the education of Negro women, 26 theological schools, 3 schools of law, 5 of medicine, 4 of pharmacy, 17 state agricultural and mechanical colleges, and more than 400 normal and industrial schools.

To-day, more than 20,000 Negroes are in business for themselves as storekeepers or in other mercantile pursuits; Negroes own 100 insurance companies and 300 drug stores; more than fifty thousand Negroes are in the professions. More than 300,000 Negroes are working in the skilled trades. Sixty-four Negro banks do about $20,000,000 worth of business every year.

Negro farmers control about 42 million acres of land. Of these farmers, 219,647 own their farms, about 20 million acres in all. The total value of farm property owned by Negroes is more. than 490 million dollars. In fifty years. of freedom the Russian serfs have accumulated, on an average, property worth $36 per capita. The Negroes, in the same time, have acquired $70 worth of property per capita.

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Negro freedom. The progress of the race in that half century is, in the aggregate, a remarkable achievement. And with the confident hope of its wisest leaders and with the encouragement of an increasing body of forward looking white men, the outlook for the future is full of promise of an accelerated advance in economic and educational development.

BACKWATERS OF HUMANITY

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LONG the banks of even the clearest streams of life are backwaters of dead mentality. There are country slums as bad as the worst city slums, and they are accepted in good communities merely because people are used to them. For half a century "pore whites" were looked upon as a necessary evil in the South. Now the cotton mills are bringing thousands of them out of isolation into the main current of life again; the Hookworm Commission is curing them of disease and putting new life and hope in them; and people are beginning to realize that the plight of the forgotten man is not his fault alone, and that his depressing influence

leave a condition fertile with the possibilities of "Pineys" and "pore whites," of poor living and low thinking. The poor schools, even the worst of them, do not create these conditions. They merely do not prevent them. And the rural schools are probably better than they ever have been. But our growing sense of social betterment demands more now than it did a generation ago, and in an optimistic mood we look at the present state of rural education to see what tremendous things a right system of rural public schools can do for the Nation. Such schools are coming. There is an ever-increasing number of examples to show what a tremendous influence for progress the right kind of a country school can be.

DESCENDANTS OF THE DEVIL

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ROFESSOR Paul Haupt, of Johns Hopkins University, is quoted in a newspaper dispatch as having said that Beelzebub was described by the ancients as "the father of flies" (not of lies, as is commonly said), for the men of Biblical times had a proper fear of these germ-carrying insects. Their fears were based upon uncertainty. Our fears are founded on the fact that flies breed and live in filth and carry filth with them wherever they go, and that they are the great purveyors of the germs of typhoid.

There is only one way to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling that the food you eat has been tracked over by the flies bred in the garbage or the stable, or the fear of typhoid, and that one way is to get rid of the flies.

To use screens and to "swat" the flies are the defences after the enemy is on the premises. The one sure way to have comfort is to prevent them by leaving no garbage or filth of any kind exposed for them to breed in. This is the first move in the campaign against the filthy fly. The second is to get your neighbor to do likewise, and the third is for you and your neighbor to persuade the butcher, the grocer, the baker, and all the other dealers in foods to beware of flies. Two or three customers can make a better argument than one.

TO SAVE BIRDS AND MONEY

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HE last Congress included in the Agricultural Appropriation Bill what might appear to be a fantastic and sentimental piece of legislation. This was the McLean Bill, which delegated to the Department of Agriculture the power to protect migratory birds from death at the hands of ruthless hunters.

But it is safe to assume that Congress was not moved so much by sentiment as by statistics, and here are some of the figures in the case, based upon the fact that men destroy the birds that destroy the insects that destroy the crops:

An official census showed that the actual damage done to crops by insects in a single year (1904) amounted to $420,100,000, of which nearly one half was damage done to cereals alone.

An unofficial estimate puts the total annual damage now at $800,000,000, or an average of $1.67 an acre on the improved land of the United States, a sum which makes the farmer's taxes look small.

The official figures also put the annual cost of the codling moth and curculio at about $8,250,000 for spraying operations alone, and $12,000,000 as representing the shrinkage in the value of the apple crop.

The damage done in some years by the chinch-bug wheat pest and the cottonboll weevil is reckoned at $40,000,000.

Tree insects cost $100,000,000 a year. Now there are birds that feed upon these insects, and that eat that eat enormous quantities of them; the entomologists have proved this. In fact, if the insectivorous birds were allowed to live unmolested, the oversupply of destructive pests would be wiped out and the balance of nature restored. But plumage collectors and pot hunters shoot the insectivorous birds, and with the decrease in the numbers of the birds the insect enemies of agriculture increase.

