splendid sport of which these two men are masters. THE RESCUE OF THE SHACKLETON PARTY Welcome news ca‘ne from Chile last week, of the success of Sir Ernest Shackleton in rescuing the twenty-two men of his party who have been isolated on Elephant Island, in the South Shetland group, since last April. This was the fourth attempt made by their commander to save these men from starva- tion. Previous attempts failed because of the impossibility of finding a suitable ship; the first was actually made in an eighty-ton whaling vessel. Finally, the Chilean Govern- ment lent Shackleton a small Government steamer, the Yelcho, and he sailed in her on August 26 from Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, the southernmost town in the world. The sea and ice must have been favorable, for a week sufficed for the rescue and return voyage. Great fear had been felt for the lives of the men, who had only five weeks’ rations when Sir Ernest left them on the island. ‘The chief hope for sustaining life was that they might kill penguins ; and that not very palatable bird, in fact, saved their lives. The story of the early disasters which had befallen both sections of the Shackleton expe- dition to the Antarctic continent has already been told in The Outlook, as also of the terrible crushing in the ice of Sir Ernest’s own ship, the Endurance, its abandonment, the distressin:r journey in small boats driven through raging seas and dragged over ice to the inhospitable little bit of land called Elephant Island, and the further journey of Shackleton and five men in a single boat from Elephant Island to the coast of South Georgia to seek for help. When the full story is narrated, it will assuredly form one of the most thrilling tales of hardship, courage, and adventure in all the annals of polar exploration. WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE You ask me what I would have done if I had been President during the last four years. I cannot tell you what I would have done. For the President is not an autocrat. In deciding upon his policies he must be guided by the advice of his Cabinet, who are his chosen counselors ; and in carrying them into effect his action must be determined by the support he can win from Congress. He is a leader, not a lawmaker. But I can tell you what the President could have attempted. and what, if I had been President, I hope I should have had the courage to attempt. I would have secured for my advisers men who believed in the greatness of the Ameri- can Nation and in the courage and patriotism of the American people, men all of whom put not safety first, but duty first. There were differences of opinion in Lincoln’s Cabinet ; but they all believed in maintaining the Union at any cost, and they all believed in “ liberty National, slavery sectional.” There were differences of opinion in Buchanan’s Cabinet ; some of them believed in preserving the Union, some desired its destruction. I would have sought to organize a Cabinet like that of Lincoln, not like that of Buchanan. I would have invited as my counselors only men who would advise me how to fulfill the Nation’s ubligations, never how to escape them. What of the specific policies outlined below I would have adopted would have depended partly on their counsels, partly on the question how far I could depend on the Congress and the people tosupport mein them. Some of the things I should like to have done are these: I should like to have acquainted myself with the coming events which cast their shad- ows before, to have been familiar with such books as Bernhardi’s ‘“*‘ Germany in the Next War ” and Sarolea’s ‘“ The Anglo-German Problem ;’’ with the campaign in England of General Roberts for compulsory military service ; with the anticipations of the more far-seeing European statesmen of an impend- ing war. I should like to have secured for our representatives abroad, both in the dip- lomatic and the consular service, men of in- sight and foresight, of diplomatic temper and diplomatic experience, and I should have de- pended on them to keep me informed of conditions and prospects. As soon as there was adequate reason to believe that Germany meant to violate Bel- gium’s neutrality, 1 should like quietly and
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56 THE OUTLOOK informally to have caused the German Gov- ernment to understand that to do so would be to alienate the sympathies of the American people at the very outset of the war, and when the first step toward that violation of 3elgium was taken I would have protested in the name of America against it. I believe that America’s part in the Hague Confer- ence gave us special reasons for such a pro- test, but if not, I would have protested on the general grounds that America cannot look with indifference on so gross a breach of national faith, destructive of the sacredness of all treaties. In the Civil War a code of laws of war was prepared under Abraham Lincoln’s per- sonal supervision, which was subsequently made the basis of a similar code adopted by the Hague Conference. I would have pro- tested in the name of America against the violation of that code—against the bombard- ment of unfortified cities, the torpedoing of merchant vessels without providing for the safety of non-combatants, the needless de- struction of churches, hospitals, and libraries. When the Lusitania was sunk, I would have called home our Ambassador and sent home the German Ambassador, and thus given the world to understand that America would hold no relations with a Power which in its wars violated alike the laws of nations and the instincts of humanity. I would have called a conference of all the neutral nations and asked them to unite with the United States in vigorous action to protect the rights of neutrals. I should like to have proposed to that conference to take possession of all German shipping in neutral ports, to open all neutral ports to the ships of the Allies, to put an embargo on all ex- ports to Germany and all imports from Ger- many—in a word, to notify Germany by action that so long as she disregarded the rights of neutrals she could not expect from them the acts of neutrals. If the neutral nations, if even the United States alone, had adopted some such policy, I believe that it would have secured respect for the rights of neu- trals even if it did nothing to secure respect for the laws of civilized warfare. I would have pursued in Mexico the policy which The Outlook has continuously and constantly urged. I would either have rec- ognized Huerta and demanded that his Gov- ernment protect the persons and property of Americans in Mexico, or I would have put a military force in Mexico sufficient to furnish 13 September such protection, not only for Americans but for other foreigners and for peaceable and law-abiding Mexicans, against the rapacity of the banditti who have been allowed to roam over the country devastating and destroying unchecked and unpunished. ‘This would not have been war against Mexico, it would have been war for Mexico against her enemies and ours. I do not say that I would have done these things. For, I repeat, I would have been guided by the counsels of my Cabinet and limited in my powers by the action of Con- gress. But these specific suggestions may serve to indicate the ‘spirit in which I hope my administration would have been carried on. The last four years make it perfectly clear that Mr. Wilson will not carry on his Administration in this spirit, and that the Democratic party would not sustain him in so doing if he tried; while the character and past career of Mr. Hughes give us good reason to believe that he will carry something of this spirit into his Administration, if he is elected, and will be supported by the Repub- lican party in so doing. For these reasons I shall vote for Mr. Hughes. LyMAN ABBOTT. THE STRIKE AND AFTER The country is no longer laboring under the threat of an immediate railway strike. It has at least time to breathe and to think. It behooves all intelligent men to reconsider calmly what has happened and to try to understand how the unprecedented action of Congress will affect the social and industrial future of the country. Many thoughtful and patriotic men are pessimistic about the situation. The view of those who look with grave distrust upon the action of the Presi- dent and Congress cannot be better ex- pressed than in the words of a well-known citizen who writes to The Outlook as fol- lows : I think the President, consistently with his general policy, has attempted to secure peace at any price ; but he has not secured peace. He has gained only a brief armistice. Instead of using the great opportunity to advance regula- tion and arbitration, he has confused the issues and pushed the controversy into a more bitter phase. I do not believe this Congress has the vision and courage to attempt anything in the way of legislation for permanent peace during the
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1916 THE STRIKE next session. Nor do I believe that the rail- roads or Nation can hope for anything like dis- passionate treatment from this Administration. Personally, if I had been a Member of Congress I hope I should have voted against the Presi- dent’s measures. The strike would have been terrible, but I believe it could have been fought out better now than a yearhence. If the Presi- dent had stood out for arbitration in any form which would have based its findings on a knowledge of the facts, ! believe he would have carried the whole country with him and have helped the cause which the unions represent. Now the difference will widen, the bitterness increase, and the fight come in the end. What- ever the men ought to have, they ought not to get it by taking us by the throat. Meanwhile, the President has humiliated Congress even in its own eyes. As at present constituted, it isa cowardly body. It was frightened nearly to death by the Germans in March, and was barely restrained from passing a measure which would have abandoned our rights on the sea. Unless regulation is now taken up in a big, intelligent, courageous spirit, we are in for the biggest kiad of troubie. I am not in despair, but I am ashamed. We do not deny that there is much groun’] for this view. We think the President may be fairly criticised for having postponed action until it was too late to take the course sug- gested by our correspondent, too late to frame anything but emergency measures. The conflict between the men and the railway managers has been steadily increasing in intensity for nearly ayear. Notices regarding it have been posted for the information of the public in many railway stations in the country for months, and circular statements and appeals have been sent out broadcast by the men. If the President had called leaders of both sides before him weeks ago and had said, as the chief representative of the public, that the controversy must be arbi- trated, there might have been—we think there would have been—an excellent pros- pect of settling the fight on the basis of arbitration. But that is more or less a mat- ter of academic speculation. The fact is that when the President summoned the two contending parties and endeavored in a spirit of mediation to settle the quarrel, the organ- ized railway employees of the country had already authorized a strike. The great ques- tion he had to face was: Can anything be done to avert the horrors of a universal rail- way strike without violating a moral principle or sacrificing the welfare of the country ? He had no authority to prohibit a strike or AND AFTER 57 to compel arbitration. Persuasion was the limit of his power. He found that if the men were granted an eight-hour day the danger of an immediate strike would be removed. There was a precedent. for this action. It seems to be somewhat generally overlooked that the Government of the United States has already set its seal of approval upon the eight-hour day. All wage-earners in Govern- ment arsenals or other Government works now have the eight-hour day by statute, and Congress, under a previous Administration, had gone so far as- to forbid the Govern- ment to let contracts for public works to any contractor who does not grant the eight-hour day to the laborers he employs. It is said in criticism of the present action of Congress that it was a misnomer to call the question one of hours or labor conditions ; it is asserted that it was simply a question of wages. It is true that for the men on the trains it will, to a large extent, result in an increase of wages rather than a restriction of hours of work. But the new law, of which we give a synopsis on another page, is so wide in its application that it will, if found to be Constitutional, affect thousands of men, such as signalmen, switchmen, telegraphers, and other employees who have fixed places of work, in their actual hours of labor. Our correspondent, quoted above, says that if he had been a Member of Congress he would have voted against the measure, and that a general strike would have been preferable to the-yielding of Congress under duress. In reply it may be said that if the present action of Congress has not established a permanent basis of peace neither would a general strike have settled the fight on a permanent basis of peace. Strikes never do. With the horrors of the European war staring us in the face, a general railway strike—which would amount to little less than a bloody civil war—seems to us a method of settling an industrial dispute to be avoided at any cost, save that of violating a great and unquestioned moral principle. Would our correspondent desire to have repeated all over the country the turbulence and blood- shed of the Pennsylvania strike of 1877, the Pullman strike of 1894, or the Colorado strike of 1914? Assuredly not. The real question to be considered may be resolved into two component parts : First, Are we nearer a reasonable and permanent basis of settling industrial disputes
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58 THE OUTLOOK than we were before the action of Congress ? We unhesitatingly answer, Yes. Second, Are the evils which the country will suffer from the yielding of Congress to the urgency of the President and the duress imposed by the labor unions greater than the evils which would spring from a_ universal railway strike and the complete disorganiza- tion of our social fabric which such a strike would entail? We answer, unhesitatingly, No. But we add the proviso that Congress must now proceed to enact a law which will assuredly prevent the repetition of such an emergency as we have just passed through. If Congress fails to enact such a law, we shall then, but not until then, agree with our correspondent that the President’s course has been opportunist, superficial, and futile. The Outlook has long advocated eight hours as the standard day for organized labor in factories, mines, and railways. As con- sumers we should be willing to pay our pro- portion of any additional cost which the adop- tion of such a standard might involve. But it is neither just nor democratic that this question should be determined for the Nation by a bureaucracy of either laborers or capi- talists. The railways are not like other pri- vate property. They are the highways of the Nation. Both the managers and the employees of the railways are the servants of the Nation. It is intolerable that any com- bination of either managers or employees should be able to dictate to the Nation on what terms the people may use their high- ways. We think it was wise for Congress to vote for the eight-hour day rather than subject the people to the terrible conse- quences of closing the highways for even a- short season. Congress has done well to free us from the present distress. But this is not enough. It ought now at an early date to devise some plan by which the peo- ple can decide with authority the terms and conditions on which the highways must be operated and can enforce their decision on both managers and employees. This can be done by the enactment of a compulsory arbitration law. Our corre- spondent, quoted at the beginning of this article, says that it would have been better to submit the issue to a strike. In the rioting that would have inevitably followed a general railway strike we should have shrunk from fighting with men over a mere question of dollars and cents. Such a fight would have been a war of conquest, and conquest for 13 September gain is repugnant. But if this country, as it ought to, should adopt a compulsory arbi- tration law for the settlement of railway disputes, and the workmen by force should attempt to fight the findings of a compulsory arbitration board or court—such a fight as that we should enter upon with zeal and a clear conscience, for it would be a fight to sustain a fundamental institution of the Re- public. Is it not possible for those who disagree as to the wisdom of the course of the President and Congress in the recent crisis at least to agree in demanding that compulsory arbi- tration, sustained by all civic and military power of the country, shall make such crises improbable, if not impossible, in the future ? THE PIPES OF PAN The pipes of Pan are never silent ; they can be heard above the tumult of cities and the deep-throated curses of the guns that turn ancient woods into blackened wastes. When poor Susan passed the corner of Wood Street in the silence of the morning and heard the song of the thrush that hung there, the city vanished from her sight and there rose before her— “A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheap- side. She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade; The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colors have all passed away from her eyes.” No poet has known opetter than Words- worth how inseparable are the inner and outer worlds, and how largely the beauty of the landscape lies in the eye and the music of the spheres rests in the ear. So the crea- tive energy flows on from generation to generation and the world is born anew for every man who looks or listens. ‘There is no age of miracles; the miracle is continu- ous and we are part of it. The spring comes in us as truly as in the bloom of the earth about us, and the springs of life within us rise again when the birds come back and the trees put forth their leaves. “In the beginning God,” is written in the poetic report of the making of the world;
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1916 and then follow the innumerable generations who have shared in a creation in which the artist in God and the artist in man work together at “ The roaring loom of time And weave for God the robe thou seest him by.” There are moments when the deeps within us are stirred by the call of the deeps without us and nature and our spirits ‘“‘ whisper to- gether of immortality.” So Wordsworth, in a fragment which Emerson used to read with thrilling intelligence, describes the boy who, “ when the earliest stars began to move along the edges of the hills,” would stand beside the lake and blow mimic hootings to the owls, and they would answer him : ; “ And, when there came a pause Of silence such as baffled his best skill, Then sometimes, in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received Into the bosom of the steady lake.” To the simple country girl at the corner of Wood Street in the most prosaic part of London, to the boy shouting to the owls on the shores of Lake Winander, to the sensi- tive Senancour in Switzerland, to Coleridge within sound of the “ five wild mountain tor- rents ” that rush headlong through the Valley of Chamouni, nature speaks in different tones, but with a kindred magic ; and there is in every man, in every condition of life, a poet who understands. Nor do the pipes of Pan ever fall wholly silent; even the passionate preoccupation of war does not hush them. Pheidippides, the fleet-footed runner of Athens, was racing to Corinth, carrying the news that the Persians had landed and that the light of Greece was at stake, when he came upon the great god Pan piping by the roadside, as he had piped a thousand times in the peace of the Arcadian hills. And the other day the lyre fell from the hand of Rupert Brooke, latest of the English singers, dying for England ‘and lib- erty on an island in the Mediterranean. The pipes of Pan are heard, not only by those to whom culture and leisure make place for poetry, but by simple folk far from the centers of art, whose days are spent inder the open sky and whose nights are splendid: with the unbroken march of the tars; and they sing of plain things and THE PIPES -OF PAN 59 simple occupations with a magic as mys- teriously beautiful as that with which they set great armies moving on distant fields or notate the elemental music of the spheres chanting the glory of God, the Creator, with sublime sweep of harp. Theocritus, report- ing the sights and sounds of Sicily, home of goatherds, is as true a singer as Homer, com- panion of gods and heroes. Pan was earliest at home in Arcadia, where he was the god of the herdsman and the guardian of the flocks, familiar with the simplest occupations and the rudest life, worshiped on the tops of mountains and in caves as well. His was also the inspiration which divined the deep mysteries of the uni- verse and made men mad with glimpses of hidden presences moving on soundless feet in the secret places of nature. Fellow with the most uncouth men in a rough occupation, his worship was charged with mysterious awe, at times with the terror that breeds panics ; for he was nearest the ways of men and yet wholly strange to them; incarnation at the same time of the most familiar and the most mysterious life about and within them. In one of his most beautiful pieces of prose Emerson wrote : “‘ The great Pan of old—who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify the beautiful variety of things and the firmament, his coat of stars—was but the representative of thee, O rich and various man! thou pal- ace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and the unfath- omable galaxy ; in thy brain, the geometry of the City of God; in thy heart, the bowers of love and the realms of right and wrong.” Poetry inheres in the nature of man and begins to show him the wonder of the world as soon as the imagination stirs within him. It antedates knowledge and is a wisdom born with children and too often blurred or ban- ished by the education which opens the text- book and bolts the doors and windows. The later knowledge lies largely prefigured and predicted in the noble myths which the race created in its childhood to explain the mys- tery of things to itself; and to-day the Irish peasants use a language on whieh stars and lonely glens have set their seal, with a rhythm of voice and words beyond the reach of the schools. And yet there are those who talk of the lack of education of Shakespeare and Burns! A thousand interests, wholesome in them- selves but tyrannical and limiting in their power of absorbing attention and energy,
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60 THE OUTLOOK assail the poet in man; but sooner or later, in his hours of passionate pursuit of the things that feed his body and starve his spirit, he comes upon the great god Pan seated by the roadside, and on the instant the spell is upon him—half-forgotten landscapes rise before him and around him, and the perishing things in which he lives take on a beauty not their own. The song of an invisible bird, a sud- den silence, a glimpse of self-forgetfulness and heroism on a city street, a flower in bloom in a tenement-house window, have power to remind him of his immortality. In the hour when the world he has made for himself seems most solid it is suddenly smitten with unreality and he is engulfed in mystery. The great god Pan was the most mysteri- ous of the gods, not because he brought the vision of vague things with him—on the contrary, he was one of the plainest and most neighborly of deities; but because he brought the deep things with him, the elusive companionships of nature and men, the inter- working of invisible forces, the flowing life which has made this vast material universe, to modern thought, not an organization of matter, but a boundless stream of force. Happy the man in whose spirit the pipes of Pan keep the wonder and mystery of it ali fresh and vitalizing. THE GERMAN SPIRIT* We wish that all Americans might read this little volume of Professor Kuno Francke’s, especially the first two essays. It is a sym- pathetic, too eulogistic, but not uncritical portraiture of the German people by a Ger- man-American who appreciates and sympa- thizes with both the Americans and the Germans. No American can read it with an open mind and not get a kindlier and, we believe, juster view of the German people. He will also get from it a somewhat more hopeful view of the outcome of this terrible war; as, for example, in the following sen- tence quoted from the address of a German captain on the field: ‘ This, I think, is true— that the war has created a mutual respect between the fighting peoples; and upon the basis of this mutual respect there may per- 1 The German Spirit. By Kuno Francke. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $1. haps arise a more solid co-operation of nations than the friends of eternal peace have thus far been able to bring about.”’ But Professor Francke also, in a single sentence quoted from Hegel, indicates what we believe is the real underlying cause of the hostility’ of all free peoples to the Ger- man idea. To Hegel, says Professor Francke, the state is ‘‘ the manifestation of the Divine on earth.” This is rather worse than the dominant idea in the Middle Ages that the Church is the manifestation of the Divine on earth. Any notion that any class or caste, political or ecclesiastical, is the manifestation of the Divine on earth, to which all human- ity should be subject, and by which the world’s civilization should be framed and fashioned, is absolutely inconsistent with that conception of democracy and that ideal of universal human development in a free atmos- phere for which all democracies stand. It is because of this Prussian ideal and the resultant attempt of Prussia to impose this ideal upon other peoples that the free na- tions of the earth are invincibly opposed to the domination of Prussia. We call this ideal Prussian, not German, because there are increasing indications of a revolt among the German people against this immoral conception of the state. Such an indication is furnished by the little but very significant volume by Hermann‘ Fernau, “ Because I Am a German,”’! written in Switzerland, con- fiscated in Germany, and now even forbidden public sale in Switzerland, though written by one who describes himself as ‘“‘born and educated in Prussia ”’ and “ generally reputed a good Christian and a law-abiding German citizen by the authorities of my country.”’ His greatest offense is his demonstration that Austria and Germany are responsible for bringing on the war ; his next greatest offense is his declaration that ‘‘ in the twentieth cen- tury there ought no longer, under any cir- cumstances, to be two morals—one for the people at large, and the other for the state and its princes.” The future status of Germany among the civilized nations of the earth depends upon the question whether Hegel as quoted by Professor Kuno Francke or Hermann Fernau truly interprets the spirit of Germany. 1 Because I AmaGerman. By Hermann Fernau. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.
