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WHOSE FIRST NOVEL IN FOUR YEARS, "THE HEART OF THE HILLS," RENEWS HIS WIDE POPULARITY AS A GOOD STORY TELLER AND AS THE INTERPRETER OF THE SPIRIT OF THE CUMBERLAND MOUNTAIN FOLK

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THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN CITIES

UPPER PICTURE: THE BUSINESS CENTRE OF PASADENA, CAL., IN 1888. LOWER PICTURE: THE SAME VIEW IN 1910. THE POPULATION OF PASADENA INCREASED FROM 9,117 IN 1900 TO 30,291 IN 1910, OR 232 PER CENT.

THE TWO BIG TASKS OF CONGRESS

HE tug-of-war now comes with the reduction of the tariff. This difficult task is at once. a great opportunity and a difficult necessity. For, of all subjects (not excluding even the making of appointments to office), this is the most hazardous, politically the most dangerous, and, in general, the most heavily "loaded" of all public subjects. If the tariff were eliminated from our political history, our political history history would be a simple story; for it has been. the mother of the largest brood of our troubles for the greater part of a century.

The duty of reducing the rates equitably - that is, substantially but not ruinously

is now undertaken with intelligence, with diligence, and with resolution. From whatever point of view it be regarded, mistakes will be made. There will be fierce criticism, even bitter feeling, aroused. The necessary effect on some branches of business will be bad for a few persons, for a short time; for some permanently; for old abuses yield somebody a profit. The general effect will be to cause a certain hesitation in commercial and financial life - a part of it a wise hesitation, much more of it mere groundless fear, the contagion of uncertainty. The commercial world, at least a part of it, must readjust itself to new conditions.

But the consumer, which is to say the whole people, will be helped by a judicious readjustment. Commerce itself will receive a large benefit by the substitution of natural for artificial forces. Of the economic righteousness of judicious reductions in many of the present rates, no man who has a firm grasp on commercial facts can have a doubt.

In discussing the disturbance that changes in duties make, it is too much the fashion to consider only those changes that do damage to some group of manufacturers and too little the fashion to consider those 'changes that will be of great benefit to a larger number of manufacturers as well as to consumers. For every one man who is "hit" by reductions, there are ten or twenty or a hundred who are helped. We are far too likely to conduct all our

tariff discussion with the status quo as the point of departure. The status quo is, in many respects, not a normal condition, but a highly artificial condition. The manufacturers that will be helped far outnumber those that will be hurt.

And it is encouraging to see that the commercial world has so far behaved with great good sense, good sense that points hopefully to our weathering this tariff storm without serious disturbance. This is another proof that, when we undertake even the most difficult tasks with reasonableness and with honesty and with resolution, we can always count on the great reserves of character and even self-denial that distinguish the American people and make our democracy the most reasonable and satisfactory scheme of government that men have yet invented or evolved.

II

Following the tariff, will come some change in our currency and banking laws. This is another long-deferred and difficult task. task. But we have been approaching it so gradually, and discussion and events have so well prepared the ground, that there is hope that this, too, may be accomplished without rude shocks to the current business of the country.

If these two long-standing and difficult tasks be done with reasonable success, the new Administration will have passed two dangers that beset it and will have done two most serious and helpful duties to our commercial and financial life and to the American people.

THE ORGANIZATION OF COUNTRY

LIFE

HE organization of country life

these words have been worn so threadbare that we fail to take in their full meaning or to be thrilled by them. But, if country life can be properly organized, the most helpful task in our world will have been done—or begun; for it is a process, like all other normal growths, that will never end.

It is cheerful news that Secretary Houston, of the Department of Agriculture, regards this large piece of constructive work as his

especial duty and opportunity; and the teacher; in others, the whole people without President, of course, is of a like mind.

When you come to think of it, the essential difference between the town and the country is this: one is organized and the other is not. The town is organization. Street-cars, the very streets themselves, banks, churches, exchanges, clubs, libraries, sewers, water, shops all these denote organization. It is by these that men do their business, live their lives with the least waste of time and effort, and enjoy what we call "civilization." Everything in the town is organized, correlated, conducted, not on an individual but on a community basis.

On the other hand, the farmer as a rule must yet do everything on an individual basis, or too nearly on an individual basis. He grows his crop, harvests it, gets it to market, sells it; he buys his necessities individually; he does his chores individually; he is a man far too much by himself, far too much deprived of the economic and social advantages of combined action. This sums up his disadvantages. Now there are, of course, in many parts of the United States, in spite of our backwardness in coöperation, many successful organizations, some for selling, some for buying, some for both, some for other economic duties, some for social help of many sorts. But the great mass of our country folk are yet unorganized.

definite leadership-for one good purpose here, for another good purpose there.

Now if the Department of Agriculture, after it collects accurate information about all these agencies and forces each working in its own way but all toward the same great task if, along with this investigation, it can use the knowledge and authority of the Government to stimulate and to coördinate them, a great movement toward a general organization of country life throughout the United States will have been begun.

This is not spectacular work; but, if there be work of greater value to the producing part of the population and for the building up of our permanent prosperity and for the well-being of the people, you will find it difficult to name it.

And we have come to a time when it is practicable. The people thoroughly understand the necessity of making life in the country profitable and comfortable for the mass of industrious men - the necessity of removing the economic and social hindrances which have come, in a perfectly natural way, with the rapid development of the town. If events could have been ordered so as to present an unparalleled opportunity to Secretary Houston they could not have been better ordered. It is an opportunity for constructive and permanent work in nationbuilding. His promptness in seeing it and in proceeding to undertake it shows a grasp on the fundamental economic tasks of our time and country.

The Department of Agriculture has at once set about the task of finding out what sort of organizations exist and do good service in the several parts of the countryhow they work, what they achieve, how they were begun, and how more like them may THE PASSING OF THE MORGAN be started.

This is the first step toward encouraging the multiplication of such organizations as have grown up out of the necessities of the people and have proven their practical worth. In Minnesota, it is a coöperative store or a coöperative grain elevator; somewhere else, it is a coöperative dairy; somewhere else, coöperative selling activity by truck-growers; somewhere else, organizations for social and intellectual help and pleasure. In one community, it may be an agricultural college that has led the way; in another, a grange, or a farmers' union; in another, a women's club; in another, the Young Men's Christian Association; in another, a preacher, or a

T

EPOCH

HE death of J. Pierpont Morgan removed one of the great men of our time. He was one of the strongest characters not only of our country but of our era, a real world-figure. And his dominant and at times domineering personality was the key to his character and to his career. What he did he did by the force of his mind and will.

It might be called an accident of birth and of his early start in life that he entered the world of finance. He might conceivably have been a man of action in some other field of large endeavor in which

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