Most of these birds are migratory and cannot be protected in any one state. For that reason the Federal Government may properly assume guardianship over them to prevent their extermination.

Another radical step to protect birds was taken when the Ways and Means

Committee of the House voted to include in the new tariff bill a clause to prohibit the importation of all plumes, skins, or feathers of wild birds, other than ostriches, for sale or for use in millinery. If this clause remains in the bill to its passage, it will stop at once a large share of the destruction of the beautiful and rare birds that are rapidly being exterminated.

LOCAL CARE OF TUBERCULOSIS

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NCE in a while a letter comes to this office telling of the pitiful plight of many hundred victims of tuberculosis in Colorado, California, and Arizona, people who have left their homes in other parts of the country and journeyed west upon slender resources in search of health. Many of them hopefully expect to get some light work to support themselves during convalescence. The light and profitable work does not materialize and they become a serious problem to the community.

Two years ago the State Board of Health of California appointed a Tuberculosis Commission to make a careful study of the tuberculosis conditions in that state.

The commission points out that the people seeking cures have made the situation there extreme. The following suggestion of the secretary of the State Board of Health should be scattered broadcast through the country:

1. Tuberculosis patients who think of migrating should first learn all that is known about the climate, opportunities for making a livelihood, living conditions, laws, attitude of the people toward patients in their condition, and special accommodations for their care in the place to which they intend to go. Hundreds of patients probably thousands - die of homesickness in strange communities who would have lived in their own homes under proper care. Many patients lose their vitality under the strain of the effort to find work that is suited to their training and condition. And many patients, if they only knew it, could find better conditions for recovery in their own communities - better food, better care, and better mental environment, with almost

as favorable climate for their needs than they are likely to find in a strange. community.

The commission recommends also a comprehensive and logical plan for taking care of California's own tubercular patients. The first step in this plan is a chain of dispensaries so placed that there shall be one in every city of 10,000 or more people, and traveling dispensaries to provide one or two days' service a month at convenient branch stations. These dispensaries are to furnish an early diagnosis and expert advice to all sufferers from tuberculosis and to obtain early information of the existence of all cases so that the spread of infection may be limited.

The second step of the plan proposes two sanatoria for hopeful cases, five farm colonies for convalescents, and hospital beds for 1,500 probably incurable cases. Bills before the present session of the state legislature, with a fair chance of passage, provide for carrying these recommendations into effect. The estimated first cost is $1,160,000, and the estimated yearly cost of maintenance is about $1,000,000, which is a reasonable sum to expend to save an annual loss of at least $8,000,000 in lost wages and cost of care, and an incalculable amount of suffering.

A similar method of meeting the tuberculosis problem is suggested by Dr. E. H. Galloway, the executive officer of the Mississippi State Board of Health. His plan is that every county shall take care of its own consumptives; or perhaps, where counties are particularly free from the disease, that two or three counties shall combine. Open air camps under competent physicians would produce the maximum of health to the patients with the minimum cost of money and suffering. The patients would not be far removed from their families and friends, and this should add to their chance of recovery. Dr. Galloway concludes his recommendation with these words, which are as applicable to most of the rest of the country as they are to Mississippi:

We now know that a large number of these cases can be cured which we formerly thought were doomed. How much better this method

would be than to send them West, as we now do, a great many of them without money and no means to support themselves, practically outcasts, unable to work, and a care to the community where they go, dying among strangers.

A WORLD'S WORK ANNOUNCE

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MENT

HE WORLD'S WORK, as its readers know, is under obligation to but one class of persons, namely, its readers; and to them it is under a definite contract to publish the truth, as nearly as it can ascertain the truth, and to remain free-free to pass unbiased judgments on public policies and public men. For in stance, it thought it wise to approve most of Mr. Roosevelt's policies during his Presidency; but it did not hesitate to oppose Mr. Roosevelt last fall, when he was a candidate for a third term. It preferred Mr. Taft's election in 1908; but it did not hesitate

thereafter to criticize what seemed his mistakes and hesitant temperament; and it opposed his reëlection last year. This perfect freedom is the breath of life of this magazine.

These obvious remarks it seems pardonable now to repeat because Mr. Walter H. Page, who has been the chief editor of the WORLD'S WORK, has accepted a post in the diplomatic service. He has withdrawn from the management of the magazine and its councils during the period of his Government service, leaving it wholly free from any imaginary obligation to Mr. Wilson's administration or to Mr. Page himself. The magazine will suffer no change, for the work of editing it has for a long time and in an increasing degree been team-work. The editorial staff are now old in its service. They work with. unity of aim and with the single purpose of fairly and freely interpreting our manysided life to its generous readers.