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THE FIELD OF POLITICS THE PRESIDENT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HE week which ended on Wednes- day, September 6, brought to the surface more things of political in- terest than have appeared for some time in the progress of the Presidential campaign. From the Democratic camp the outstanding feature was, of course, the President’s speech of acceptance, delivered at Long Branch, New Jersey, on September 2. As may be surmised, the President’s ad- dress was an eloquent presentation of the accomplishments of the Democratic party during the past four years. He began his address by an attack upon the Republican party couched in stinging phrases. The President said : The Republican party was put out of power because of failure—practical failure and moral failure ; because it had served special interests and not the country at large; because, under the leadership of its preferred and established guides, of those who still make its choices, it had lost touch with the thoughts and the needs of the Nation, and was living in a past age and under a fixed illusion—the illusion of greatness. He continued his attack upon the Repub- lican party by saying that it had “ framed tariff laws based upon a fear of foreign trade, a fundamental doubt as to American skill, enterprise, and capacity.” He said the Re- publican party ‘‘ had permitted the country throughout the long period of its control to stagger from one financial crisis to another under the operation of a National banking law of its own framing which made stringency and panic certain,” and it had been indifferent “to the fact that the farmers, upon whom the country depends for its food, and in the last analysis for its prosperity, were without standing in the matter of commercial credit.” Under the Republican party, Mr. Wilson continuéd— Little intelligent attention was paid to the army, and not enough to the navy. The other republics of America distrusted us, because they found that we thought first of the profits of American investors, and only as an after- thought of impartial justice and helpful friend- ship, THE DEMOCRATIC CLAIMS Against this statement of the Republican record Mr. Wilson claimed for his own party iat laws had been placed upon the statute- books revising the tariff and the banking and currency laws, establishing rural credit, rehabilitating the merchant marine, and cre- ating the Federal Trade Commission. Amcng other things, Mr. Wilson included in the achievements of the Democratic party the emancipation of the workingmen of America by the legal recognition of a man’s labor as part of his life, the emancipation of the chil- dren of the country from hurtful labor, the equalization of taxation by means of an equitable income tax, the opening up of the resources of Alaska, and the provision for National defense upon a scale never before proposed upon the responsibility of an entire political party. He claimed that the Demo- cratic party “ had driven the tariff lobby from cover, and obliged it to substitute solid argu- ment for private influence.” Mr. Wilson claimed not only to have car- ried out practically all the platform of the Democratic party, but he added: “‘ We have in four years come very near to carrying out the platform of the Progressive party as well.”’ THE PRESIDENT ON THE EUROPEAN WAR Naturally the two most vital subjects, out- side of our domestic relations, dealt with in the President’s address were the European situation and the revolution in Mexico. Here is his statement of his attitude towards the European war : We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed and traditional policy of the United States to stand aloof from the politics of Europe and because we had no part either of action or of policy in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible con- flict, and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must follow when peace will have to build its house anew. The rights of our own citizens, of course, became involved—that was inevitable. Where they did, this was our guiding principle: that property rights can be vindicated by claims for damages, and no modern nation can decline to arbitrate such claims; but the fundamental rights of humanity cannot be. The loss of life is irreparable. Neither can direct violations of a nation’s sovereignty await vindication in suits for damages. The nation that violates these 61
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62 ° essential rights must expect to be checked and called to account by direct challenge and -re- sistance. Perhaps we will be pardoned if we find in Mr. Wilson’s statement of his theory of action and the record of the still unsatisfied claim against Germany for the sinking of the Lusitania an inconsistency which the Presi- dent would doubtless feelingly deny. There seems to us a further inconsistency between his statement that ‘‘ we have been entirely neutral . . . because we have no part either of action or of policy in the influences-which brought on the present war,” and his own later statement that “no nation can any longer remain neutral as against any willful disturbance of the peace of the world... . No nation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril.” To us this seems the nobler doctrine, and this doctrine Mr. Wilson himself claims will be the guiding principle of the future. He says : There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in America must contribute the full force of our enthusiasm and of our authority as a Nation to the organization of that peace upon world-wide foundations that cannot easily be shaken. No nation should be forced to take sides in any quarrel in which its own honor and integrity and the fortunes of its own people are not involved; but no nation can any longer remain neutral as against any willful disturbance of the peace of the world. The effects of war can no longer be confined to the areas of battle. No nation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril. If hopeful and gener- ous enterprise is to be renewed, if the healing and helpful arts of life are indeed to be revive | when peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justice and friendship must be generated by means the world has never tried before. The nations of the world must unite in joint guaran- tees that whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s life must first be tested in the court of the whole world’s opinion before it is attempted. THE PRESIDENT ON MEXICO In regard to his Mexican policy Mr. Wil- son said: We have professed to believe, and we do be- lieve, that the people of small and weak states have the right to expect to be dealt with exactly as the people of big and powerft. states would be. We have acted upon that pziaciple in deal ing with the people of Mexico... . Many serious wrongs against the property, many irreparable wrongs against the persons of THE OUTLOOK 13 September Americans, have been committed within the territory of Mexico herself during this confused revolution, wrongs which could not be effectually checked so long as there was no constituted power in Mexico which was in a position to check them. We could not act directly in that matter ourselves without denying Mexicans the right to any revolution at all which disturbed us, and making the emancipation of her own people await our own interest and convenience. Mr. Wilson continued by saying that his Mexican policy was “ not hard for the plain people of the United States to understand,” but that it was a “hard doctrine only for those who wished to get something for them- selves out of Mexico.”” He added: I have heard no one who was free from such influences propose interference by the United States with the internal affairs of Mexico. Cer tainly no friend of the Mexican people has pro- posed it. As if to forestall his opponents in pointing out that his action towards Huerta was a distinct interference with the internal affairs of Mexico, Mr. Wilson continued : The unspeakable Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitorously overthrew the Government of which he was a trusted part, impudently spoke for the very forces that had driven his people to the rebellion with which he had pretended to sympathize. The men who overcame him and drove him out represent at least the fierce passion of reconstruction which lies at the very heart of liberty; and so long as they represent, however. imperfectly, such a struggle for deliverance, I am ready to serve their ends when I can. So long as the power of recognition rests with me, the Govern- ment of the United States will refuse to extend the hand of welcOme to any’ one who obtains power in a sister republic by treachery and violence. Of course if a blow from the shoulder can be characterized as “ withholding the hand of welcome,” certainly Mr. Wilson cannot be charged with inconsistency in this matter. In concluding his address Mr. Wilson summed up his vision of the future America in these words : We are Americans for Big America, and rejoice to look forward to the days in which America shall strive to stir the world without irritating it or drawing it on to new antagonisms, when the nations with which we deal shall at last come to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and justice our passion for peace rests, and when all mankind shall look upon our great people with a new sentiment of admira- tion, friendly rivalry, and real affection, as upon
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” 1916 THE FIEED a people who, though keen to succeed, seek always to be at once generous and just, and to whom humanity is dearer than profit or selfish power. Upon this record and in the faith of this pur- pose we go to the country. THE REPUBLICAN SIDE OF THE CAMPAIGN The Outlook in last week’s issue com- mented editorially upon Mr. Roosevelt’s Lew- iston address, emphatically indorsing the principles of Americanism therein enunciated. There have been those who have been waiting for a similarly emphatic utterance from Mr. Hughes since his address in Car- negie Hall formally accepting the Republican nomination. Mr. Hughes has now placed himself squarely beside Mr. Roosevelt on the question of Americanism by a telegram which he addressed to Mr. Roosevelt after the Lewiston speech. From Kansas Mr. Hughes telegraphed: ‘I heartily congratulate you on your speech at Lewiston, and warmly appre- ciate your effective support.” The position which Mr. Hughes took in his telegram to Mr. Roosevelt he emphasized during his sub- sequent visit to St. Louis, a city which has been looked upon as the center of German sympathy and partisanship. According to a report in the New York ‘'I'ribune,” Mr. Hughes took the occasion of his visit to St. Louis to restate his attitude towards Mr. Roosevelt’s speech. The ‘ Tribune ”’ says: Publication of the Hughes telegram to Colonel Roosevelt in the morning newspapers had caused St. Louis Germans to inquire whether its implied acceptance of the Roosevelt views concerning the hyphen question had been properly understood. Several prominent citizens even advised that a statement be issued by Mr. Hughes denying that he shared the opinions of the Colonel. Just before the candidate’s party went to the Business Men’s League for luncheon the question was put squarely up to Mr. Hughes. “Did your telegram to Colonel Roosevelt carry with it an acceptance of the Roosevelt views on hyphenates ?” he was asked. “The telegram may be taken on its face value. I meant just what I said,” was the reply. From St. Louis Mr. Hughes journeyed to Nashville, ‘Tennessee, where, facing an audience a majority of whom were sympa- thizers with President Wilson, he won the respect and attention of his hearers. ‘lhe reporter of the New York “ Times,” a news- aper which in general supports Mr. Wilson, but whose editorial views do not often influ- OF POLITICS 63 ence its news reports, writes of Mr. Hughes’s Nashville welcome : The address was delivered in the Auditorium here before a crowd of 3,600 persons, a large majority of whom were openly hostile and at- tempted to start demonstrations for Wilson by hisses and catcalls. Mr. Hughes’s fighting words won the crowd for the time and found applause. It was during Mr. Hughes’s discussion of the Mexican question that one of the most dramatic incidents of his Nashville address occurred. A questioner in the gallery shouted out an inquiry as to what he would have done under the circumstances. ‘* What would I have done?’ replied Mr. Hughes. ‘I would have protected American lives; and that is what I will do.” MR. HUGHES ON THE, RAILWAY STRIKE, Passing* from the question of foreign politics to the labor situation, Mr. Hughes, emphatically stated his position on the great labor strike which has been so narrowly and perhaps but temporarily averted. He said: I believe there is no grievance with respect to labor that cannot be settled by a fair, candid examination of the facts. We huve in the past had to deal frequently with the opposition oi employers to the principle of arbitration. Sometimes they have refused to arbitrate dis- putes. Public opinion has been against them. I believe and I stand here firmly for the princi- ple of arbitrating all industrial disputes, and | would not surrender it to anybody in the country. . ‘a Now, then, I stand for two things: first, for the principle of fair, impartial, thorough, candid arbit ation; and, second, for legislation on facts according to the necessities of the case; and I am opposed to being dictated to either in the executive department or in Congress by any power on earth before the facts are known and in the absence of the facts. Mr. F. M. Davenport, whose article de- scribing the’Hughes trip appears elsewhere in this issue, writes us from Nashville that these remarks were recéived by the audience ‘with a whirlwind of applause.” It has been pointed out that Mr. Hughes, while Governor of New York State, vetoed the bill requiring railways to furnish trans- portation for two cents a mile on exactly the grounds which he has taken towards the set tlement of the railway strike. ‘The position which Mr. Hughes has taken is entirely anal- ogous with that which Mr. Roosevelt assumed in the settlement of the anthracite strike.
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64 THE OUTLOOK Mr. Roosevelt has not commented at any length upon the present railway situation, but from the brief statement which he has made it is plain that he believes that the present situation should have been handled as the anthracite strike was handled in 1901. IN CALIFORNIA AND OHIO For some time the California situation has been a thorn in the side of the Republican party. Governor Johnson, the only Progress- ive Governor still in office, and the candi- date for Vice-President on the Progressive ticket in 1912, was one of the first and strongest Progressives to declare himself for the election of Hughes. Nevertheless, the apparently irreconcilable differences be- tween the Progressives and the old-line Republicans of California, together with the * PRESIDENT WILSON 13 September refusal of such a California Progressive as Francis J. Heney toenter the Republican ranks, have been the cause of no little political worry, Governor Johnson, however, who entered the race for the United States Senate in both the Republican and Progressive primaries, has been nominated on both tickets. Governor Johnson’s nomination is regarded as a valu- able omen of Republican success in the fall. Governor Johnson’s opponent will be his one- time fellow-Progressive, Francis J. Heney. The Democrats are predicting that the Re- publican Old Guard in California will vote for Heney rather than for Governor Johnson. Another victory in the primaries which encourages the Republicans is that of Mr. Myron Herrick in Ohio. We are glad to say that ex-Ambassador Herrick was nomi- nated by a decisive majority for the Senate. AND PROSPERITY ” From a number of replies to Mr. Theodore Price’s article on the economic achievements of the Wilson Administration we select the following for publication this week. Others may be printed in later issues.—THE EDITORS. To the Editors of The Outlook : As a presentation of individual opinion of reasons for continuing the Democratic party in control of our Government, the article by Theodore H. Price with the above title, in your issue of August 23, merits the enco- miums you bestow in its prefix. As a presentation of “ economic and finan- cial arguments ” it is subject to further re- mark along other lines than those pursued in your editorial. After fairly and, with his unequaled facility in handling figures, clearly summarizing our economic growth during the past two years, Mr. Price asserts: ‘Whatever profit the United States has derived from the war in Europe is measured exclusively by the increase in the balance of trade in our favor.’ ‘This statement he supports by an ingenious argu- ment, reduced to its elements, apparently, as follows : The excess of our favorable trade bal- ance over the normal during the past two years being only $21.30 per capita, against a per capita increase in wealth during the same period of $410, leaves $388.70 made for each individual by the Democratic party. Although the writer of your article in other of his productions has been accustomed patiently to trace incidental economic effects and philosophically to analyze fundamental processes, in this instance he stops short at the first link in a long chain. Mr. Price is a man of imagination. Let him, in the exercise of that faculty, conceive an isolated community depending on a single manufacturing enterprise, employing substan- tially the entire adult population; that enter- prise on the outbreak of the war abandoning its legitimate line and engaging in the munition business, doubling its capacity, tripling its force, and increasing by fifty per cent the average wage paid; the railway serving that community carrying five times the freight it did before the war; the shopkeepers’ busi- ness doubled; the moving-picture houses filled daily in contrast to former. tri-weekly performances ; the farmers of the neighbor- hood riding in motor cars paid for out of profits from sales of produce in the booming town; landlords enjoying higher rents; bank deposits up seventy-five per cent; and such other evidences of prosperity as the fancy, in the light of observation, may conjure. The analogy may be crude; a reductio ad absurdum usually is. One need only to recall how gradually business recuperated after the first shock of the war in the last
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1916 months of 1914 and well on into 1915 to appreciate the economic process by which prosperity was disseminated. It was usual then to hear the merchant or manufacturer concerned with peace products say, in effect, “We're doing little—only people with war contracts are making money.”’. The change was rapid; soon one became accustomed to admissions of improvement, and finally to assertions of activity and good business in all but relatively few lines. Mr. Price next asserts: ‘‘ Our prosperity has been mainly due to the encouragement that has been given to business and enter- prise by the Democratic party under the leadership of President Wilson,” and cites in support of his claim these seven Acts of Congress : 1. The Federal Reserve Act, as your edi- torial points out, is the product of the Repub- lican statesmanship which created the Mone- tary Commission. You might have added that Senator Root, a Republican, by force of logic and intelligence, at the eleventh hour induced a Democratic Congress to eliminate from the then pending bill some of the most material changes the Democrats had made in the Republican scheme for currency reform. 2. The Rural Credits Bill became a law within two months. The experiment into which the Government will launch by virtue of its provisions may operate beneficently ; but as operations under this law have not yet fairly begun, its contribution to past pros- perity is not apt to be elsewhere emphasized during the present campaign. 3. The Income Tax Law became a pos- sibility only after the Sixteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was ratified. ‘That amendment was proposed by and rati- fied under Republican auspices and became effective only ten days before the Republi- cans passed out of power. Without going into the question, which a goodly number of our people will deem debatable, whether by any possibility the income tax contributes to National prosperity, the Republicans, rather than the Democrats, seem entitled to whatever credit or blame attaches to the application of the income tax. 4. The Federal Trade Commission Act, if memory serves, is in line with cariying out the Rooseveltian policy, which first took con- crete form in the establishment of the Bureau ‘*PRESIDENT WILSON AND PROSPERITY ’”’ 65 of Corporations. Perhaps the writer of your article may be able to point to substantial accomplishments toward the furtherance of prosperity by the Trade Commission during its brief existence. They certainly have not been emphasized in the public press. 5. The Clayton Bill by its terms does not become effective until next October in respect of the features which your writer enumerates. 6. The Good Roads Law, as Mr. Price says, “ promises’’ great things. But his argu- ment is based on accomplishments, not promises. 7. The Agricultural Education Act, al- though two years old, is another prospect, in the class with the Rural Credits and Good Roads laws. Thus these seven sisters of prosperity resolve themselves into a respectable adoles- cent Republican, a Republican of at least questionable virtue, a child with inherited progressive characteristics, and four promising infants. More surprising than Mr. Price’s forget- fulness of the incidental economic cffects due to stimulation of special industries is his lapse of memory when he says: * Zhanks to the conservatism, tact, and statesmanship of President Wilson, we have become the most powerful Nation in the world, both morally and economually.” If so, then why do we celebrate Washington’s and Lincoln’s birth- days? Why do Democrats foregather to honor Jefferson? Why do we make efforts to conserve our National resources? Indeed, why do we go to church ? ‘* President Wilson and prosperity ”—the fact and Mr. Price’s conclusions therefrom bring to mind a farmer’s son of whom Abra- ham Lincoln was wont to speak on occasions. This small boy peeked through the window of the best room in the farm-house while his older sister was entertaining a caller. In alarm he rushed to his father, shouting, ** Come, hurry, Sue’s sick !’’ The father in- quired what evidence Sue gave of illness, and the boy replied: ‘ She’s sitting on the sofa with Jim Brown and he’s holding her tight so she won’t fall off. I think she’s fainted.” ** You see,” Mr. Lincoln would add, “the boy’s facts were all right, but his conclusions were all wrong.” Pr. c. &. Philadelphia, August 29, 1916.
