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Government is entering upon the biggest experiment of our time, a policy of tariff revision that is designed for nothing else than to reduce the cost of living and to lay the burden of the cost of Government more largely upon those who can best afford to carry it.

A STRIKE OF FARMERS' WIVES

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FEW months ago there appeared in the Century a story by Edna Kenton called "Solidarity." It was the story of a strike of farmers' wives. They demanded running water and other conveniences in their houses, and they left the men to do their own cooking, washing, cleaning, and mending until they should provide the proper equipment for modern housekeeping and decent living. In the story the women got what they wanted. In the country they have not; at least, the majority have not.

A year or two ago the Agricultural Department of the State of Missouri made an investigation of the reasons why the prosperous Missouri farmers gave up their farms and moved to town. The chief reason was the life that the women were compelled to live on the farm. And as it is in Missouri, so is it elsewhere. If you will ride through the countryside you will pass farm after farm equipped with modern machinery to help the men do their work. You may even see an automobile standing by the old well from which the farmer's wife draws the water for her kitchen, for her house, and for her washing, but you will see few such conveniences to lighten the labor of the home.

The women in towns and cities, if they do their own washing at all, do it with the aid of hot and cold running water, laundry rooms, and generally with the aid of hired help. Washing on the farm is a different ordeal carrying water from the well, heating it on the kitchen range, and washing an endless amount of clothing — not only of the family, but of the hired men as well with no help at all, or with only the most inefficient kind. This is what This is what drives the women off the farms. It is but another phase of the unorganized isolation of country life.

The farmers near Chatfield, Minn., have the remedy. They have established a coöperative laundry next to the coöperative creamery. creamery. A farmer coming to the creamery on Monday morning brings the wash with him. On Wednesday he can take it home with him. Even by such homely things as these were such laundries established all through the country could a very vital change be wrought in the economics of the Nation.

THE JAPANESE CONTROVERSY F WE have not already lost it, we are fast losing the friendship of the Japanese people. Officialdom in Japan will do for us everything that it can. But California's attitude toward the holding of land by Japanese, coupled with the fact that they are (by treaty) ineligible to citizenship in this country, has all but stopped the flow of friendship of the people of Japan toward us. We have touched their most sensitive point their belief in the equality of their race with all others in the world. Whatever else comes from California's action, the loss of the good will of the Japanese people is a serious loss to the whole country.

The Japanese protest against the prohibition by the California legislature of Japanese land owning is based upon the following clause of the treaty of 1911:

The citizens or subjects of each of the high contracting parties shall have the liberty to enter, travel, and reside in the territories of the other, to carry on trade, wholesale and retail, to own or lease and occupy houses, manufactories, warehouses, and shops; to employ agents of their choice, to lease land for residential and commercial purposes, and generally to do anything incident to or necessary for trade upon the same terms as a native citizen or subject, submitting themselves to the laws and regulations there established.

Read literally, the article seems to provide only facilities for trade (and for homes for people engaged in trade). It is carefully, explicitly, and fully phrased and it does not include the privilege of leasing or owning land for agricultural purposes. New York and the District of Columbia

have laws that provide, as California wished to provide, that no alien may own land unless he has declared his intention to become a citizen. Arizona and Washington have laws on their statute books that specifically prohibit "aliens ineligible to citizenship" from owning land. No complaint against these laws has yet been made. The President's attitude is that it is the function of the Supreme Court to decide whether the Californians' wish is constitutional in face of the existing treaty which is, of course, a part of the supreme law of the land. That is a wise and quieting attitude. Secretary Bryan's visit to the Coast is evidence to Japan of the Washington Government's friendly attitude. The case, of course, will be amicably settled, as several other similar situations created by race prejudices have been settled before. But there is one unquieting aspect to it all. We have many differences with other nations. We ended our treaty with Russia. We have violated the spirit if not the letter of our obligations to Great Britain concerning the collection of tolls on shipping through the Panama Canal. Yet there have been no mobs demanding war against the United States in St. Petersburg and London. In Japan the probability of passage of an act by one state discriminating against its people brings out mobs and talk of war. Of course it is only talk, but even that is not pleasant from a country to which we have sent so many emissaries of peace and from which we have received so many similar delegations.

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Whatever may be the end of these anti-Japanese land laws of the California legislature, in all probability the purpose that lies behind them will sometime be achieved. The purpose is to keep out of the Pacific Coast states the problem of a non-assimilable race. The racial antipathy between Japanese and Caucasians is profound and entirely mutual. Japanese dislike the Californians as heartily as the Californians dislike them. They come to the country with all the equipment of bodily vigor, native intelligence, initiative, and courage that they find in

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their American competitors. They come also with a just pride in their own race and its traditions. They have no idea of exchanging their heritage for the heritage of the white men, nor of being ingredients in the "melting pot" of races. They have a contempt for white men that they do not conceal, and they do not intend to adopt the point of view of a people whom at heart they regard as their inferiors. There has been little intermarriage between the two races and what there has been has not been particularly successful. The Japanese live in "quarters," both in the cities and in the rural districts of California - settlements that are almost as distinctive and certainly as exotic as the "Chinatowns" of San Francisco and Fresno. Wherever they live, their presence depreciates the value of all adjacent property. Their mercantile establishments are of no significance in the commercial life of the community, being almost wholly small shops that cater only to the necessities and small luxuries of their own people.