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WOMAN, living out in a thriving Nebraska town, came into possession, through the death of her husband about a year ago, of an estate which consisted of a small mercantile business, a credit balance of a few hundred dollars at the local bank, and some stock certificates of the total face value of several thousand dollars, representing "investments" that had been made by her husband from time to time in a half dozen or more companies.

She assumed at once the responsibilities of the management of the business, hopeful that, with the help of her two grown children, she could continue to make it yield, as it had in the past, a comfortable living for them all. But, to her dismay, she made the discovery shortly afterward that the business was burdened with debt, and that the creditors were not of the indulgent sort.

Failing to obtain an extension of time in which to meet the creditors' claims, and finding that she could not borrow enough

money at the bank, she determined. reluctantly, as a last resort, to sell her stocks. She found, moreover, that the local banker could not help in that transaction. So she sent to this magazine a list of her securities, and asked to be advised how to proceed to market them, and how much cash she could reasonably expect them to bring.

The list was made up entirely of a kind of stocks about which there was a good deal of inquiry a few years ago, but which is rarely mentioned nowadays in this magazine's investment correspondence. The records showed that two of the companies represented had gone out of business in 1906, apparently without sufficient assets to have made any accounting worth while. Two were found to have lost title to their properties through failure to pay. taxes, and were classed as "dead". And three were found to have been promotions of men who had been gathered into the net of the post-office authorities, and convicted on charges of using the mails to

defraud. The stocks were all useless as a means of saving the woman's business.

This story is typical of the kind most frequently heard about unwise investment. It has become a more or less common habit to think of the surplus of the unwary country merchant, the mite of the widow, the legacy of the orphan, the hard-earned savings of the parson, or the spare dollars of the self-sacrificing school teacher, as the only funds that get earmarked for the promotion of precarious enterprise. One reason for this notion is that the records of such cases are the most easily found. For instance, one may pick up one's newspaper almost any day and find an account of the financial misfortunes of credulous investors of small means, who have been called to bear witness against the promoters of "get-rich-quick" schemes.

Though it is undoubtedly true that the losses of investors of this class, lured into mistakes by extravagant advertisements in conscienceless newspapers or by cunningly written circular letters, run into many millions yearly, they are probably exceeded in amount by the losses that are made in securities of doubtful merit by even the shrewdest and most successful business men. Not infrequently, a case of the latter kind comes to light, where the "victim" is found to have been some man of great prominence in the financial world. He may even have been one of those commonly credited with some mysterious faculty for achieving success in the investment markets - perhaps, one of those whose successes are sometimes ascribed to “inside information" and other like advantages that are not possessed by the average investor.

For example, it was shown by the expert appraisal of the $70,000,000 estate of the late Edward H. Harriman that that great railroad genius and financier had among his holdings of securities worthless stocks and bonds of the par value of more than $4,000,000. Several millions of such Several millions of such securities were reported by the experts who completed in April last their appraisal of the real and personal property of the possessor of the great Astor fortune, who lost his life in the Titanic disaster in the spring of 1912. And while these instances

are being noticed widely in the current news, similar instances can be recalled from the older records. Appraisers of the $66,000,000 estate of Russell Sage, who died in 1906, reported as worthless a miscellaneous lot of stocks and bonds, amounting to about $1,000,000 par value. Among the securities in the $75,000,000 estate of Jay Gould, who died in 1892, there were worthless issues of the face value of $2,000,000.

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But, however striking these examples of unwise investments made by men so able to command investment wisdom, there is little in them that should cause the investor of more limited resources to despair. From the lists of worthless securities held by almost any wealthy investor like a Harriman or an Astor, it is necessary to make a good many eliminations to get at an estimate of the amount which measures actual error of judgment. Many stocks and bonds of strange names and characteristics find their way into the possession of such investors, bringing little, if any, expectation of return. percentage of their capital which such men put deliberately into ventures of the essentially risky type is in most cases small indeed. The records show that, after all, the "rich man's gamble," pure and simple, is not as big by comparison as it is frequently made to appear. By way of contrast, consider the difference between between the principles of distribution observed by the man who, out of resources of $70,000,000, stakes a million or so on enterprises of honest conception, which turn out merely to have been misguided, and the principles oberved by the investor who, like the Nebraska lady, stakes nearly everything on enterprises that are as likely as not to be wilfully fraudulent.

Just ordinary business prudence will usually tell any investor how to discriminate for himself between these two kinds of enterprise, and how much, if any, rein he can properly give to his inclination to take a chance for large returns. Business prudence will allow the small capitalist, in mighty few instances, to go far afield from the safest of standard investment securities, and invariably it will prescribe for him the most competent banking counsel.