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THE EIGHT-HOUR: LAW A POLL OF HOW WOULD YOU HAVE YES. S: would the New York “ World.” It VOTED ? says that the first duty of a doctor in an emergency case is to save the patient’s life, not to prescribe a system of moral and economic conduct for him in the event that he survives. The “ World ”’ continues : It is the duty of Congress to take such prac- ticable means as maybe adopted at once to remove the excuse for a strike. Whatever fur- ther adjustments are necessary can be left for the future. That is the common-sense method, and Congress is displaying far more intelligence and patriotism than its critics. ... A philosophic fire department might plausibly contend that its chief duty was not to extinguish the flames, but to frame a fireproof building code and strengthen the laws against arson. That would no doubt be an admirable public service, but in the meantime the building would burn down, the fire would communicate itself to other buildings, and a whole community would be left homeless. We prefer the Congressional way of putting out the fire first, and determin- ing later whether it was of incendiary origin or due to defective wiring, and whether the owner can legally collect his insurance. Yet why disregard arbitration ? The action of the President and of Congress in so doing is defended by the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) ‘‘ Gazette ’’ as follows : The Congress is the proper and the most com- petent board of arbitration. In this case the Congress had so much courage that it refused to dodge the responsibility and by a show of cowardice follow Congressional precedents of half a century standing. The President and the Congress declined to delegate their authority and elected to stand or fall in the estimation of the public by the exer- cise of their own convictions. Whichever side had lost the greater number of points by the decision of a specially created board of arbitration would have alleged preju- dice, incompetence, or lack of understanding. Nothing would have been settled. The issue would have been left open for the promotion of other disagreements involving similar causes of discussion. The President and the Congress could not have created a board and conferred upon it greater authority than they themselves enjoy. Having the authority, it was their duty to act. The Congress has had this eight-hour question before it for several years. It has been. dis- 66 THE PRESS cussed locally, and in very many cases deter- mined by States and cities. No doubt every Senator and every Representative has experi- mental knowledge of the working of the rule. The evidence has been available to them all. No members of a possible board of arbitration should have been better informed. The Mem- bers of Congress are chosen for the specific purpose of regulating the business intercourse of States and individuals. . . . The principle of arbitration is in no way affected by the action of Congress. With characteristic felicity and force of phrase the “ New Republic” thus dis- courses : , The eight-hour day, like the phrases “ due process,” “ reasonable,” “living wage,” has not a definite and unequivocal meaning. It repre- sents a general principle of action, a kind of norm for the industrial world. It cannot be applied rigidly, but its general intention can be made a standard in concrete cases. Congress should declare for it, and so establish in the minds of employers, men, and public authori- ties a standard to which they can appeal. The modern community requires an official decla- ration of what constitutes a civilized working day, and the President is right in believing that eight hours meets the consensus of opinion among those who have thought humanely and disinterestedly on the subject. .. . Mr. Wilson has done what high statesmanship in a democ- racy must do: hehas interpreted the demands, principles, and interests of group interests, and lifted them up into a National programme... . He has shown how to turn an emergency to constructive purposes. The political necessity which compelled the President and a Democratic Congress to act as they have is thus explained by the Detroit ‘“* News :” President Wilson is running on a platform which recognizes the eight-hour day. That clause was placed in the Democratic platform because the leaders of the party believe that the American people are willing to recognize eight hours as the proper work period. The President cannot withdraw from that position. As might be expected, other Democratic papers, like the Columbia (South Carolina) ‘‘ State,” are insistent that President Wilson has scored another victory, one which, though of internal concern only, affects the people of the United States scarcely less than would the decision for war or peace with a foreign
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THE EIGHT-HOUR LAW 67 nation. The credit for the settlement must go to the White House, affirms the “ State,” and continues : It is the President who has first brought the negotiations to a clear point where public opinion could crystallize on the eight-hour-day issue. It is the President who, after striving vainly to effect a settlement by other means, has undertaken the delicate but highly necessary task of arranging the matter by new legislation. To the criticisms of Mr. Hughes, the Re- publican nominee for the Presidency, the Brooklyn “ Citizen ” replies as follows ; It appears by what Mr. Hughes said at Nash- ville yesterday that if he had been in Wilson's place the country would have been treated to a railroad strike. ... Mr. Hughes would have insisted upon arbitration, and, rather than make any such compromise as Wilson effected, would have thrown the whole country into turmoil. ... Far from being like Wilson, a man who looks to the actual conditions upon which any piece of legislation is to take effect, he would fall back upon some hypothetical principle and allow the whole fabric of society to be shaken rather than depart from it.... With Mr. Hughes, Government does not, it is thus appar- ent, involve, as all our statesmen have thought, compromise and the giving way at one point so that some other. point of importance may be obtained. ... . He would rather see the whole country go to smash than yield a point. There are, no doubt, not a few of our voters who will applaud this. It will strike them as an evidence of strength when, in fact, what it is evidence of is incapacitv for the work of gov- ernment. But that it will not be approved by the majority is certain. In an editorial in “‘ Commerce and Finance,”’ by Theodore H. Price, the well-known econo- mist, we read the following : We don’t know anything about the writer of the subjoined letter, which is clipped from the “Sun,” but we print it just to show that there are two sides to a much-discussed question. We rather think that the well-fed men who sit in parlor cars and become apoplectic over the “menace of the labor unions” would change their views if for just half an hour they had to fire the locomotive that is pulling them. We wish they couid all read Philip Gilbert Hamer- ton’s classic book on “ Human Intercourse.” It was written long before trade unions had any political power, but in the chapter on “Con- fusions ” it deals with one’s inability to appre- ciate another’s feelings in a way that reveals the cause of most misunderstandings and teaches a lesson that would prevent many quarrels if it were heeded. But we are forgetting the letter hat led us to remember Hamerton’s book. Here it is: :“T have been reading your editorial articles on the threatened railroad strike. Why is it that most of them blame the employees? I am the wife of a locomotive fireman and I know what kind of.a life they have about as well as any one. “Tt is not more money that is the main thing they are fighting for, but shorter hours. Do you think twenty-five to thirty cents an hour is such a very high rate of wages for a man who stands and shovels tons of coal and rakes and fixes up raging fires, tends to steam, watches signals, and tries not to make black smoke, especially on some of those very warm days we have had? “ My husband has come home fairly faint- ing many anight. He leaves the house every morning at five o’clock and gets home any time from seven to eleven o'clock at night. He has worked all summer every Sunday and asked to be relieved last Sunday, the first one all sum- mer, and was refused. “Tell me what other employment has such hours, day in and day out, Sundays, holidays, every day just the same? Most lines of em- ployment give some respite from the work. A man is a slave on the railroad, and I think he is entitled to his right to fight for shorter hours.” HOW WOULD YOU NO. So would the New York ‘“'Times.”’ De- spite the fact that in general it supports President Wilson, it describes the legislation at Washington as “ A National Humiliation,” and speaks of it as follows : HAVE VOTED? The blackmailing of the whole Nation under the threat of a strike, the extortion from a Nation’s Legislature of a special Act granting the demands of the brotherhoods without time to inquire into its justice or its practicability, puts upon the country an intolerable humiliation; it reduces 100,000,000 people to a condition of vassalage, no longer permitted to make laws that freely express their will, but held up, as the highwayman’s victim is held up, and forced to instant compliance with the terms imposed upon them by the leaders of organizations comprising only 400,000 of their number. .. . The brotherhoods deceived the public for a time; they appear to have deceived the Presi- dent. They insisted that their demand for eight hours was not arbitrable. It is the general opin- ion that the President erred grievously in not insisting, with equal firmness, that they consent to arbitration. Instead he appears to have yielded to their demand at once and then to have employed his time in seeking to compel the railroads to yield. An increase in wages is eminently a fit matter for arbitration, certainly
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68 THE OUTLOOK for deliberate examination and inquiry, to the end that justice shall be done. That the Presi- dent should have insisted on. The railroad presidents proposed arbitration, were willing to arbitrate ; the brotherhoods refused. That is the net situation, and the public understands it perfectly. What ought to have been done? The Boston “ Herald ” tells us: Either the President: should have referred the whole question to Congress in the first place, after requesting a two weeks’ truce from brotherhoods and railroad presidents, or he should have insisted on arbitration at any cost. By trying to make a personal triumph of the affair, and by having to appeal to Congress only as a confession of personal failure after the date for the strike was actually set, Mr. Wilson has thrown the whole railway situation literally into the danger of intermittent anarchy, and American industry into the unsettling pool of politics. Referring to ex-President Roosevelt’s and Governor Hughes’s experiences, the Lewis- ton (Maine) “* Journal” says : Some one says that a lockout or strike pre- vented by surrender to special privilege elicits a worse peril ahead than it professes to avert for the present. .\s the Kaiser blundered seri- ously when he refused to arbitrate the reason- ableness of the hell which he projected on Europe, so Wilson’s obedient Congress loses to the common sense futurity of all American busi- ness by legally putting present prosperity on the unfair list—thus hastening the severity of a certain reaction. ... Having turned down the Roosevelt principle of reference and public regulation, we now get plausibility instead of ability in Congressional and executive life, while rate regulation loses to concentration of political power in the White House. ... When legislative price-fixing was undertaken in New York seven years ago, Governor Hughes won the applause of right-minded men and women by vetoing such a bill and did effective work for the consumer by creating a splendid Public Service Commission, which has regulated monopoly power and effectively helped the consumer. But Wilson had and has no such economic forecast. The Chicago “ Evening Post ” inquires : Are four rich and highly organized labor unions the dominating force in this country, or does government still rest in the Congress of the United States?... The oftense is no less because it is com- mitted by the aristocrats of labor instead of the aristocrats of capital. Riding along unopposed for years, from wage advance to wage advance, riding at last over the President himself, these brotherhood chiefs havé become mad through the arrogance of their conceit. ... They have taken. their fight from a contest with the railroads to an open assault upon the tights of free government... . A railway strike is an important thing. But more important is the upholding of the principle that the Congress of the United States cannot and will not abdicate its power to legislate for all the people at the bullying demand of an organized class-benefit-seeking minority. The Boston “ Journal” charges that the President and Congress have submitted to a hold-up of the Government of the United States, a Government never before coerced into a decision. ‘The “ Journal” proceeds: They have nullified the principle of arbitra- tion in the United States, a country that pro- fesses to live and let live by that principle. They have defied and defeated public opinion in a country which by its Constitution is com- mitted to government by the rule of public opinion. They have thereby betrayed the faith and defeated the ideals of the people whom they were chosen to serve. Most of us have favored the eight-hour day, and expected that some time it would be given the sanction of law. But we did expect it to come by free choice. We never anticipated it as a ransom for the country’s life... . Terrible as would be the consequences of a great strike, there are sacrifices worth making in the preservation of a free government. Ifit came to a choice between a country-wide rail- road strike and an abject surrender by the Government, the people would choose the strike and fight with a will. There are worse things than a strike, affirms the Philadelphia ‘‘ Ledger,” and one of them is legislation changing the basic condi- tions of a great industry when such legislation is enacted under threat in response to a pistol pointed at the Government. ‘“ This is not gov- ernment by injunction, but it is government by intimidation.” The ‘‘ Ledger” concludes : We do not believe that the people of the United States indorse such prostitution of the lawmaking authority. The “ Evening Ledger” is devoted to the cause of social reform, to fair working conditions, to the eight-hour law wherever it is feasible. But we can foresee nothing but menace in stretching the Constitu- tion to the breaking-point for the purpose of legislating special concessions to ‘a special class when that class demands this legislation, not by the accepted methods of argument and logic, but by a physical threat.
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THE FARM LOAN BILL ae IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE”’ BY GEORGE W. NORRIS COMMISSIONER OF THE GENERAL FARM LOAN BOARD No apology is needed from us for giving our readers a fourth article on the new Federal Farm Loan Act. izing ” government finance. It makes a new and perhaps profoundly important step in the direction of “ Social- Mr. Clarence Ousley, a well-known expert on agricultural finance and a member of the staff of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, discussed and ‘com- mended the bill in The Outlook of June 28; Mr. Paul Collins, Progressive candidate for Governor of Minnesota in 1912, criticised it in The Outlook for August 2; its relation to investors was described in the Financial Department of The Outlook for August 23; and we now have the opportunity of presenting the views of an officer of the Government to whom has been especially intrusted the duty of putting the new law into effect. high reputation in the world of business and finance. Commissioner Norris is a Philadelphian, of He was one of the well-known members of the reform administration of Mayor Blankenburgh.—TuHE Epirors. ' ) Y HAT does the Federal Farm Loan Act seek to do? It seeks pri- marily to providea conduit through which funds may safely flow from the private investor to the needy farmer at a rate of interest fairly compensatory to the lender, but which the farmer can afford to pay. It is universally admitted that this is a laudable purpose. How is it proposed to be accom- plished? Any farmer wanting to borrow a sum not less than. $100 nor more than $10,000, representing not more than fifty per cent of the value of his land and twenty per cent of the value of the permanent im- provements, the loan to run for not less than five nor more than forty years, may do it by associating himself with nine or more others in like case, whose requirements aggregate at least $20,000. Every loan must be se- cured by a first mortgage. ‘The money can be borrowed for only one or more of four purposes: (1) to buy land for agricultural uses ; (2) to buy equipment, fertilizers, and live stock needed on the farm ; (3) for build- ings or for the improvement of farm lands ; (4) to refund indebtedness now existing, or indebtedness hereafter incurred, for one or more of the three previous purposes. Every borrower must be at the time engaged or about to become engaged in the cultivation of the farm mortgaged. Installment payments must include a sum which, within the life of the loan, will pay off both interest and principal. The ten or more would-be borrowers form a ‘farm loan association,” to whose stock each one of them becomes a subscriber to the extent of five per cent of his loan. On this stock there is a double liability—like National bank stock. ‘The association, if satisfied of the security of a mortgage, * in- dorses ”’ or guarantees it, and gets the money from the ‘“ Federal land bank ”’ of its dis- trict, and turns the money over to the indi- vidual borrower, at the same time using the five per cent which the borrower has paid for its stock in buying for the association a like amount of stock of the bank. ‘To illustrate : If ten farmers borrow $2,000 apiece, each of them buys $100 worth of stock of the association. That gives the association $1,000, which it uses in buying $1,000 worth of Federal land bank stock. ‘The association gets the dividends on this bank stock, which should enable it to pay_dividends to its own stockholders, but the stock itself is held by the bank as collateral security against the association’s guarantees of its members’ loans. Where does the bank get the money to make the loans? First, it has at the start at least $750,000 capital. If that amount is not subscribed by individuals, firms, corporations, or State governments within thirty days, the balance is to be subscribed by the United States. Second, the additional capital it gets as the various farm loan associations in its district become subscribers to its stock. Third, the proceeds of sale of ** Farm Loan Bonds,” secured by the assignment of mort- gages as collateral, which it is authorized to issue and sell to the extent of twenty times its capital and surplus. In lending its original capital it sells more stock, against which it can issuc more bonds, so that the process per- 69
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70 THE OUTLOOK petuates itself indefinitely. But no matter to what gigantic proportions the figures may grow, the “ factor of safety ’’ never changes. Always there is (1) the conservative basis of the original loan ; (2) the constant improve- ment in the security resulting from the gradual liquidation of the principal; (3) the guarantee of the association, fortified by its bank stock held as security ; (4) the, double liability of the members of the association ; (5) the assets representing the capital stock of the bank, equivalent to at least five per cent of the amount of bonds outstanding ; (6) the joint liability as guarantors of the eleven land banks in the event of default: by any one of them ; and (7) Federal supervision at every point in the process. The fact that these bonds are to be certified by the Farm Loan Commissioner ; are to be free from National, State, municipal, and local taxation ; and are to be a lawful investment for all fidu- ciary and trust funds and accepted as security for all public deposits, should make them an unusually attractive investment. Suppose peculiar local conditions make it impossible to form an association, how is the individual farmer to get his loan? The Act provides that in such a case the Farm Loan Board may authorize loans to be made through approved corporate agents, who must indorse them, and shall be entitled to expenses and a commission for so doing. There is also a provision in the Act author- izing the Farm Loan Board to charter “ joint- stock land banks.” This is criticised as set- ting up a “‘ rival system of capitalistic banks,” and as offering an opportunity to evade the co-operative idea ‘and some of the other good points incident to the “associations”? and ‘Federal land banks.’’ It is true that one of these privately owned joint-stock banks may make farm loans for any purpose to any person and for any amount; but the security must be the same as in the case of the Fed- cral land banks—a first mortgage for, not more than fifty per cent of the value of the land and twenty per cent of the permanent improvements ; its operations must be con- fined to its own State and one contiguous State; it cannot exact from the borrower any charge or commission not authorized in the act; it cannot charge him an interest rate greater than 6 per cent per annum nor more than one per cent above the rate at which it is selling its bonds. ‘These bonds carry no certification by the Farm Loan Com- missioner, and their total issue is limited to fifteen times the capital and surplus of the issuing bank, instead of twenty times, as allowed to the Federal land banks. It is therefore manifest that they will be less desirable investments and must be sold on a higher interest basis, which means a higher rate to the original borrower. It is therefore extremely doubtful, to say the least, whether they will pre-empt the good territory and restrict the Federal banks to the “ financial deserts.” ‘There would seem to be quite as much justification for the anticipation that they will be hopelessly handicapped in the competition with the Federal land banks, and will have to confine themselves to loans which the Federal land banks are precluded from making. Our knowledge of the various factors entering into the situation is not sufficient to enable any one to prophesy with any degree of safety. Undoubtedly a foundation has been laid. Willing hands are already at work on the superstructure. If errors or omissions are discovered—as they probably will be—there is an ever-existent power of correction. The Act ought to provide a safe and attractive outlet for hundreds of millions of accumulated capital; reduce by many millions the annual. interest charge on the farming industry ; stimulate the improve- ment of existing farms -and greatly increase the area of tilled land; encourage the “ back to the land”? movement; and increase the quantity and reduce the cost of foodstuffs. Whether it shall actually do these things, and to what extent, depends largely upon the mental attitude of the people. It is not de- sirable that honest criticism or helpful sug- gestions should be discouraged, but it is highly desirable that such criticisms and sug- gestions should be founded on knowledge and expressed with sincerity and fairness. When any measure which has_ been long under discussion finally becomes law, there always arise critics to point out its damning errors and prophets to foretell its inevitable failure to accomplish the. results intended. Criticism and prophecy are two of the easiest, cheapest, and freest things in the world, and there are few indulgences which give more pleasure to their devotees. Manifestly, there- fore, they should not be curtailed. In pri- vate affairs and personal matters it is usually unwise to answer the critic, while counter- prophecy is a waste of time under any con- ditions. But in public matters it is perhaps (Continued on page following illustrations)