In the rural districts, however, they are a strong and growing influence. They are in demand in the fruit growing sections as laborers because, having few women and no possessions, they can move to the country when they are needed and shift for themselves in the towns when they are not. The land laws, however, are aimed especially at the Japanese farmers who lease land for cultivation. The experience with these Japanese farmers repeats the history of tenant farming everywhere: the tenant forces his crops as much as possible, quickly "mines" the soil to exhaustion, and then moves on to fresh land.

There is no logical ground for special complaint against the Japanese for his commercial or or agricultural activities. American farm laborers in California are even less dependable than the Japanese laborers; American tenant farmers are as careless of other people's land as the Japanese farmers are. The whole complaint ultimately comes back to a profound dislike of Japanese neighbors of any sort, based on difference of color, creed, language, ideals of government and

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EVEN hundred earnest men mature years, nearly all of them dressed in European fashion, met recently in Peking and with simple and solemn ceremony opened the first Chinese Parliament, thus making the oldest nation in the world into the youngest republic. They were elected by 40 million voters to begin a new era in the government of 400 million people. With this Parliament begins popular government upon a larger scale than has ever been tried in the

history of the world. Our population is about one fourth that of China. No other republic approaches China in population even so closely as this. As an indication of the spirit with which the great task is being undertaken, the Government appealed to all the Christian churches in China to set aside a certain day of prayer for the success of the new régime.

The twenty-two provinces of China are nearly as autonomous as our states were before the adoption of the Constitution. These provinces collect tariff dues upon goods passing from one to another. They are not used to acting in coöperation; and even in their relations to the former Imperial Government at Peking they often showed a feeling of independence. Under Under the Manchus, China was a loose confederacy with a weak central government that had neither the power nor the money to become effective. To clothe the central government with power and credit is the immediate task before the framers of the new constitution. The foundation upon which they can build is (as it was with us a century and a quarter ago) the knowledge and practice of local self-government. It is now and has been for centuries a fundamental part of Chinese life. This, and the inherent ability of the Chinese in agriculture and commerce, is a solid groundwork for an effective national government.

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gress in China during the last ten years, but they are not extensive enough to carry more than an infinitesimal proportion of the nation's internal commerce. The telegraph and postal services are not in popular use, nor is the telephone. Moreover, the language of the common people of one province is not spoken in another: even from one valley to the next there are changes. Nor is China racially homogeneous. The five colors of the new flag are symbols of five races which the Chinese count among themselves. To make China a governable republic there is need of a common language and efficient communication-a public school system, wagon roads, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers. Until these things come through the slow processes of educating a people, the machinery of government will be clogged by ignorance and prejudice.

In the meanwhile, the immediate problems would be critical even for a people long practised in the use of the machinery of democratic government. The Manchu government, derived its revenue from what practically amounted to tribute money from the provinces. For the conduct of the multitudinous affairs of a modern government, this tribute money is pitifully inadequate. It was hardly enough to support the Manchus' medieval court. The salt monopoly is practically the only other source of revenue for the central government. The customs duties, collected under English supervision, are used to pay indemnities of one kind and another which the European countries have imposed upon China, to repay loans. Thus the country's greatest source of revenue, the tariff, is used chiefly for the benefit of foreign nations. The immediate problems before the Republic are to get control of

its finances; to get an adequate source of revenue, so that it will not be subject to the demands of the money-lending countries; and to build up an army and navy that will prevent further encroachments by foreign Powers, for no government will long be popular in China that is forced to make ignoble concessions to other nations. And the new leaders are already beset. Russia, on the northwest, has practically taken Mongolia; and England, on the southwest, has given notice that it has acquired an interest in Thibet. And money for China's urgent needs is offered by foreign countries only upon humiliating terms, the acceptance of which creates a popular feeling against the new government.

The new Republic is in a most difficult situation. It is entitled to our sympathy and support, to the formal recognition that the United States Government has promised it, and, so far as we can insure it, a fair chance to work out its own salvation.

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THE PRICE OF WAR

HIS year, the one hundredth anniversary of the political uprising and the new birth of Prussia and of the twenty-fifth year of the reign of the present Emperor of Germany, finds him sponsoring the addition of 4,000 officers and about 130,000 non-commissioned officers and men to the present tremendous German army. The increase by itself is 30 per cent. larger than our whole army. With it the German army is seven and a half times as large as ours. To put its fighting force on this new basis the Government proposed to raise $240,000,000 by a single extraordinary war contribution of

per cent. upon private fortunes above $2,500 and of 2 per cent. upon incomes of $12,500 and above, and, after that, for the annual expense of maintenance, an extra $45,000,000 a year.