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Current Events Pictorially Treated THE OUTLOOK, SEPTEMBER 13, 1916 COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD THE PROGRESS OF THE CAMPAIGN—MR. HUGHES SPEAKING FROM A RAILWAY CAR ON HIS WESTERN TRIP
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COPYRIGHT BY INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE, THE INDIAN POET, IN A JAPANESE GARDEN Sir Rabindranath is soon to make a lecture tour in America, it is reported. The picture shows him (at the left) in the gardens of Count Okuma, in Tokyo, Japan. He is the best known of present-day Indian poets and philosophers
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COPYRIGHT BY AMERICAN PRESS ASBOCIATION 4 “THE CHRISTIAN INDICTMENT"—A SYMBOLIC PORTRAIT OF : CARDINAL MERCIER emy, for whom delom. The This painting, recently completed, is by M. Besnard, Director of the French Acad Cardinal Mercier gave sittings for the portrait in Kome, after being expelled from _ picture portrays powerfully and sympathetically the appeal of the aged Cardinal to the Christian sentiment of the world against the brutality of German militarism. An article giving a personal impression of Cardinal Mercier appears in this issue
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ayy 4103 paplaoid syse7 yYSYy ay) ye UaAa BuO] YOM youues pur aaa aae way) jo Aueut 105 *Aep & sanoy Xts A[uO Y40M UdW dy], “payead Bulag ase stsApesed apyuvzut yo stuNota yoy ul speitdsoy 103 s407 no Burin) ut Asnq A{jewadsa uvaq sey doys ay3 Ajayey “100.1 aya JO UONIPUOD ayy Bulaoidwy 103 uOeIDossy YOA MAN aq) Aq. paNpUOD st doysxi0 Ay S$, Ua PIO 2 i‘. dOHSNAYOM SNAW GTO AHL NI NAYAGTIHD MOIS AOA SAOL ONINVW BIAUIS ONILVULENTIN SS3Ud AB HdVEDOLOrG SAN JU ADAO [O4AUOD S,ULUE JO 2DuUaptIAa FY) JO QUO ‘4901 SUPT siyy yey, “s4ay10.M [EDO] Ssa;jUNOD puke ‘ad¥UNS st Uo Bunsa + peptirtp aq. ues *SaoUPRysqus jO yapiry
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a(3dn4ys yeaud say ut puv(susy djay oy uaw Buipuas 403 paorar ISq] YI OF SB JUST SITY) Ut ATPEAU snos|UaZ YON SI 34943 pUe ‘spsedefd 98943 UO UMOYS SI yUOIZ ay) 0} JUAS Sey 199138 yoeA YY SHAIPIOS JO JaqUINU BY], “PUA ISB SUOPUO'T Jo s39913S By} BJBLODaP YIYM JOUOF] JO SOY AY) a10J9q sIaMOY Bure st uaan?) ayy, NYONOH 4O STION GNA LSVA SLOAMSNI GNVIONA JO AUVW NAAN 3DIAU IS SMIN IWYLIN3D WOUS HaVHOOLCHd
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PUBLAZILMG JO JIYSUAIDBIBY St YOtyM A19UADS UTEJUNOW pIpUalds ay) ple ‘yo eU-Burpysoim & Buthofua sidiplos 934j-3189 4194} yo dnoiZ & smoys ainjoid sty] ‘arepiem [enjde OWUI UMEIp UVaq JOU aAeY OYM adoiny jo sajdoad May ay) Buow aie ssims ay] SNAGUNA SUVM WOUA AIAA LAA SV AUYV OHM SAAIAGTOS ONOWV ONINVWAUNAN NOSGNOHA Wind NOUS HdvEoOLOHe Pad, be > ‘
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* — a THE PIONEER—A PORTION OF THE PEDIMENT OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON This fine group, by Paul W. Bartlett, forms part of the statuary for the pediment of the Capitol. It has recently been installed with appropriate ceremonies
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oo ¥ ra oT he be ye 8 rt roy t7 eee © A mi 4! § mo ii ie he ot hk , 2 , WO « a. 7 pa Mie COURTESY OF OREGON-WASHINGTON RAILROAD poner =o CO. COPYRIGHT WEIBTER CO., PORTLAND, OREGON MULTNOMAH FALLS ON DEDICATION DAY OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER HIGHWAY The photograph was taken during the Portland Rose Festival, June 7, and is typical of the fine scenery of this new highway. The Fails in their entirety are over 700 feet high
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youd aas osre pure *(aanjqoid aaoqgr ayy ul YAU AY IK) AMY AMA “HH @ouairy) udsap ,auasayig, & WIM AydesZojoyy ,, “ONSst SIY) UL AAYMaS[>a ape ayy aag saded Surmojpjoy xts ayy Uo sydesdc ‘ayy Aq, pay puUos fooyss sawUNs 34) Burqt SSV1D SIH GNV OILIYD DIHdVADOLOHd V JUOOM LAOH AUNIH AB HdVHOOLOHG
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« MuUMAaHIG & UUM AydesZojoy, ,, apse ayy aas SdTHH NVWAYIVG AHL—LOAIANS LINDIAdIad WV NO NAOM LV LSITIVINOLIId v 3HOOW LAOH AUN3H AB HdvHOOLOHG UM “HH @ouarry
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PHOTOGRAPH BY HENRY HOYT VOORE A NEW ENGLAND FARMER See the article * Photography With a Difference ™
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PHOTOGRAPH BY HENRY HOYT MOORE THE GRAPEVINE See the article * Photography With a Difference”
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THE REAPER See the article “ Photography With a Difference”
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PHOTOGRAPH BY HENRY HOVT MOORE JOYOUS YOUTH See the article “ Photography With a Difference”
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PHOTOGRAPH BY HENRY HOYT MOORE THE BABY See the article “ Photography With a Difference ”
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q i THE FARM LOAN BILL “IN well to answer criticisms which are based on such obvious misapprehension of plain facts that a mere citation is sufficient to impale the critic. In The Outlook of August 2 there was-a very interesting and readable article entitled * Will the Rural Credits Law Work?” It was a beautiful illustration of how much more readable an -article can be made when the author does not allow himself to be hampered by those troublesome details called ‘ facts.” The author of this criticism exposes his unfamiliarity with his subject in almost the first paragraph, by referring to ‘‘ the Federal Land Board, comprising the Secretary of the Treasury, ex officio, and four other commis- sioners.” - The fact is that the title of the Board, as expressed throughout the Act, is “Federal Farm Loan Board,” and that it comprises the’ Secretary of the Treasury and four “members,” only one of whom is “ Com- missioner.” This is a perfectly harmless error, and is cited only to show that igno- rance of the Act, and not a deliberate attempt to misrepresent, is probably responsible for the subsequent errors in matters more mate- rial. After referring to the fact that the Govern- ment will subscribe to as much of the original stock of each land bank as may not be taken by private investors—and throwing out the prophecy that this will be a@// the stock —the author adds: ‘‘ But afterany of the banks has accumulated $100,000 surplus a sinking fund of twenty-five per cent of all subse- quent profits will be applied in taking up the Government stock until all of it is retired.” Now the fact is that the payment and retire- ment of the Government’s stock is not con- tingent upon either the accumulation of any surplus or the earning of any profits. What the Act provides (Section 5) is that after farm loan associations shall have subscribed $750,000 to the stock of any Federal land bank, twenty-five per cent of ‘‘ all sums there- after subscribed to capital stock ” by National farm loan associations shall be applied to the retirement of the stock originally subscribed. The Act provides that the banks may charge the borrower on mortgage a rate one WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE” 87 per cent higher than that which they are themselves paying on the bonds they sell. Our critic explains that ‘the one per cent difference is to cover overhead expenses of the bank and pay the Federal Board a salary of $10,000 for each Commissioner.’? Where this last idea had its birth it is impossible to guess. It would certainly have come to an untimely end if its author had happened to glance at Section 3 of the Act, where he would have read, ‘‘ The salaries and expenses of the Federal Farm Loan Board . . . shall be paid by the United States.” One other statement is made in such a form that it is impossible to tell whether it is intended as a statement of facts or as a prophecy. I refer to the sentences: ‘“ The twelve Federal land banks are to be made Government depositories for Government deposits: to a total amount of $6,000,000 at any one time. Interest is to be paid by the banks at 2 per cent.” If this be prophecy, I will not quarrel with it. But might not modesty in that case have suggested the inter- polation of “ probably ” or “I think”? If it be intended as a statement of anything appearing in the Act, it is wide of the mark. Section 6 does say, to be sure, that they shall be Government depositories ‘“ when designated for that purpose by the Secretary of the Treasury,” but the Secretary has not yet designated them, or evidenced any inten- tion to designate them. ‘There is a further provision in Section 32 that under special conditions the Secretary may ‘‘ make deposits for the ¢emporary use of any Federal land bank,” but that the aggregate of such tem- porary deposits shall not exceed the sum of $6,000,000 at any one time. It would seem that at this point our critic anticipated with prophetic insight the action of the Secretary of the Treasury, failed to notice the distinc- tion between authorization and direction, confused ordinary and extraordinary deposits, and then capped the climax by evolving a rate of interest from his inner consciousness. Attention is called to these details only to emphasize the importance of discussing this or any other Act of Congress with due regard to the facts.
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ACROSS THE CONTINENT WITH. HUGHES A HUMAN INTEREST STUDY OF THE CANDIDATE AND HIS IDEAS BY FREDERICK M. Mr. Davenport was with Mr. DAVENPORT Hughes’s party during the Republican candidate’s recent closely watched campaign trip to the Pacific coast and return. He writes from knowledge and from experienced insight, not only into the nature and personality of Mr. Hughes himself, but also inte the workings of the mind of the Western electorate among whom Mr. Hughes moved and whom he has sought to influence.—THE EpirTors. r \HE Governor’s job, as he started West, was first to convince that distant part of the country that he is human enough to be President of the United States, because that part of the country doesn’t wish any other kind of a man to sit in the seat of the mighty at Washington ; and, second, under difficult and delicate circum- stances, to begin to create a Republican majority that will finally be responsive to the Hughes ideals out of a broken and leaderless party in process of reconstruction after a revolution. And to begin to accomplish this second labor of Hercules at a time when, after some twenty years of political ebullience, an ease-loving, prosperous, and conglomerate population is torn asunder in sentiment with respect to dominant international affairs and gives no sign of desire to register a majority for idealisms, anyway—at least until after a process of education which is not likely to be completed before election day in November. Some job ! I am going to’ try to give the readers of The Outlook a picture of how the Governor met his task, of how the character and per- sonality of the man responded to the tem- perament and environment of the folks in the West, and of how they responded to him. I have spoken of the Governor’s job and the Governor’s task. It is strange how, even in American politics, the good works that men do sometimes live on in the recollection of the electorate. I heard him occasionally re- ferred to as Justice Hughes by some judicial dignitary or other. But almost always it was the Governor of New York whom the great audiences had in mind, and not the Judge at all. Nearly every introduction was of what he did when he was Governor of New York, and the most instant and generous applause that came to him as he spoke would occur again and again when he referred to some- 88 thing that happened or of how he tried to con- duct himself when he was Governor of New York. Everybody seemed to know all about that, and the content of their thought of him whom they had never seen before was of a man who had fought for party freedom and liberal measures of legislation and for the thing that was right in the capitol of the State of New York. And my judgment is that that is the thing which is more likely to carry him through to success at the election than all the campaign argument which will be heard in his behalf between now and November. To the mind of the great: majority of the American people he is not running on his promises or on his views of what happened or ought to have happened under the Wilson Administration. He is running on. his record—on the belief of the people of the United States that he is the kind of a man who will meet future National contingencies as they arise with the intelligence and _firm- ness and strength and patriotism with which he met the lesser contingencies in the com- monwealth of New York. Some of the current likenesses of Hughes do him justice, but many-do not. He.is: tall and splendidly set up, with a full, powerful face and massive forehead, a well-trimmed beard which adds dignity and strength. It was interesting to see the great crowds at the station pick out the candidate. ‘ That’s him,” they cried; “the tall chap with the whiskers.” He has an eye, large and keen and penetrating, which seems to say, ‘* Come on, if you are straight, I am with you.” A splendid chest and back, great arms and legs, pretty thoroughly bald, but altogether a powerful physical figure. As he has gone among the Western crowds he has had a fine, alert, and regnant appearance. He looks like a President—that is, like a born leader of democracy ; and as I occasionally mingled
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ACROSS THE CONTINENT WITH HUGHES 89 with the vast audiences and listened to the comment of the people I found that: every- body was satisfied on this score. They thought he was big engugh for the job. Mentally, Hughes is a great dynamo of energy who properly and modestly realizes his power. He has a wonderful capacity for analyzing facts and situations. - There is probably no man in American public life in our time who has in his: public work shown a surer quality of detachment from personal bias. He could sit in a case which involved his own family and not be influenced by a hair. He thinks straight, and he has a con- trolling sense of right. He has broadened on the bench. Not simply because he has made such profound studies in Nationalism and human justice, but because he has thought deeply into political movements and read widely in the liberal political literature of our time. And he has grown in the direction of broad and generous political liberalism. ‘Through all his Western speeches there ran this thread. ‘The Republican party must be the genuine liberal party of Amer- ica. ‘I would not be here if I did not think of the Republican party as a liberal party,” he said again and again. And his emphasis throughout the West upon efficiency, economy, a budget system, the businesslike adminis- tration of government, the expert, the over- throw of the spoils system, a scientific tariff, industrial organization, and especially upon Nationalism, was avowedly intended to give fair notice that, if he is elected, he will seek to lay the foundations of freedom and human welfare so deep that we shall have in America not only a thoroughly organized government by the people, but also a government per- fected, fitted, and able to do whatever ought to be done for the last man, woman, or child under its sway that needs protection and succor. And the Republican party will be that kind of a party under his leadership or go out of business. My judgment is, from what I saw in the West and from what I have seen elsewhere, that even the stiff- necked generation of the Republican reac- tionaries will be constrained to follow him humbly, if not gladly. Itis the only way out. It is probably the last chance that Republi- canism has once more to make good in the United States of America. Hughes made it clear throughout the West that he understands the need of a great liberal party in the United States ; that he knows well that the Democratic party, chained to a belated political South and to other influences and traditions which delay its ad- vance, cannot in time be made over into an instrument of efficient liberalism. Hughes believes that the Republican party, broken and stricken and chastened as it has been, with its sound instincts of Nationalism and efficiency, can once more become the instru- ment of freedom and human welfare if it can be shot through with a sense of right, with a sense of integrity and devotion to the cause, not of aclass or an interest, but of the whole people. And it is in this spirit and with precisely this in view that Hughes told the West he desired to serve his party and his country. I suppose you think that a man of the Hughes sort is above being a good politician. It depends upon what you mean by politi- cian; whether you use the term in the lower or the higher sense. If you mean a glorified ward-heeler who knows every kind of human nature at a glance and can always pick his man for his own purposes—that is hardly like Hughes. Probably Hughes can make the usual number of mistakes in read- ing certain ranges of human nature and picking men—and correct them. But I regard him as a very able politician—I believe in taking that word over and purifying its con- tent—I like it better than statesman. ‘The statesman is of too lonely grandeur, in danger of being too detached from the world as it sins and sighs and struggles. Hughes is an able politician in the sense that he weighs cautiously and fairly the great human forces that are at work in the world and in the American population, and he reads the mind of his countrymen, I think, exceedingly well. As we turned our faces from the Pacific coast once more towards the East, there began to reach us from the Atlantic slope expres- sions of political concern and disquietude which I was very much interested to analyze. Hughes, it was said in the hostile journals and by a few anxious political correspondents, was not striking out from the shoulder as he was of old wont to do in his hand-to-hand struggles with his New York foes. He was limiting the range of his discussion. He was not revealing his whole mind. His emphasis was wrong. He didn’t say enough about the European war or about our international relations with countries across the sea. He was not sufficiently pro-Ally or pro-German. And these particular correspondents and newspapers seemed to be under the impres-
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90 THE OUTLOOK sion that we had perhaps been traveling for three weeks through the frost belt towards political defeat and despair. I was interested, because no such impres- sion as this could possibly be gathered in the West. Not from any newspaper of any party, not from any one of the vast audiences that faced the Republican candidate from Detroit to Seattle and from San Diego to Denver. If ever a man talked to people by the acre in this country, it was Hughes on his Western trip. In a subsequent article I shall undertake to describe these Western mass-meetings of the people and how they reacted to the message of Hughes. But what I call attention to here is that the West felt no such lack in the candidate and his message as seemed to be indicated by the hostile portion of the Atlantic press or by the friendly concern of a certain respectable and intelligent element of the East. Hughes is remarkable in his power to ex- temporize the expression of ideas which have themselves been thoroughly wrought out in advance. And he delivered a series of such speeches, never twice the same, from Detroit around to Denver and beyond, before great eager and: delighted crowds ranging from five to twelve and fifteen thousand people. Those who remember his campaigning dur- ing his Governorship will recall him calmly stalking from one end of the platform to the other, his quiet, strong mind working as if on ball-bearings—a Corliss engine, noiseless and efficient. The range of his discussion in the West was very wide—labor, democracy, efficiency, economy, Nationalism, the failure of the foreign policy of the Government, the need of the expert, the tariff, preventive diplomacy, social welfare, naval and military preparation, a new industrial organization, the way to permanent peace, National unity, the assimilation of aliens, the protection of American life and property throughout the world, international arbitration, the develop- ment of Alaska, the dominance of the public interest in every concern of the United States—and there was no frigidity and no pussy-footing in any of it, and I heard it all. His discussion of the tariff in Spokane and other parts of the Northwest where this sub- ject is of great importance was broad and wise and sound in its economics. In fact, I didn’t know that any judge in the United States knew so much economics. And every- where Hughes left the trail of great, confident crowds, of Republican assurance, and a suffi- 13 September cient measure of the spirit and the practice of reunion to give promise of good majori- ties at least for the National ticket in these old-time Republican commonwealths. There were lions in the way, and there are diffi- culties yet to be overcome, to which I shall later refer, before these States become again permanently Republican, but Hughes carried with him the impression and presage of suc- cess from Michigan to the Pacific. I think he is more astute than his critics as well as broader-visioned. In the West he was cautiously but fundamentally constructive, and beyond this he took care, like the good lawyer that he is, only to file a complaint against his Democratic adversary. As I write this, the demurrer which will come from the President at the time of his notification has not yet appeared. When that comes, I look for the swift joining of the issue and an oral argument that will cover a wide and sufficient range. It is not wise in political conflict to unfold your whole strategy too early. But I think it is not going to be possible for Mr. Hughes to satisfy entirely the more perturbed and turbulent of his critics, who would have him enter into concrete attacks upon Germany or England or dip deeply into some of the more harrowing and ill-handled international events of the present Adminis- tration. No doubt he will go further than he has yet gone. No doubt he will discuss freely the international rights and duties of the country. But, whatever his strong personal views may be upon the ill-starred events which have aroused the passion and preju- dice of great elements of our population, he has a National duty as the official head of a great party which he is not at liberty to for- get. Not simply to win in a paltry sense, but to create a fresh National majority out of suspicious and discordant elements in a dis- cordant country, and to create that majority for a great patriotic purpose, in order that in some National group there may be the power and the will to govefn firmly and wisely a hundred million people. That is his job, and it involves a course of conduct and of speech which the private citizen is under no obliga- tion to follow. And he can never forget, either, that he is not simply going through the motions of the campaign for the sake of the mental and physical exercise, but that after the 4th of March next he is likely to be the President of this whole people, of Germans and Irish as well as of English and Russians, for whom he must furnish a
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1916 greatly needed leadership. into National unity ; and that, looking toward the future period of difficult international reconstruction which is soon to come, he must at least be careful to preserve for himself and his party an hon- orable measure of good will from the great nations with whom we shall soon have to deal intimately and intricately in time of peacc. It is a difficult task, but as the campaign proceeds I expect to see the Republican candidate walk in it with wise and clear vision. Speaking from a month’s experience with the many thousands of Western folks whose opinions and sentiments I have sought to fathom, I am satisfied that they are as anxious about the country and as loyal to it as any fierce pro-German or pro-Ally protagonist could possibly be, but that their highest sense of patriotic purpose in the coming election rises only to the point of desiring a party in power that will insure permanent National unity and order and welfare with- out the disruptions and agitations of recent years, and a President in office who can be counted on in future emergencies to analyze the facts and then “ go and do it”’ swiftly and righteously. And they will take him on the record of his deeds, and they care very little about what he says he thinks he would have done in this or that past contingency of the National life. I am writing it as I think I have found it in the mind of the average man or woman of the West.. I am regretfully compelled to concede that the instinctive feeling in the West, and the mass of the people, for that matter, is that the danger to democracy and morality in the world at large and the danger to the United States in par- ticular from foreign aggression is much exag- gerated by the thin line of international ideal- ists on the Atlantic slope. Somebody ought to write a book on the po- litical myth. Our public life is full of mgterial. Before the trip through the West the Hughes candidacy was suffering from a_ political myth, namely, that the candidate was cold, reserved, an iceberg. one of the cold-storage twins, Fairbanks being the other. It is a little strange that the memory of the West was so good as to what Hughes did when he was Governor of New York, but not so good as to the kind of a man and campaigner that he was. Nowhere in his public appearances is he stern or cold or forbidding. On the other hand, he is affable to a degree, and he has a winning smile and an exuberance of ACROSS THE CONTINENT. WITH HUGHES 91 human interest in the presence of the pecple which indicates that he is enjoying every minute of it. I suppose the contrary view of Hughes is partly due to the fact that he has been on the bench and partly to the comparing of every Presidential candidate with Roosevelt, whose marvelous physical and human exuberance has long held the world’s record, and who, when in the West, is as much a part of it as if he were born in it. But the success of Hughes in overcoming the view that he was a sort of Supreme Court abstraction was complete. The first day out began the dissipation. of the myth, which was wholly dissolved by the time he reached the Coast. Almost his first public act in Detroit was to leap from the railing upon the concrete roof of the players’ bench at the park and shake hands with both teams and chat with Ty Cobb, who is, of course, the idol of American baseball enthusiasts. And it certainly caught the crowd and did business against the myth. ‘“ By golly,’ said a man next to me, ‘there is nothing cold about him! He is a modest man, but he is all right.”” And it rather shook the coolness of the home team, for the first ball pitched by the Detroit twirler was lined out over Ty Cobb’s head by Witt, of the Athletics, for a home run. And Ty himself didn’t field that ball in perfect form. That was a good start against the myth. And Hughes kept it up until it was demol- ished. He showed himself to the satisfaction of the West to be a real human being with red blood and a knowledge of his kind. One evening, as the sun was setting over the richest hill in the world at Butte, clad in miner’s trousers and jumper and rubber hat, he went with the rest of us rattling down the shaft of a great copper mine two thousand feet, and far into the recesses of one of the rock chambers he talked with the miners and worked the rock drill by the light of the lamp. Every man who is a candidate for the Presi- dency, or for any great Federal or State office, ought to have to do that, and by the ear-splitting noise of the drill and in the swel- tering temperature of ninety degrees learn something about what the length of a work- ing day means in the hard and hazardous occupations of many of society’s toilers. And we should then get the increasing influence of the human quality in government. Hughes made himself one with the cow- boys at Miles City, with the knights of the barbecue at Reno, as he rode into the audi-
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92 THE OUTLOOK torium and up to the very rostrum in an automobile in Denver, with the rear-end crowds at a hundred stopping-places—the West was satisfied with the human stuff there is in him. And the thing you find yourself asking yourself is how a man who enjoys the world outside so much as Hughes could ever have sat on the Supreme bench as long as he did. I suppose the answer is that tne Hughes on the Supreme bench was the in- tellectual Hughes, the profound analyst and student of legal as well as human affairs. And there is no doubt that Hughes greatly enjoyed the bench. But you cannot help feeling that he must be glad that once again he is breathing uncloistered air. I venture to say that a large number of the several hundred thousand who heard him in his trip through the West have forgotten by this time that he was ever on the bench. A very powerful impression was made upon the West by the family and home aspect of Governor Hughes’s trip through the con- stant presence with him of Mrs. Hughes, a sensible, strong, and splendid personality. That suited the West. It represented to the West, what above all else the West loves, the power and glory of a genuine American home life. Inthe Painted Desert concession of the San Diego Exposition they coddled Indian babies together, and the babies cried and the crowd laughed and cheered, and even the Indians grinned. As they stood together in front of the old Spanish lighthouse at San Diego, overlooking a harbor as blue and beautiful as the Bay of Naples, watching the Government hydroplanes hovering and flying over us, I heard a dear old chap near me say, “They are very common, ain’t they, just like the rest of us ?” The tour of the West has made it clear that the Hughes appeal to the whole country will be the appeal of an American, a democrat who desires to see an organized country, strong, efficient, and set upon doing what is right. He is an old-fashioned American in his view of Sunday. We didn’t travel on that day. We rested and we went to church if we wished to. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes always did. There is nothing narrow about it. It is a day for good cheer and recreation and rest. But neither the moving-picture concerns at Universal City nor anybody else could commercialize Hughes on that day. Politics and profit stopped at the threshold. And we all had a chance to reflect and get a new vision of the right. The reaction upon Hughes of his Western trip was the reaction of democracy. Many times he spoke of that. The great North- west especially thrilled and inspired him. I think I didn’t hear him make a better speech than at Miles City, under the flags in the park, looking down from the band-stand upon the big, husky fellows, eager and strong, upon the cowboys and the girls, upon the little folks on big horses with the colts running after. Such enthusiasm, such response to ideals, such a genuine body of folks! As we left town the bunch of cowboys followed the train full tilt down the valley, the horses leap- ing backwards and forwards from one side of the track to the other, or cautiously and swiftly picking their way across it. One horse outfooted them all, and the last I heard as I went inside was somebody from the rear platform shouting to the swift rider, “‘ Where are you going ?”’ and back came the answer, ** Going to follow you to Seattle.” You can’t stop the spirit of the Northwest. And it is a good thing for the whole country that in that whole section of the Nation there still lives the soul and vigor of democracy. ‘This is where Roosevelt was awakened. Roose- velt was an idealist by inheritance .and be- came a radical in power, but he became a democrat in the Northwest. Democracy is its own inspiration to its wisest leaders. And it was the power and vigor and possibilities of democracy which again and again found expression in the message of Hughes as he wended his way to the Coast. He talked everywhere of a strong, efficient National Government and the need of the use of Na- tional power, but it was all for the sake of helping the cause of the whole pecple—the womeg and children, labor, the defenseless, those who cannot so well help themselves. He exhorted them to have no fear that any sinister power would frame up anything on him, in the tariff, in Alaska, in monopolistic practice, anywhere else. If Hughes is going to be President, and I hope he is, it will always help that he made his first great cam- paign adventure into the West. Estes Park, Colorado, August 31, 1916. Mr. Davenport's next article will be entitled “ Hughes and the People of the West”
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ie % TWO VIEWS OF MEXICO These two views of Mexico are, we believe, with some variations, the two views most commonly held by Americans. By thus placing them in juxtaposition we hope to help our readers to solidify and freshen their own opinions by the sam2 process of examination and adjustment by which one is enabled to overhaul one’s own mental stock in trade at a debate. opinions, but much more of it in the second than in the first, we believe. There is truth in both these The Outlook has never had much sympathy for the. céentificos, Mexico’s aristocrats of wealth, who were largely driven from the country by the Madero revolution. The Outlook has never.advocated the restoration of the edent*ficos to their former despotic position or the favoring of special capitalistic enterprises as a part of American intervention. of Madero as the leaders of a genuine and sincere social upheaval. We sympathized to a considerable extent with the revolutionists But that revolution failed, as others in Mexico have failed, because its leaders lacked the strength to cleave to their first aims in denial of their own selfish instincts. The Outlook wants of Mexico only safety and fair play to Americans living there and the regeneration of Mexico for the Mexicans. But it doubts Mexico’s ability to work out her salvation without outside aid. And the determination of the nature of that aid, whether political, economic, military, or all three, is, in our opinion, the Mexican problem to-day. to be pursued, but is rather the question of selecting the means to the end. In short, the question as regards Mexico is not the question of the end And we believe that a study of the means used in the regeneration of Cuba and the Philippines will be an important aid in choosing the means for Mexico.—THE’ EDITORS. I. MEXICO—A DUTY T may be conceded that a large majority of the American people believe that there is no real reason for a war with Mexico. As a people, the Americans do not desire any Mexican territory, have no desire or ambition to govern the Mexican people, and no zeal to impose upon Mexico their ideas of civilization. However, Americans should have a desire to assist Mexico in solving some of the vexed questions which confront that distressed country, for in the solving of them we bring peace to Mexico and remove a menace to the peace of this country. So it may be plainly stated that this country has a duty to perform, and that duty should be, and can be, so performed as to make Mexico a true friend of the United States, and it is certainly admitted that a friend is desired to the south of us. It is not fair to the Mexican people to state that we have no quarrel with the Mexi- can Government, for the reason that there is no government, and to charge that Mexico has been and is being ruled bya mob. The fact is that Mexico to-day has a government in control of a greater portion of Mexico than any government set up since the days of General Porfirio Diaz. It should be clearly evident that the people of Mexico, as a mass, are behind this government, for they have brought it into existence. We have admitted the right of revolution ; a revolution has been won, and the government the Mexicans are trying to set up is the result of this revolution. This must be admitted before justice can be given Mexico. Calling the de facto Government of Mexico, now generally recognized by foreign Powers, “the greatest of these mobs” does not change the real issue, but simply is a reflection on the people of Mexico, for the present Government is not a minority one, as have been almost all former governments set up in Mex- ico, but is the résult of a majority element enforcing their mandates by means of a revolution. Revolutions have never been popular with tory and conservative interests, but have al- ways been popular with the people. If dregs come to the surface during revolutions, it is the result of conditions, and with peace re- stored the dregs sink to the bottom. History has made this plain, especially in connection with the French Revolutions, which in their nature were similar to those which have taken place in Mexico for over a hundred years ; the evidence of an attempt on the part of a people to secure, and retain, their political and economic liberty—in the case of Mexico, as of France, to correct social and economic conditions, rather than political. To-day Mexico has a real national spirit, 93
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centered for the first time on real issues which they have won through a prolonged strife and which they will hold and not turn loose again. The belief in this on the part of the old reactionaries is the real reason for their vindictive opposition to Carranza and his government. The rich and powerful interests which have in the past governed Mexico through a minority rule, hating the United States and the American people, now hope to return to Mexico and be séated in power by the army of the United States. Zhzs is the real issue. The wrongs of the Mexican people have been enlarged upon, yet those remaining in Mexico have not appealed to the United States. The expatriates, however, who never gave a thought to the well-being of the peo- ple of Mexico, now cry out their wrongs and, having failed through a Villa and a Huerta to go back, too cowardly themselves to fight, look forward with glee to the possibility of returning to Mexico under the flag of Uncle Sam, whom in their hearts they hate and despise. And is it the duty of the American people to commit this further outrage on unhappy and distressed Mexico? ‘The Mexican peo- ple as represented now by the Constitu- tional Government are said by some to hate and despise us. Do not for a moment be- lieve it. There is a vast difference between the hate for us on the part of the Constitutional- ists and that of the expatriates. One hates us for the supposed ills we have brought upon him, dodging and ignoring his own responsibility for these ills; the other hates us for wrongs and aggressions which he believes are uncalied for, and the evident attempt at meddling in his affairs. This last can be overcome when the duty owed to Mexico is granted and we assist that coun- try in overcoming its present economic diffi- culties and withdraw our troops from Mexico. The reaction will then set in and they will be- come our good friends. But do not for one moment believe that the reactionary element driven out of Mexico by the revolution will ever have for this country and its people other than hate. The present critical condition has been brought about by two things—border raids, resulting in sending United States troops into Mexico, where they now remain without the authority or consent of the Mexican Govern- 94 THE OUTLOOK 13 September ment. Cut out everything else, the crux of the whole situation is embraced in these two facts. These bandit raids into this country have never been the acts of the Mexican Government, ordered and carried out, but of unorganized bands acknowledging no govern- ment and admitting of no control. Their acts have been repudiated and the responsi- bility assumed. On the other hand, acting under Government orders, the American troops invaded Mexico. No matter what the reason, the act was an invasion. Further, after accomplishing their purpose, they are now held in Mexico against the protests of Mexico and its people. In this matter the United States hasa grievance; Mexico suffers from a wrong. It is admitted in this country that if the de facto Government will show ability and purpose to protect the border the occasion for troops in Mexico will have ended. Then it is the duty of this country to make the first approach at a settlement, for in fact we are the aggressors, having invaded a friendly country with which we are not at war. If the above contention is even in part con- ceded, this country can with good grace wel- come arbitration of a form which will finally settle this trouble once and for all. Media- tion will not settle it. The A B C confer- ences have only resulted in postponing the agony, as it were; they never healed and never settled things. ‘The American people now demand a settlement, but they are not demanding a war to settle it, for iri the minds of the majority it can be settled without war. The great burden of Mexico is now eco- nomic. ‘The vital question is the stabilizing of its currency. This done, commercial relations may be resumed with safety and peace be an accomplished fact, for ills will soon be forgotten when business occupies the attention of the people. As soon as these pressing needs are relieved the de facto Government can give its undivided attention to organizing its administration along legal lines and in accordance with the Constitution, and it can then seat the government so organized. From a commercial point of view, it would seem better for the United States to lend Mexico what money it needs and draw the interest, rather than incur the expense of a war, which costs not only money, but the lives
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1916 of our citizens, when the reason for a war would be written as the selfish demands of invested interests in Mexico. Such deeds would, in truth, be friendly and II. TWO VIEWS OF MEXICO 95 the returns would be manifold. Money we can spare; human sympathy also, which costs nothing. And the duty is performed. WILLARD L. SIMPSON. PHILIPPINE AND MEXICAN SITUATIONS COMPARED Mr. Hamilton Wright says of the Filipinos : (New York “ Times” Magazine Section, May 7, 1916.) The difficulty in arriving at anything like a convincing presentation of the Philippines arises from the fact that most persons are in- clined to consider the islanders as a homogene- ous population swayed by common impulses. This is not so. Outside of the very few political leaders they are not deeply interested or informed in politics. Among the islanders, who speak in more than thirty-seven dialects, there does not exist at any time a consensus of opinion as to political issues. The Filipinos are not like children who are learning something new. They have adult minds in some ways, infinitely more subtle, infinitely more simple, than those of white men. The Filipinos belong to the Malay race ; in the Malay Peninsula and _ elsewhere, 35,000,000 people. Nowhere have the Malay people ever en- joyed se/f-government ; self-government is ot native to them. Nowhere in the Orient has a race enjoyed self-government. ‘The nearest approach to it is a benevolent despotism. The Filipinos have never enjoyed se/f- government, though under the American rule they are the first Oriental race to be taught. They are learning well. It is certain they enjoy greater privileges to-day than. ever before. Autonomous government as we know it is an Anglo-Saxon institution, the outward ex- pression of the za#er Anglo-Saxon character ; we have been endeavoring to protect ourselves Mr. James Brown Potter, writing to ‘he Outlook, says of the Mexicans : The difficulty in arriving at anything like a convincing presentation of Mexico is precisely the same. ° This applies perfectly to Mexico. The same is very true of the average Mexican. The Mexicans, pure blood and mixed blood, belong to the native Indian race of the Americas. This is likewise true of the Mexicans. Se/f- government is not native to them. Equally true of the Mexicans. This would also be true of the Mexicans if they were under American rule.
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96 THE OUTLOOK in it since the days of King John, and we have been endeavoring to teach this se/f- government to the Filipino, with whom it is not native. Should complete moral and physical zezth- drawal of Americans take place, the con- ditions which govern the life of this people of many dialects would result in a govern- ment of class and caste. Slavery, which the American occupation suppressed with great difficulty, would reappear. The bulk of the people when the Spanish came, about 1521, were ruled by petty des- pots. INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND LIBERTY OF ACTION WERE NOT ENCOURAGED UNTIL AFTER THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AMERI- CAN COURTS OF LAW and the American school system. An unstable rule in the Philippines or ove of weakness offers tremendous opportunities for the lawless; demagogues springing up would offer rewards to those who would fol- low them. Regarding Philippine independence, the agricultural class cares little about it; a few of the peasant class are reached by agitators ; the rest never think of it, they have zo politi- cal opinions, they seldom see a newspaper. ‘To-day the Filipinos are guaranteed those personal rights that belong to the citizen of an enlightened nation. Cast them adrift to revert to their former condition, and they could not enjoy as many privileges as they now enjoy. The Philippine Constitution of July 1, 1902, signed by the President of the United States, entitles them to the personal liberty the citi- zens of the United States enjoy. And the military power of the United States guarantees it to them. Complete withdrawal of American moral and physical influence in Mexico will have:the same result. Precisely what has resulted in Mexico from the withdrawal of American moral and physical influence following the fall of the Huerta government. This is likewise true of Mexico. To-day the Mexican is in anarchy because he is zo¢ guaranteed them. The Mexicans have cast themselves adrift from Aryan influence, and Indian anarchy is the result. The Mexican Constitution of 1859 guaran- tees the Mexicans this same liberty. And no military power guarantees it to them.