A military policy of this kind, promulgated when Germany is at peace with the world, shows how far removed the German Government is from the great democratic forces which have made over so many governments in the last fifty years. War is against the interests of the common man and he is coming more and

more to realize what his interests are and his power to enforce them. In Germany, however, the natural military spirit in the people, the memory of their successful wars with Austria, Denmark, and France, and the Government's continual propaganda for more battleships and more soldiers, have combined to prevent any effective popular protest against the Kaiser's ever-increasing expenditures for warlike purposes.

But, unhappily for the Government, almost simultaneously with its proposal for an extraordinary war measure, comes the disclosure that at least a part of the demand for greater armaments is manufactured clandestinely by the ordnance and armor plate manufacturers for their own profit. The great Krupp Steel Works are charged with bribing Government officials in Germany, and another great armament concern with sending an agent to Paris to induce a French journal to publish a report that France was about to double its orders for field guns, so that the German Government would feel that it, too, had to do the same. The armor plate manufacturers are accused of subsidizing German newspapers to conduct crazy campaigns of hatred against England and France, all the while selling weapons to these nations — playing one nation off against another for their own profit.

In the words of President Jordan, of Leland Stanford University, written six months ago:

There can be no doubt that the most powerful lobby in the world is that employed by the great armament builders of England and Germany. It is equally plain that these huge rival war trusts consciously and purposely play into each other's hands. The war scare as promulgated through the "Armor-Plate Press" of these countries is the chief agency for affecting public opinion and controlling the action of Reichstag and Parliament. The greater and more imminent the danger, the louder the journalistic noise, the greater the appropriations are likely to be. But when one remembers that the financial resources of all the nations concerned are already strained to the limit of exhaustion by war expenditures in time of peace, and this in spite of the interrelations and mutual dependence of the civilized world which render war impossible, one can

see no reality in these clamors. They would be simply ridiculous were it not for their malicious efficiency in wasting the substance of the people.

From 1881 to 1910, six nations (Germany, England, France, Austria, Italy, and Russia) have spent $31,930,000,000. Germany, with no wars during this period, spent $6,000,000,000, or about as much as one fourth the capitalization of all the industrial and manufacturing corporations in the United States in 1910. And now, just after a $500,000,000 war in the Balkans, when money for the constructive work of the world is scarce, the German Government proposes its $240,000,000 increase in its war establishment. This can hardly be classed as twentieth century economic statesmanship, for certainly no nation whose foreign affairs are well managed should be on such terms with its neighbors that it has to levy such extraordinary war

taxes.

If Germany expects war - in that case such preparations are justified. The last two wars, the struggles between the Allies and Turkey and between Japan and Russia, as well as the Franco-Prussian war, point the same military moral. Modern war is intense and short; and the victory goes to the side that is prepared.

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Germany is taking no chances of unpreparedness. It is so well prepared that its very preparation has become a menace to the peace of Europe. The country and its army have become, not insurance of peace, but a continual threat of war. This state of preparation of the German people costs $400,000,000 a year. The United States is at the opposite extreme. So far as the army is concerned we are unprepared for war and always have been. believe in that policy. When war comes upon us we send our unprepared citizen soldiery into the field to get their training at the hands of the enemy. This is an expensive method also. The citizens of the United States pay now approximately $460,000,000 a year (more than the Germans will pay even after the proposed increase) for a scattered, unprepared army of 100,000 men, an efficient though undermanned navy, and a pension roll of citizen soldiers which would not, exist in anything

like its present extent if we had had an adequate trained army when we went to war in 1846, 1861, or 1898. Somewhere between these two extremes lies the path of common sense and statesmanship.

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FIFTY YEARS OF FREEDOM

T IS fifty years since the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. It is

a fair time to strike a balance sheet of the Negroes' condition and progress. There is no better judge of the condition of the American Negro than Mr. Booker T. Washington. He has traveled and taught and talked and worked among his people from one end of the South to the other, and in the North as well. For comparison, not long ago he made a trip to study the conditions of the lower strata of society in Europe. As a result of these investigations he says, in his book, “The Man Farthest Down":

If I were asked what I believed would be the greatest boon that could be conferred upon the English laborer, I should say that it would be for him to have the same opportunities for constant and steady work that the Negroes now have in the South.

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The Negro in the South has opportunities in another direction that no other man in his position has, outside of America: he has the opportunity to get land.

Another record of Negro progress comes in a recent bulletin of the Hampton Institute, prepared by Mr. Monroe N. Work. The following are a few striking statistics of the Negroes' material advance:

In 1867, there were only 111,442 pupils and 2,087 teachers in schools for Negroes. Of these teachers, only 699 were colored. Last year, 1,700,000 Negro pupils were taught by 31,000 Negro teachers. In 1867, only 4,661 Negroes were studying in higher institutions of learning; last year more than 100,000 students were enrolled in normal schools and colleges for colored folk. In 1863, there were only four institutions in the United States for such advanced study. Now there are in the South alone 50 colleges, 13 institutions for

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