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PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A DIFFERENCE ‘BY HENRY HOYT MOORE (See illustrations in Alcogravure Section) than I got out of my two years of work in art schools in New York and Chicago.” The speaker was a young Western woman who was preparing for a career as a sculptor. She spoke at the conclusion of the afternoon session of a summer school of pictorial pho- tography. So far as the writer knows, there is only one such school, and it is conducted by Clarence H. White at East Canaan, Connecticut. Pictorial photography ? Is there any other kind? There certainly is, and lots of it, in the opinion of the pictorialists. They try to get away as far as possible from what they call “commercial” photography, from the ‘“‘snap-shots ” that merely make a record of a conventional scene, and from thescientific pho- tography that makes strictly accurate, optically perfect negatives with anastigmatic lenses. They want ‘“ atmosphere” in their photo- graphs just as much as any painter wants it ; they want beauty of tone and line; they want harmony, feeling, and pleasing compo- sition; in a word, they want /ictures, not photographs. And they believe that pho- tography is a means for making real pictures, just as much as is pencil or brush. Foremost among the pictorial photogra- phers who have preached this gospel is the head of the above-named school. And he has inculcated his lesson so successfully, in spite of some opposition on the part of peo- ple who begrudge photography a place in the sun as a means of artistic expression, that at least one great university has sanc- tioned his teaching of pictorial photography within its walls, and another great popular educational institution has now for several years announced him on its faculty of lec- turers. The summer school of pictorial photography at East Canaan, Connecticut, is the outgrowth of the ideas of this man. White is a genius in his way, and was irre- sistibly called to his work, like most indi- vidualistic men. He was for thirteen years a clerk in a grocery store, but all his spare time was spent in doing experimental work in photography and getting gold medals for it, and finally the thing got such a hold on him that one day he was “called down” by é l: getting more out of this art criticism his employer for some supposed neglect in his task of wrapping up sugar and flour. Perhaps he had packed up flour instead of sugar, or undercharged a customer, or sent a wrong total to the bookkeeper; at any rate, when he was thus reprimanded for possibly the first mistake in his thirteen years of faith- ful service, he wisely realized that the psycho- logical moment had come for getting out forever from the grocery business and for taking up his real foreordained work, picture- making by photography. The afternoon session of the school at which the Western girl gave her tribute to Mr. White was prepared for on this wise: Every one of the score or more of pupils had gone out the previous day with his or her camera to work out a “problem.” One was to make a study of a figure under a tree; an- other was to photograph a head, simply lighted ; another, to make a child’s portrait ; still another, a picture of a doorway or an ornamental window; while another worker was to make, perhaps, a study of “ joyous youth ” or of a girl in a garden. The class had enthusiastically set forth to work out their problems. The exposed plates were developed late in the afternoon, or, by the specially earnest workers, at night. In the morning the negatives, dry by this time, were * proofed,” and given to the instructor for examination. Then, before the assembled class, gathered under a fine old tree for shade and coolness, the proofs were shown, criti- cised, praised and blamed. ‘The teacher is certainly remarkably keen and just in his criticisms. ‘ There should be something of interest in every part of your print ;’”’ “ That obtrusive high light takes something away from what you are really photographing, and should be sunned down;” “ That is very nice ; the interest follows pleasantly from the arm to the head, then to the overhanging bough, and that leads us back again ;’’ ‘‘ The foreground is mushy; you must learn to focus ;” ‘“‘ That is very good indeed; there is in it a nice quality of light and shade ;” “The figure would be better if placed a little higher on the plate;” “ Now you need an accent of light here ; watch me put in a high- light ’’—and the lecturer puts a small piece of white paper on the proof, to its manifest 97
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98 THE OUTLOOK improvement ; ‘‘ That is so good that I would like to see it done over again.” These are samples of remembered criticisms. They were indeed illuminative, and they were gently phrased. No one is ever offended by this genial teacher. He is so manifestly anxious for the improvement of the learner that the victim of his severest criticism gets some consolation out of it and resolves at once to try it again, and this time make a picture worth while. And the school is in a place where there is plenty of opportunity for picture-making. Its home is on a large farm in the Litchfield Hills, and there are plenty of agricultural pic- ture-making possibilities—-haymakers, dairy workers, herds of cattle, plowmen. The house itself where the camera people live is a pre-Revolutionary one which is said to have been an inn once. Some quaint examples of antique furniture still survive in it. Its nearest neighbor has the date 1801 on its door lintel. Fine.old trees, very photograph- able, line the highway ; one of the elms near by is said to be the largest but one in the State. A beautiful old church is in the quiet village, and near it is a hillside cemetery which gave the suggestion for one of the class problems— a competition for the best photograph to illustrate a line from Gray’s “ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”’ For this the school’s leader offered as a prize one of his own prints—and to his admirers this was as if Whistler, in his teaching days, had offered his pupils one of his own paintings as a spur to quicken their industry. Another prize was offered for the best post-card photograph to celebrate the charms of little-known East Canaan. The delightful thing about this summer school was the continual variety of interest it offered. One day its leader would say, ** We'll all go down by the river this morning and see what we can do with that as a prob- lem.” And he was so enthusiastic in carry- ing out the suggestion of one worker there that her camera was actually carried out by him into midstream—it was a shallow place, of course—to get a better point of view. ** Never mind wet feet, if we get a real pic- ture,’”’ was the leader’s comment. Another time the demonstration took the form of showing the difference between a lens por- trait and one made with a pinhole, both taken in full sunlight ; then there was a procession of camera-carriers to the village church—a difficult but fascinating subject ; and always 13 September there were problems of photographic plates and papers, ‘‘ gum prints,” ‘ bromoils,’” and other interesting ‘mediums for advanced workers. There was, indeed, a judicious mixture of art and science in the course of instruction—the art side, as well as much practical advice, being furnished in endless variety by Mr. White, and the science ably contributed in daily lectures by his assistant, himself a well-known pictorialist, Mr. Paul L. Anderson. A summer school, to be of any use to pupils who are occupying their vacations with a more useful form of activity than that furnished by the usual summer hotel or boarding-place, must have its play hour as well as its class time. And so the School of Pictorial Photography arranged for one or two picnics every week. Only, it could not keep its enthusiastic members from carrying their working tools to the picnic grounds— or waters, as it was in the case of the initial picnic, which involved an excursion to a charming lake for boating and _ bathing. Then there was the trolley picnic through the Berkshire Hills, passing Sheffield, Great Bar- rington, and Stockbridge, loveliest of New England villages, with incidental visits to the summering places of well-known artist pho- tographers—Mrs. Gertrude Kasebier among them, and George H. Seeley, whose well- known poster-like pictures, all made in the vicinity of Stockbridge, were exhibited te the class, and proved that one does not need to travel far afield to find subjects for genuinely pictorial work. “ The angel sought so far away Is waiting at your door.” Perhaps one of the chief benefits that come from such a gathering of kindred spir- its is in the pleasant social life that it en- genders. What bright sallies at the dinner table! What keen comments on art and letters! What joyous mirth on the occasional straw rides by moonlight! Here the irre- pressible talker finds his or her antidote in the gay repartee that stops the flow of words ; the sententious story-teller has his grateful opportunity ; the quiet thinker is moved to contribute his quota to the conversation ; the organizer finds scope for his faculty in pro- moting dark-room and _ studio efficiency by forming co-operative committees ; the ‘ cos- tume committee ” shows its genius by pro- viding unexpected wardrobes from the shelves of the country store; and in the taking of * candlelight pictures ” there is perhaps even
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ne ee ne eae a ere aay” 1916 CARDINAL MERCIER: an opportunity for.a harmless flirtation such as the wariest summer girl sometimes in- dulges in. Then the exhibition of prints, when the last week comes, and all the neighbors drop in to see what these cameracranks have been doing. That surely was an occasion! Many were the naive comments. One of the good- natured farmers who had posed said, ‘“* You certainly made me look like a tramp ;’’ the photographer’s feelings were mollified when the farmer’s hired man remarked, “ That’s a good picture; it looks just like ye.” An- A PERSONAL IMPRESSION 99 other said, “‘ Now I wish you would take a picture of us when we’re dressed up; I’d really like to have one of that kind !”—wit- nessing to the universal wish to be ‘“ dolled up ’’ when our photographs are taken, instead of looking like our usual selves as our friends know us. But on the whole the comments are kindly, and the school terminates its ses- sions with the good will of the entire com- munity, and the hope that its members will call again when summer days once more lure the camera devotee to the woods and the fields and the riverside. CARDINAL MERCIER: A PERSONAL IMPRESSION’ BY EDWARD HEN one calls on the Cardinal, one VW wanders through long, white halls in the archiepiscopal palace, through cloisters formerly opened to wind and rain, now closed and glassed from the elements by a less heroic race. In the sa/on formerly used for a reception-room a German shell has torn through the roof and burst, leaving jagged fragments in the mirrors, so that they are splintered like ice under the hammer and fling grotesque reflections and spars of light into the emptiness overhead. The dais, with its crimson hangings, droopsin shreds. The hardwood floor is plowed and uprooted, and carved cherubim smile placidly from the débris. In still another room huddle por- traits of archbishops of old; saints and poli- ticians, some of them in Louis Quatorze wigs ; and the familiar faces of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and the present Pope, Benedict XV. The Cardinal receives in a tiny white- washed room, furnished with horsehair chairs, walnut-wood desk and table, and a small coal stove. On the walls are an image of the Virgin, framed in glass, and a pencil drawing of the Cardinal as a boy. Through the win- dows one looks into a dead garden where shells have plunged and burst. The Cardinal is like a Degas painting, if Degas had pictured cardinals instead of chorus-girls and ballet-dancers. He seems ' See the picture entitled “‘‘ The Christian Indictment’ —A Symbolic Portrait of Cardinal Mercier,” in our alco- gravure section in this issue. EYRE HUNT preternaturally tall—six feet five, I think. His face, thin, scholarly, ascetic, with sparse grayish-white hair above it, is bloodless, and his forehead so white that one feels one looks on the naked bone. His eyes are deep-set, the eyes of a man who sees a great deal. There is a pleasantly humorous expression about the corners of the firm mouth, but the expression of his face in conversation shows a man who knows what he thinks, measures what he says, and feels in advance the exact effect of every remark that he makes and of every look that he casts upon one. His black habit with the cardinal-red braid, the heavy gold chain about his neck and the heavy gold cross at his breast, the wide car- dinal sash, and the black-skirted cassock—all serve to emphasize the old-ivory whiteness and tooled artistry of the fine face above them. There is something feminine in the Cardinal’s face—a feminine deference and sympathy and comprehension perhaps—but the effect which he makes on a caller is the same that he makes on the world at large, that of a finely poised, keenly intelligent, yet very gentle Prince of the Church and shep- herd of a nation. They tell in Belgium of an American tour- ist who called on the Cardinal. ‘‘ You’re a Catholic, ain’t you, Mr. Cardinal?’ he in- quired. The Cardinal understands English, and gently answered, “ Yes.”
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100 “ Well, ’'m_a Presbyterian myself, but I ain’t got no prejudices,”’ said the visitor. Unlike this American, the Cardinal has prejudices. He is strongly prejudiced in favor of Belgium, and any one or anything which helps Belgium. He is a steadfast up- holder of the work of Herbert C. Hoover ard the Commission for Relief in Belgium. He speaks in exalted terms of America and Americans. He is not afraid to be pro-Ally, and his written and spoken words have been a keen embarrassment to the occupying gov- ernment. In him conquered Belgium has found a voice. It has found also an example of patriotic recalcitrance. In May, 1915, when Malines was isolated by Governor-General von Bissing in an effort to force the railway repair-shop workmen to work for the Germans, and a cordon of soldiers was thrown about the city to keep the people from going in and out, the Cardinal wished to go to Brussels to celebrate a High Mass. He sent word of this to the German commandant, but the commandant courteously replied that, on order of the Gov- ernor-General, the Pass Bureau was closed, and that for the present no pass could be issued to his Eminence. ‘The Cardinal at once sent word to the commandant that he would be obliged to walk to Brussels, and two hours afterwards he left his palace on foot, accompanied by two or three priests, and began the long march south. Men, women, and children thronged about him, priests came from all over the city, and before the Cardinal was fairly started on his way his walk had taken on the character of a dangerous popular demonstration. At the first sentries he was stopped and his personal Ausweis—a card of identifica- tion which all Belgians must carry—was de- manded. After a brief argument, he and two of his priests were permitted to proceed. The crowd, however, was balked. An ex- cited argument began, and one of the soldiers arrested a priest. I am told that the priest re- taliated by beating the sentry with an umbrella and disarming him ; the second sentry called THE OUTLOOK for help, and in a moment more the warlike priest was under arrest and soldiers were charging into the crowd. Then an extraordinary thing occurred. The Cardinal had continued on his way, but the disturbance behind caused him to stop. He saw the danger to the priest, retraced his steps, and followed the soldiers having the priest in charge into a little guard-house. Civilians and soldiers alike made way for the Prince of the Church. The Cardinal strode in, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his extraordinary height lifting him head and shoulders over the crowds about him. Then he caught sight of the priest. Onlookers say he merely looked at him steadfastly, raised his right arm, and beckoned; and, without a word having been spoken on either side, the priest followed the Cardinal out of the door and down the road, and they continued on their way to Brussels. The Cardinal was then sixty-four years old, yet he walked from Malines to Vilvorde, a distance of seven miles, and there took the electric tram. “They are so stupid, these Germans! Sometimes I feel that they are dike silly, cruel children, and that I should do something to help them.” The Cardinal is quoted as having used these words, and they are a fair statement of his political attitude. Even in his disobe- dience to the powers that be he is always priest as well as Prince. ‘This gives him an uncanny power over his people, and over the invaders as well. It is impossible to disso- ciate the paternal from the political reason for his acts, and so the Governor-General, who is a bold, downright, hard-handed mili- tary administrator in Belgium, finds all mouths closed but one, all arms paralyzed but one, all heads outwardly humbled but one—and that one the Cardinal’s. - Yet he can do nothing to change matters. The drama of Canossa and Canterbury is being played again in the twentieth century, and the priest still is victor.
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“eat Nt BOOKER T. WASHINGTON THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL IN THE MAKING BY EMMETT J. SCOTT AND LYMAN BEECHER STOWE This article appears here in advance of its publication in “ Booker T. Washington: Builder of a Civilization,” a book to appear in October, written by Emmett J. Scott, for eighteen years secretary to Booker Washington and now secretary to Tuskegee Institute, and Lyman Beecher Stowe, grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and himself a trained and experienced writer. Shortly before his death Booker Washington selected these two men to write this account of his life and work.—THE EDITORS. Macon County, Alabama, a certain ex- Confederate colonel conceived the idea that if he could secure the Negro vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he cov- eted in the State Legislature. Accordingly the colonel went to the leading Negro in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he could do to secure the Negro vote, for Ne- groes then voted in Alabama without restric- tion. This man, Lewis Adams by name, himself an ex-slave, promptly replied that what his race most wanted was education, and what they most needed was_indus- trial education, and that if he (the colonel) would agree to work for the passage of a bill appropriating money for the maintenance of an industrial school for Negroes, he, Adams, would help to get for him the Negro vote and the election. This bargain between an ex-slaveholder and an ex-slave was made and faithfully observed on both sides, with the result that the following year the Legis- lature of Alabama appropriated $2,000 a year for the establishment of a normal and industrial school for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of Gen- eral Armstrong, of Hampton Institute, a young colored man, Booker T. Washington, a recent graduate of and teacher at the Insti- tute, was called from there to take charge of this landless, buildingless, teacherless, and studentless institution of learning. This move turned out to be a fatal mistake in the political career of the colonel. The appellation of “ nigger lover ’’ kept him ever after firmly wedged in his political grave. hus by the same stroke was the career of an ex-slaveholder wrecked and that of an ex-slave made. ‘This political blunder of a local office-seeker gave to education one of its great formative institutions, to the Negro )% came about that in the year 1880, in race its greatest leader, and to America one of its greatest citizens. One is tempted to feel that Booker T. Washington was always popular and success- ful. On the contrary, for many years he had to fight his way inch by inch against the bit- terest opposition, not only of the whites, but of his own race. At that time there was scarcely a Negro leader of any prominence who was not either a politician or a preacher. By most of the Negro preachers he was accused of being a godless man building up a godless school. This was because his school was undenominational—an unheard-of thing at that time. By the whites he was accused of “spoiling niggers” by trying to educate them. Among the ®Sriginal group of thirty students with whom Booker Washington started Tus- kegee Institute, on an old plantation equipped with a kitchen, a stable, and a henhouse, was a now elderly man, who to-day has charge of the spacious and beautiful grounds of the Institute. He was ripe in years when he entered this original Tuskegee class. ‘The following is a paraphrase of his account of the early days of the school: “ After we’d been out on the plantation three or four weeks Mr. Washington came into the school- room one afternoon and said: ‘‘l‘o-morrow we're going to have a chopping bee. All of you that have an ax, or can borrow one, must bring it. I will try and provide those of you who cannot furnish an ax. We will dismiss school early to-morrow afternoon and start for the chopping bee.’ So we came to school next day with the axes, all of us that could get them; we were all excited and eager for that chopping bee, and we were all discussing what it would be like, because we had never been to one before. So in the afternoon Mr. Washington said it was time for that chopping 101
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102 bee, so he put his ax over his shoulder and led us to the woods and put us to work cut- ting the trees and clearing the land. He went right in and worked harder and faster and handled his ax better than any of us. After a while we found that a chopping bee, as he called it, was no different from just plain cutting down trees and clearing the land. ‘There wasn’t anything new about that —we all had had all we wanted of it. Some of the boys said they didn’t come to school to cut down trees and clear land, but they couldn’t say they were too good for that kind of work when Mr. Washington himself was at it harder than any of them. So he kept at us for some days, till everybody had his idea. He then went off to do something more important. ** Now in those days he used to go off every Saturday morning, and he wouldn’t come back till Monday morning. He’d travel all round the county drumming up students for the school and telling the people to send their children. And on Sunday he’d get the preachers to let him get up in their pulpits and tell the people about the school after they had finished preaching. And even the preach- ers who were warning their people against him and his school because they said it wasn’t Methodist, and it wasn’t Baptist, and it wasn’t Presbyterian, and it wasn’t Episcopalian, and it wasn’t Christian, would let him speak from their pulpits. They had told the people to keep their children away from that godless man and his school, but when he came along and asked to speak to the people they had to leave him, just as everybody always did—let him do just what he wanted to do. And when they heard him—the people—they didn’t pay any attention to the preachers ; they just sent their children as fast as they could contrive it. ‘** Now in those days Mr. Washington didn’t have a horse, nor a mule, nor a wagon, and he wanted to cover more country on those trips than he could afoot, so he’d just go out in the middle of the road and when some old black man would come along driving his mule wagon he’d stop him and talk with him, and tell him about the school and what it was going to do for the black folks, and then he’d say: ‘ Now, uncle, you can help by bringing your wagon and mule around at nine o’clock Saturday morning for me to go off round the country telling the people about the school. Now, remember, Uncle Jake, please be here promptly at nine.” And the THE OUTLOOK 13 September old man would say, ‘ Yes, boss, I sure will be here.’ That was how he did it—when he needed anything he’d go out and put his hand on it. First, he could put his hand on anything he wanted round the town ; then he could put his hand on anything he wanted all over the county; then he could put his hand on anything he wanted all over the State ; and at last, they tell me, he could put his hand on anything he wanted away up to New York. “In those days, after we came to live here on the ‘ plantation,’ I used to take the wheel- barrow and go round to the office when Mr. Washington opened up the mail in the morn- ing, and if there was money in the mail then I could go ‘long to the town with the wheel- barrow and get provisions, and if there was no money then there was no occasion to go to town. We’d just eat what we had left. Most of the white storekeepers wouldn’t give us credit, and they didn’t want a ‘ nigger school’ here, anyhow. ‘Times have changed. Now those storekeepers get a large propor- tion of their trade here at the Institute, and if there should be any talk of moving they’d just get up and fight to the last to keep us here and keep our trade. «* And in those days the Negro preachers, or the most of them, and the white folks, or the most of them, were always trying to dis- pute with Mr. Washington and quarrel with him, but he just kept his mouth shut and went ahead. He kept pleasant, and he wouldn’t dispute with them nor argue with them nor quarrel withthem. When the white folks would come round and tell him he was ‘spoiling good niggers by education,’ he would just ask them to wait patiently and give him time to show them what the right kind of education would do. And when the colored preachers would come round and tell him he was no Christian and his school had no religion, he would ask them to just wait and see if the boys and giils were any less Christian because of the education they were getting. But, whoever came along and what- ever happened, Mr. Washington just kept his mouth shut and went ahead. ‘* After two years of school I went out and rented some land and planted cotton, and just about time to harvest my crop Mr. Washing- ton sent for me one Saturday and said: ‘I need you. I want you to come back and work for the school on the farm. I want you to start in Monday morning.’ When I told him about my cotton crop, just ready to
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1916 ke picked, he said: ‘Can’t help that, we need you. You'll have to arrange with your neighbors to harvest your crop for you.’”’ To the inquiry, “‘ Well, did you come ?”’ the old man replied: ‘‘ Of course I did. When Mr. Washington said come, I came, same. as everybody did when he told them. I gota neighbor to harvest my crop and I lost money on it, but I came to work that Mon- day morning more than thirty years ago, and I’ve been here ever since.” The idea of not doing what Mr. Washing- ton wanted him to do, or even arguing the matter, was evidently inconceivable to this old man. He obeyed, and had always obeyed, Mr. Washington, just as he had obeyed the laws of nature by sleeping and eating.’ That is the kind of control which Booker Wash- ington always exercised over his fellow- workers. He accepted their implicit obedi- ence as naturally and simply as they gave it. Just as Samuel Armstrong was perhaps the most receptive of Mark Hopkins’s pupils, so 300oker Washington became the most recep- tive pupil of Samuel Armstrong. In his autobiography, ‘‘ Up from Slavery,’ Mr. Washington thus describes General Arm- strong’s influence and the impression he made upon him: “It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called greatcharacters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say that 1 never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of General Armstrong. .. . * One might have removed from Hamp- ton all the buildings, class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus thacis equal to that which can be gotten frem contact with great men and women. Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things !” When the young man imbued with these ideas and fresh from these influences found himself responsible for the destinies of a studentless, teacherless, buildingless, and landless school, it is significant how he went \o work to supply these manifold deficiencies. lirst he found a place’ in which to open the school—a dilapidated shanty church, the A.M. E. Zion Church for Negroes, in the town , BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 103 of Tuskegee. Next he went about the sur- rounding countryside, found out exactly un- der what conditions the people were living and what their needs were, and advertised the school among the class of people whom he wanted to have attend it. By experience and through acquaintance with the actual conditions under which his people were living he became more con- vinced than ever that little could be done for them by mere book-learning. Agriculturai training must be the basis of their education, just as agriculture was the basis of their livelihood. In order to give such training he must have land. About that time an old plantation near the town came onto the market. Borrowing personally the $250 re- quired as a cash first payment, he bought it and moved the school onto it. And as soon as they were established in their new quarters he organized the “ chop- ping bee” already described, and cleared some of the land so that it could be used for crops. He did not clear and plant this land to give his students vocational training. He did it for the purpose that all land was originally cleared and planted—to get food. He, of course, realized that the educational content of this work was great—greater than any possible text-book exercises in the class- room. . He then and there began the long and difficult task of teaching his people that physical work, and particularly farm work, if rightly done, was education, and that educa- tion was work. To secure the acceptance of this truth by a race only recently emanci- pated from over two hundred years of unre- quited toil—a race that had always regarded freedom from the necessity for work as an indication of superiority—-was not a hopeful task. ‘To them education was the antithesis of work. It was the magic elixir which emancipated all those fortunate enough to drink of it from the necessity for work. He also began to emphasize at this time his familiar dictum that learning to do the common things of life in an uncommon way was an essential part of real education. Probably the reverse of this dictum—namely, learning to do the uncommon things of life in a common way—would have more _ nearly corresponded to the popular conception of education among most Negroes and many whites. After the land was secured the next most pressing necessity was a boarding department so that the students might be influenced
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104 throughout the twenty-four hours of the day —so that they might be taught the manners, customs, and amenities of decent and orderly living. As Mr. Washington says in “ Up from Slavery,”’ ‘‘ We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin a boarding department.” As soon as this boarding department was established each student was required to have and to use a tooth-brush. Mr. Washington later observed that, in his opinion, the tooth-brush is the most potent single instrument of civilization. Then, too, it was possible for him to begin to enforce this injunction taken from one of his now well-known Sunday night talks: ‘* Make a study of the preparation of food. See to it that a certain ceremony, a certain importance, be attached to the partaking of the food.” ‘This exhortation sounds so commonplace as to be scarcely noticed by the average reader, but just put yourself in the place of one of these boys or girls who came from a one-room cabin, and realize what a profoundly revolutionary, even sensational injunction it is! To the boy or girl who had snatched a morsel of food here and there when prompted by the gnawings of hunger, who had never sat down to a regular meal, who had never partaken of a meal placed upon a table with or without ceremony— imagine what it meant to such a boy or girl ‘“to see to it that a certain ceremony, a cer- tain importance, be attached to the partaking of the food’’—not on special occasions but at each one of the three meals of each day ! Finally, it came about that this school which had started with a paltry $2,000 a year, a great need, and the invincible determination THE OUTLOOK of one man, came to have land, buildings, teachers, students, and even a boarding de- partment. But in Mr. Washington’s view there was still a great fundamental lack in their work. They were doing nothing directly to help those less fortunate than themselves —those about them who could not come and enjoy the advantages of the school. Mr. Washington held that as soon as an individual got hold of anything as useful and desirable as education he should take immediate means to hand it on to the greatest possible number of those who needed it. He had no patience with those persons who would climb the tree of knowledge and then pull the lad- der up after them. He and his teachers then began to go out on Sundays and give the people homely talks on how to improve their living conditions. They encouraged the farmers to come to the school farm and learn how to grow a variety of crops to supplement the cotton crop, which was their sole reliance. They relieved the distress of individual families. Mrs. Wash- ington gathered together in an old loft the farmers’ wives and daughters who were in the habit of loafing about the village of Tus- kegee on Saturday afternoons and formed them into a woman’s club for the improve- ment of the living conditions in their homes and communities. Mr. Washington and his teachers went right onto the farms, and into the homes, and into the churches and the schools, and everywhere showed, for the most part by concrete object-lessons, how the Negroes could make their farms more productive, their homes more comfortable, their schools more useful, and their church services more inspiring.
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dle ate ble no nb yut lks ns. ety ich the sh- the in us- 1ed ve- nes his nto the the OW ore ale, rch ; ‘i é HOW TO MAKE PLAY OUT OF WORK’ IV—JOY OF SELF-ACTIVITY BY ELLEN CHATTLE we shall see that his pleasure is purely a result of the motions that he makes. He pushes his little arms and kicks his feet and gurgles with glee ; he likes the feel of it. As he gets a little older he runs after nothing just for the fun of running. He leaps and turns somersaults, and, while other elements of pleasure enter in later, for a number of years the predominant joy is the thrill of move- ment. This is what we call an elemental pleasure, and it should persist through life. There is no reason why a healthy grown per- son should not experience a sensation of pure pleasure from the mere swing of his walk, the play of his muscles, in their perfect response to the nervous impulse. It should be exquisite. In this sense a person should “ enjoy himself.” Analogous is the sheer joy in mental ac- tivity, the delight of thinking faster and faster, of disentangling a hazy web until the lines of thought lie straight and clear. Puzzles appeal to this instinct in children. It like- wise should remain a joy while the power of thinking lasts. This kind of joy is the hidden spring which can freshen monotonous tasks. A broom may be made to move rhythmically with as fine a swing as a conjurer’s wand. ‘To dust a room properly requires a great many poses of the body, and to do it in a reasonable length of time requires that they be taken quickly. Thus the whole exercise may be conceived of as a gymnastic per- formance. ‘The open windows complete the conditions ; cap, apron, and gloves make as right a suit as other things do. The fact thata clean and beautiful room will result need not detract from the exhilaration of physical ac- tivity. There are other kinds of work in which the motions are simpler and more monotonous. But we may get a certain “feel” of any motion, however simple, by thinking ! For other articles in this series see The Outlook for August 23 and 30, and September 6.—THE EpITors. L we watch a very little child in his play, about it when we make it. And you have no.idea until you try it what that * feel ” adds to the interest. Many motions may be made rhythmical, and most of them can be acceler- ated by attention. Whether work requires much or little mental activity, it always requires some. And that mental action is a perfectly safe investment, which may be made to yield a constant in- come of interest and pleasure. ‘The rule for realizing the most on this investment is this : Put the maximum of thought into whatever you do. If the task is simple, the tendency is to let the mind wander. ‘That takes the fun out of it. The girl at the ribbon counter who measures off the ribbon with a far-away look in her eyes and hands out the change in a state of coma is a poor clerk—but that is another question. ‘The comment significant to our discussion is that she is throwing away opportunities for a really interesting time. Human nature is a fascinating study, and those lengths of ribbon are a more efficient aid in its pursuit than a social function would be. She may sharpen her wits by learning different ways of best serving different types of people, how to speak the right word and how to be silent at the right moment. Any worker may test by trial the wide opportuni- ties for mental life afforded him by his work. The statement that a particular kind of work is devoid of interest will usually be found to suffer by investigation. We Christians assume that the maker of the worlds, the Supreme Intelligence, is interested in everything. The farther we go his way intellectually, unques- tionably the more interesting things will be- come. To know all about anything and how to do it best is a splendid achievement, and to even start on a thorough investigation of the subject of one’s work is a healthy mental stimulant. Novo artificial stimulant, such as is afforded by amusements, can compare with it for genuine interest and the exhilaration of real play.
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KNOLL PAPERS BY LYMAN ABBOTT TWO KINDS I have been a praying man all the fifty-two years of my life. I observe stated daily times of prayer; but, far more than that, I have for years sought to maintain an attitude of prayer, by which I mean that I consciously make an effort to open my mind and spirit to any impression which the divine Spirit may be willing to make upon me. Many of the things about which I have prayed have come to pass, but never in such a way that I could trace the relation of cause and effect and say that so and so has come to pass because I prayed. As far as I can see, the value of prayer has been altogether subjective. As far as the practical events of life are concerned, they would have come to pass as they have whether or not I have prayed. In fact, the same holds true largely in what is commonly called the spiritual sphere. And there is the whole problem of intercessory prayer! When one prays for the safety or, for that matter, for the spiritual enlightenment of some one else, is any relation between what follows and the intercessory prayer provable? | es LL that it is possible for me to do in A this brief article is to touch upon one point respecting prayer, which seems to me of vital importance, and recom- mend a little volume by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, entitled “*‘ The Meaning of Prayer,” ? to you and to any of my readers who are perplexed—as who has not been at times ?— by your problem. In this little volume Dr. Fosdick notes the distinction between the two prayers of the Prodigal Son, ‘‘ Give me ” and ‘“‘ Make me.” And he said, A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of thy substance that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country; and there he wasted his substance with riotous living. . . . But when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: I am no more worthy to be called 1 The Meaning of Prayer. By Harry Emerson Fosdick. Young Men’s Christian Association Press. 106 OF PRAYER thy son: make me as one of thy hired serv ants. The father in the parable gave the son what he asked for: “ He divided unto them his living.” But when the son returned the father made him what he had not asked for. He asked to be made a hired servant; he was made a son: ‘ This my son was dead, and is alive again.” The Bible contains many illustrations of these two kinds of prayer. Jacob, fleeing in exile from his home, where he has cheated his aged father and robbed his twin brother. sees in his sleep a ladder reaching from earth to heaven and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. The vision does not suggest to him that heaven and earth are one, and that the celestial spirit may be car- ried into earthly affairs. It only suggests to him that perhaps he can get the aid of celes- tial powers to win for him the successful achievement of his sordid ambitions, and he makes a vow, Saying : If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go,and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, sothat I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee. Contrast with this Paul’s prayer for his fellow-Christians in Ephesus : For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inward man, ... that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God. Jacob’s prayer is, Give me; Paul’s prayer is, Make me. Paul himself illustrates both kinds of prayer: the prayer for physical succor from pain ; the prayer for spiritual wisdom and strength to gain a larger life through the ministry of pain. Tormented by a thorn in the flesh, he prayed earnestly that it might depart from him. Give me, was his cry, and the relief he asked was not given. Then he changed his prayer
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rv On em the or. he ad, of rin ted 1er, irth ling loes are car- s to ‘les- sful he e in eat, n to lI be » for that enth his the and you, may pirit Alled KNOLL to a thanksgiving for the physical infirmity from which he had sought rescue, because in that physical infirmity the power of God’s helpful companionship was made manifest : ‘‘ Most gladly therefore will [ rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake : for when I am weak, then am I strong.” Our real prayers are cur supreme master- ful desires. Not what we ask for are our prayers, but what we strive for. The masterful desire of the Preacher- King was for knowledge and pleasure and houses and vineyards and gardens and orchards and silver and gold and :aen singers and women singers and musical instruments of all sorts; and this lifelong prayer was granted. His life prayer was, Give me; and at the end he hated all the Jabor which he had taken under the sun and counted his life a vanity made of vanities. The prayer of the Psalm singer of Israel was, Make me: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts : and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” And he reports what had been the answer to this prayer : How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them ! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: When I awake, I am still with thee. The Bible justifies praying for things. To substantiate this assertion we need noth- ing more than the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘‘ Give us this day our daily bread.” Experience is called upon in religious books and addresses on prayer to prove that this request for things is often offered not in vain. But certainly it does not always bring the thing desired. If the Master taught us that we may ask our heavenly Father for good gifts, he also taught us in more than one _par- PAPERS 107 able that the kingdom of heaven is like an estate which the landlord puts in the charge of his servants. while he goes into a far country, leaving the responsibilities of the estate upon them. God often throws us on our own resources. Even the prayer, Give us our daily bread, he answers by giv- ing us, not a loaf, but a fruitful soil. I think it is Mrs. Stowe who has said that “ No” is as much an answer as “ Yes.” God often answers our request with ‘“ No” and we mistakenly call our prayers ‘‘ unanswered prayers.’’ The Master in Gethsemane prayed, ** Let this cup pass from me,” and the answer was, “It cannot pass from thee ;’’ and the Master accepted the answer, though it was brought to him by the traitor Judas. But that the other prayer, the prayer ‘‘ Make me what thou desirest me to be,”’ is answered by wisdom, strength, and comfort bestowed is attested by a mass of testimony quite sufficient to establish the fact in any court of justice or for any expert in historical research. The question most discussed by skeptics is, Docs God give us things in answer to prayer? The faith of the devout soul is that God is our great companion, with whom we may live in intimate fellowship and from whose unvoiced but not unexpressed friendship we derive a clearness of vision freed from our low and selfish desires, a strength which makes us wish to share with our Master the pains and perils of our great campaign, and that soldierly joy in self-sacri- fice which is more than comfort. The Father does not promise that his children, if they cry unto him, shall not pass through cleansing waters and purging fires ; what he promises is, ‘‘ When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”’ Of intercessory prayer for others I may write at some future time. The Knoll, Cornwall-on-Hudson.
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MY IMMIGRANT O’DOWD AND NEIGHBORS “THE PUSH” BY GERTRUDE BARNUM r ‘HE boys called themselves “the Push,” and it seemed an appropriate name, as they wedged themselves through to the front of any crcowd—* Dago,” “‘ Sheeny,’’ “ Mick,” and “ Nigger ”’—~forced on in a jammed mass by pressure from behind. The Push was made up of very indi- vidual entities, closely as these might stick together against a common enemy. Their nicknames indicated’ this _ individuality. “Happy Hooligan,” “Chicken,” “ Stilts,” ‘“‘ Buffalo,”’ “* Monkey,” were recognizable at a glance. Other names were easily ex- plained—*“ Beeswax ”’ for the son of a Ger- man cobbler, ‘‘ Duds” for the small boy from the rag-shop, “ Pickles” for the lad from the Heinz factory, ‘‘ Hoochty Woocht,” a satirical substitute for an unpronounceable Slavic name, and “ Streaks” for the Irish messenger boy. They were a formidable group, whose deeds were often done in darkness. Their language was such as might be acquired by eavesdropping around saloons, umpiring teamsters’ fights, and culling the pages of sport and crime in the yellow jour- nals of fact and fiction. Many of their games were savage, especially the “‘ Indian Gaunt- let,” in which one by one they would run between a double line of braves who took ‘“‘ cracks ”’ at their defenseless faces and heads with caps, leather ball-gloves, book-straps, geographies, or other implements of torture ruled “fair” by the “ Big Chief.””’ When first we knew them they seemed friendly Indians, glad to help in community tasks, such as cleaning up and fencing in a vacant lot for gardening purposes. They knew where to get implements of peace as well as of war. Wheelbarrows, spades, brooms, bas- kets, and boards were easily available in a neighborhood used to doing its own work. Hammers, saws, putty, rope, nails, and wire seemed to drop like gentle rain from: heaven. It was well to question the sources of these supplies before utilizing them, however. And eagerness to help sometimes rose to a frenzy which was impossible to control from the out- side and must be directed by the “strong men’”’ of the Push itself. A lack of tact 108 or justice in a neighbor resulted in broken windows, mud-clogged doors, derailed fences, tarred sidewalks. A popular neighbor, on the other hand, had but to step to the door to enlist from three to ten willing and effi- cient servants. On the whole, in the begin- ning, the Push was a just; nay, a generous body, though kindergarten methods were neither practiced nor understood by its members. Streaks was their acknowledged leader. Although only twelve when first we knew him, he was streaking in the wrong direction. Wan, thin, and hoarse, he usually was without an overcoat and wore shoes split so that the cold slush oozed through. The sole support of a mother and two younger children, he ran errands as district messenger from four in the afternoon until twelve, one, and two o’clock at night, his sharp little greenish eyes missing none of the sights of the night life to which he ministered. His plausible speech foretold an easy following in his father’s foot- steps down the side-cuts of life to the bride- well. Having a vivid mind and opportuni- ties for observation in extraordinary realms, Streaks was easily the center of interest in the few hours he could spend with his pals. His influence, powerful from the first, became supreme after he acquired the cigarette habit and a police court record. The Push had arrived at the lead-pipe- stealing stage when Policeman O’Dowd was assigned to our beat. ‘Cheese the new cop !”’ cried they. The “ new cop” was especially detailed to a settlement playground just opened for the district. At once he enlisted the brains and brawn of every boy in our parts for the con- struction of additions to the meager original equipment of the place. Soon it became a common ambition to evoke the reluctant approval of the taciturn and mighty O’Dowd, whose standards of efficiency were high. There were swing-seats, ‘‘ teeter-tauters,’’ and turning bars to be planed and sand-papered ; ropes to be fitted and fastened ; benches to be built ; short-jump and long-jump markers measured for, sunk, and braced ; tally-boards to be propped. A day’s work with O’Dowd
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aad > 1 1 2 1 2 > S 2 THE READER’S VIEW 109 left the group “all in ” as to physical strength, and mentally entirely absorbed with reminis- cences of past humiliations and triumphs, or anticipation of future accomplishments and glory. Next followed tests for the ‘strength grades.”’ Right here it was that Streaks lost his grip on the popular imagination. With mortification he “ fluked the stunts ” which even ‘ third-class men” could “ pull off.” Competitors in running and jumping contests developed a lofty scorn for the “cigarette fiend.”’ Vainly he hung around the outskirts of the playground sounding his shrill, once magic, finger-whistle. Sorrow- fully he slunk off alone to reflect upon the fickleness of the crowd. To achieve the height, breadth, and chestiness of O’Dowd had become the paramount aim of his former admirers. O’Dowd, biding the proper time, at length went in search of his fallen rival to ask his aid in hammock-making. Years before the big policeman had been a sailor, and. now came his chance to utilize an old knack, to point the moral that strength was not all a “feller”? needs. Deftness, too, he demon- strated, was worth cultivating. Soon Streaks became an adept in weaving hammocks and basket-ball nets. The Push paused in its running, turning, climbing, and hand-springing to form an envious ring awaiting an oppor- tunity to “ get in on the new game.” Gradu- ally each was pressed into service. There were rope ladders to be constructed, tennis nets and rackets to be mended, cradle-swings to be woven, May-pole twists to be fashioned, besides innumerable sailors’ knots to be prac- ticed and mastered. All the while the imagination of the youths was stirred by old sailors’ tales, full of the color and music and poetry of the sea, with its hidden depths and mystical treasures ; and yarns of bravery and unselfish devotion held the circle wonder-struck, while new veins of interest and character were opened up in the minds of the maturing lads. Streaks excelled all the rest in skill with string and rope. Moreover, his superior imagination, responding to the stimulus of O’Dowd’s sea tales, wove romances that later formed the basis of games and corner vaude- ville ‘* stunts ” through which first he regained leadership over his companions and _ later acquired a position in the “ movies.” My last recollection of the boys was of a much washed and combed group, sitting by right of conquest in the front row ofa settle- ment “movie” and serving as fans for Streaks, who was shown on the screen enacting a highly moral part. As I studied their alert faces and sturdy forms that evening O’Dowd’s influence was plainly dis- cernible. I was ready to agree with him that at last the chances in life of the Push had become fully “ fifty-fifty.” THE READER’S VIEW BEER NO CURE FOR ALCOHOLISM We, the undersigned members of the Unita- rian Temperance Society, ask space in your pages to enter a protest against articles now flooding the press written apparently to keep in- tact the business of the breweries by constantly affirming that prohibition is always a failure and beer well-nigh harmless. Typical of such litera- ture is “ Alcohol and Society,” by John Koren, written originally for the “ Atlantic Monthly.” We protest against the idea that beer is the cure for the drink evil. Distilled liquors were not used to any extent for beverage purposes in England until about the time of Henry VIII, and yet we all know that England was cursed with drunkenness from ale and wine long ere this. Not only does beer cause drunkenness, it also leads to immoderate drinking. Take, for example, the fact that in Germany the extreme accessibility of beer has so fostered the taste for alcohol that Germany is no longer primarily a beer-drinking country, forty-nine per cent of her consumption being (according to Gabriels- sohn’s well-known figures) distilled liquors. Says Professor Gustav von Bunge, “ Beer in Germany is worse than the whisky pest, because more apt to lead to immoderate drinking.” As for the non-hygienic, disease-making quality of beer, we refer the reader to Professor Bollinger’s researches ; he found, among other things, that in Munich, Germany, one out of every sixteen hospital patients died of beer- drinker’s heart. We note in some of these articles that beer below twoand one-fourth per cent becomes harm- less. But Mr. Mjven, from whom.the “ Brewers’ Year Book” draws this conclusion, says that he found this solution apparently harmless as far as digestion went, but adds that the point where alcohol becomes altogether harmless is a purely
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110 technical one and should in no way stay the hand of temperance workers. The amount is so small as to be practically negligible for ordi- nary beverage purposes. Moreover, Georgia tried from 1908-16 a “near ” or light beer experiment, but gave it up, because, according to Judge Broyles, of Atlanta, a light-beer law is unenforceable, as you cannot have a chemist with every barrel to see that the beer is light. As for assertions giving the impression that the case against moderate drinking is not proved, we believe that Dr. Benedict, at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory, Boston, has proved beyond cavil that thirty to forty-five cubic centimeters of alcohol (about a wineglass of whisky) “slows down” neuro-muscular action. As for prohibition being nowhere successful, we refer our friends to the recent survey made by the State University at Kansas showing that in 1913-14 the per capita consumption of Kan- sas was eighty-six per cent less than that of the country at large. Charles Stearns. Christopher R. Eliot. Courtenay Guild. John J. Holmes. Charles F. Dale. Alice Higgins Lothrop. Frederick Gill. William H. Parker. Elizabeth Tilton. Lyman Rutledge. Eugene Shippen. Joseph Crooker. Samuel Maxwell. Elmer Forbes. Thomas Elliot. Abbot Peterson. Mrs. Frank L. Young. Edgar Weirs. “DARKNESS MADE LIGHT” Thursday evening, August 3, the Exchange and Training School for the Blind, 110 Living- ston Street, Brooklyn, New York, was totally destroyed by fire. Many blind people of Brook- lyn have received financial benefit from this agency. The darkness which has fallen upon the blind youth and the blind man has not ob- literated the eagerness for self-support. The blind workers must have another work- shop. Making a living is not an easy thing for any young persgn. To any one who has found the way especially hard the fight of the sight- less for self-support must make a strong appeal. Contributions may be sent to the Brooklyn Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 104 Livingston Street, under the auspices of which Association the workshop is main- tained. * & * THAT LITTLE COUNTRY SCHOOL As a summer resident of many years a few miles from the country school of which Miss Smith writes so pleasantly [The Outlook, July 26, 1916] and which she has taught so well, I should like to give my testimony to her ability as seen in one result. Through these years I have watched the development of one scholar in many ways, but THE OUTLOOK 13 September Jast summer I was most agreeably surprised in one of our conversations—well, suppose I re- peat it for you as nearly as I can recall it; the child was then ten years old: “We have a good teacher now. pictures ; one of them is ‘ Aurora.’ ” “ The only ‘ Aurora’ I know is Guido’s.” ““This is Guido’s. Some of them like it best because it has bright colors, but I like ‘ Sir Galahad’ best.” “Do you know who wrote about Sir Gala- had ?” “Oh, yes, Tennyson. ‘ My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.’ And we have ‘ The Sower.’” When this was de- scribed and the artist’s name given, I spoke of “The Angelus,” and after a minute hearing she said, “ Yes, I’ve seen that, but it isn’t in the school.” Then I asked: “ Do you know what nations are at war?” Instantly came the names of the Central Powers, and just as easily those of the Allies. And when I spoke of the relationship of the sovereigns, saying how much the Czar resem- bled King George, “ Don’t he, though!” came promptly, showing that she knew for herself. “ Have you studied about this in school ?” “ Oh, we. have ‘Current Events.’ ” There was more in like fashion, with all of which I-entertained our club at home later. Not until I saw Miss Smith’s article in a late Outlook did I know who had done all this for these children. Later, one bright, beautiful morning, when the child came on an errand for her father, and I said, “Isn’t it good to be alive!” her face lighted up. She said, “I know some lines that end so,” but they wouldn’t come at her call. I told her how they were nicely laid away in her brain and would come, and then she could tell me. So a day or two ago she came joyfully in, saying, “ They came while I was washing dishes.” Here they are: “ Here and yonder, high and low, Goldenrod and sunflowers glow. Here and there a maple flushes, Sumach reddens, woodbine blushes, Purple asters bloom and thrive. I am glad that I’m alive!” Tolland, Massachusetts. C. A: H. We have RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS In The Outlook of July 19 I read an article by Isaac Levine on the relative values of the Russian and American high schools that inter- ested me very much, for I also have been a student in the Russian gyznasia, and am now a student in an American high school. The chief points in the article are these two: (1) the American school needs a new force of teachers and a centralized form of government; (2) the American school is governed by a spirit
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1916 of money “ zider alles.” The writer asserts that Russian graduates are better educated than American. But could a Russian student be more educated than an American when he is able to graduate absolutely ignorant? The aver- age Russian high school student is of the wealthy people, for tuitian is from seventy to two hundred rubles a year—a sum that poor children cannot afford. These wealthy people, in order to have their children graduate without any hardship in the examination, make money donations to the principals and teachers, for which the children are permitted to pass to the next higher grade or given diplomas without care as to their knowledge. I have witnessed many such cases in the royal schools and eysnasia of Odessa, whence I come, where they are not rare—as a matter of fact, quite common. There the Rus- sian student aims to get into a gymnasium, not to be educated, but to wear the uniform with shiny brass buttons, attractive to the eyes of young ladies, and to get the privilege that the Russian student possesses of paying half-fare on the street cars, obtaining special seats in the theaters and circuses, and other favors dear to his heart and to that of the lady whom he admires. All of this can, and does, happen in the highly centralized school in Russia. Is this the education that Mr. Levine advocates for America? Again, in Russia the student must take the whole prescribed course, without opportunity to choose subjects for which he has special need or liking. He must take Latin, which is given very dryly, and physics and botany, which are taught without any laboratory work—all such a monotonous grind that students are often driven to madness or suicide. The fear of not passing examinations in subjects so abominably taught often results in ten suicides a year. I agree with Mr. Levine’s statement that co- education in the American schools improves home life and the understanding between men and women. Is not this a far nobler achieve- ment than the surface polish that the Russian high schoolhas? Itis inthe clubs of these co- educational schools that free discussions show- ing all sides of a case impart true knowledge and culture. In one place the writer says that the Ameri- can teacher gets better results than the Russian, and in another he recommends Russian reforms, with the centralized authority and the abnormal attitude of unity between pupils and teacher which must naturally follow. Mr. Levine cites the case of the American teacher depending upon the book. In this re- spect the Russians are twice as bad—they make parrots of their pupils. One is called on to recite in a geometry lesson, and if he does not THE READER’S VIEW 111 explain in the words of the book is given a low mark. Do the Russians not have to memorize long, meaningless poems that show nothing more than the tyranny of the Czar? I should rather learn the fine monologues, the speeches in Shakespeare, such as, “ Is thisa dagger of the mind?’’ and others full of beautiful words, than long, meaningless prayers. Mr. Levine wants a change, and he suggests Russia! He says 4“ Here the programme is the same in every high school, there the universities have their standards and will not permit a stu- dent to stay if he does not keep up in his work, there the same text-books are used everywhere.” In the United States they are not; but what is the difference between the Wells and the Smith geometry? Both are modern, up-to-date books. In our gyznasium we had a geography twenty- five years old, and this book, full of nonsense, has still to be used, for it is decreed by the centralized department and forced upon the pupil and the teacher. In order to get a position as principal, one must be a politician in favor with high Govern- ment officials. Does Mr. Levine want to draw our free high school system into the mire of politics? CHARLES STRAUSS. North High School, Minneapolis, Minnesota. “ ENGLAND” AND “ BRITAIN” Nelson signaled to his fleet at the critical moment when it approached the French at Trafalgar, ‘‘ England expects every man to do his duty.” The word “ England ” has a political, dramatic, or oratorical effect. Each nation has a “core word,” or national entity, in expression. “Scotland forever,” not “ North Britain for- ever.” This latter would not have inspired the “ Grays” at Waterloo. The North Americans use the word “ British ” more than other nations or the British themselves do. The French and Germans always say “England,” “the Eng- lish,” as the Kaiser’s “the ridiculously little English army.” Tuomas LATHAM. AN APPRECIATION FROM JAPAN “Very many thanks for The Outlook, which comes to me regularly,” writes T. Kobayashi, a business man of Tokyo. “In this magazine appears sometimes an account relating to our country, and I am always thankful for its true understanding of our nation. Many disputes arising between nations are due to the lack of thorough knowledge of each other. As I trust The Outlook reflects the sentiments of your Nation, I endeavor always to grasp the true sense of Americanism through this magazine.” EpitH A. SAWYER. Wellesley, Massachusetts.
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BY THE WAY The President of the Tennessee, Kentucky, and Northern Railroad is a woman, Mrs. Phoebe E. Clark, of Nashville, Tennessee. She was, “ Leslie’s Weekly” states, elected Vice- President of the road in March, 1914, and a few months later was chosen President to succeed her husband, the late George A. Clark. Her administration of the road is said to have been most successful, ° The Jews of the East Side of New York City, “ Everybody’s Magazine ” informs us, are pro- ducing an extraordinary number of artists. “ Fifty per cent of the students in the principal art academy of New York are East Side Jews,” it says. Among the names of the Jewish artists cited are those of Jo Davidson, Jacob Epstein, Sterne, Halpert, Walkowitz, Jerome Meyers, Weber, and Kroll. A letter printed in the “ Private Correspond- ence of Lord Granville” gives an amusing ac- count of avisit by Charles James Fox to Paris in 1802. He was invited to dine at the house of Mme. Cabarrus, a celebrated beauty. “ The moment he came into the room a black-looking, oldish man [the famous Chevalier des Boufflers] ran up to him with open arms and kissed him. This put poor Fox completely out.... He said that at first he looked round to see if he could jump out of a window or run downstairs again; but sat down resigned. To his great surprise, after a few moments the conversation became so extremely amusing, so brilliant and clever, Mme. Cabarrus looked so handsome and was so good-humored, that he was delighted, stayed the whole evening, and has returned several times since. He said he had no idea French- men could be so pleasant as these were.” The late Joseph Fels, philanthropist, tax reformer, and millionaire business man, once de- scribed himself thus: “Iam twomen. With my right hand I can skin a man for five cents while with my left hand I can give away five thou- sand dollars.” This characterization not in- aptly applies to many shrewd self-made men, hard in making a bargain but open-handed when a good cause appeals to them. “ Gladys,” remarked a somewhat irresponsi- ble young girl, according to the New York “ Times,” “1 am very much afraid my bank is in a bad way.” “ Nonsense!” said the other ; “why, that bank is one of the strongest finan- cial institutions in the country. Where ever did you get thatidea?” “It’s very strange,” replied Gladys, still unconvinced. “ They’ve just re- turned a check of mine for $30, marked ‘ No Funds.’” A candid hunter tells in the “ National Sports- man ” about his case of “ buck fever ’—though he was hunting birds, not deer. “I began to shake and see birds on every side,” he says. 112 “T] finally managed to bring my gun in his [the bird’s] direction and pull the trigger, only to see him walk away. ... Bob got three, and I shooting as hard as I could and killing nothing. I got separated from Bob and ran across another hunter. Determined not to be outdone by Bob, I bought a rabbit and some birds from him. When I got back to Bob, he had two birds more, but I was satisfied !” Irish good nature is being strained by war conditions. Anadvertisement in a weekly Irish newspaper, the “ Kilkenny People,” announces an advance in prices by the Blacksmiths’ Asso- ciation of Kilkenny, and adds, with the emphasis of capitals : kg NO SMALL JOBS DONE GRATIS IN FUTURE Evidently the times are past when the thrifty farmer could say, “ Tim, ye’re not chargin’ me for that thrifle of a job, are ye?” The black- smiths of Kilkenny are out for their rights in these days that try men’s souls. “Eternity is the distance between a hungry boy and supper-time,” says E. W. Helms in “ Reflections of a Corn-field Philosopher ” (com- positor please note that it is wot “Corn-fed Philosopher”). Other aphorisms are: “It is not wealth but the arrogance of wealth that offends the poor ;” “ Opportunity never knocks at the door of the unprepared ;” “ The only way to get a thing done is to neglect everything else ;” “ Most people overvalue the acquirements they do not possess;” “ The only way to reform a man is not to let him know it;” “ Misfor- tune is the bosom friend of the man who ‘didn’t think ;’” “If you would enjoy the taste of pie, live mostly on bread.” In “A Last Memory of Robert Louis Ste- venson,” by Charlotte Eaton, this curious inci- dent is recorded: “ What do you consider your brightest failure?” the novelist was asked. “¢Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ ” he replied, without a moment’s hesitation, adding, “That is the worst thing I ever wrote.” Yet in a standard book of brief biographies this is the one book- title given under the name of the author. In a contribution of vers “bre to the Septem- ber “ Atlantic” Mr. H.G. Dwight observes, “ I have stood on the bluffs of Scutari,” “I have wandered among the lonely pillars of the Parthe- non,” “I have sat in the ruined theater at Taor- mina,” “I have climbed the North Cape,” and as a climax utters this astounding sentiment: “But I like Newark Bay.” And his imagina- tive description of the allurements of that pro- saic stretch of water almost makes the reader like it too. “ All trunk lines between Chicago and Den- ver,” the “ Railway Age Gazette” states, “ have abandoned the sale of wines and liquors in the dining cars.”