FOR FREEHOLD FARMERS

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ITH the exception of Florida, every state in the far South has half or more of its land worked by tenants. In Mississippi, tenants hold 66.1 per cent. of the farm land. In Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina the percentage varies from 26.5 to 42.3.

In the sixteen states (including Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia) that are referred to as the South, are 49 per cent. of the farms in the United States, almost a third of the total area, and nearly a third of the improved land. It is a country of cheap land and small farms. There is much good land sold at ten dollars an acre and, comparatively speaking, very little land in the South brings $30 or $40 an acre, which elsewhere in the country would be cheap. Along with the cheap land goes poor buildings, poor stock, and poor equipment. The average Northern farm of a hundred acres has buildings worth about two and a half times as much as the average hundredacre farm in the South. The discrepancy in the value of implements and machinery is about the same, and in the value of live stock it is nearly as unfavorable to the South. All these things are the accompaniments of a high rate of tenancy and a constantly shifting farm population.

But there are two hopeful facts in the situation. Where the Negro population is greatest, tenancy is now the highest, but to offset this the Negroes are acquiring more and more land every year. Though the average value of a Southern farm is not quite a third of the average value of a Northern farm, its value is increasing somewhat faster.

In spite of all the progress that has been made in crop improvement and in spite of all the discussion of better farm conditions, as yet in this country there is no large rural district well organized in all its social and business aspects. This great opportunity awaits the new Secretary of Agriculture and, in a more restricted area, any of the state agricultural commissioners who have the courage and vision to tackle it.

CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY

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THILE the tariff bill was being passed by the House, the great cotton mills of the Borden estate in Rhode Island closed down to put in automatic looms. These looms have been on the market for years and the Borden mills have always been able to buy them. It may have been merely a coincidence that these particular mills changed to a more efficient basis just at the time that the new tariff was going into effect. But many other industries will be spurred to a standard of efficiency which they have not sought before because it was not necessary. Many industries have read the handwriting on the wall and have made. preparations to meet the new conditions that will place them under competition with the best and the most economical means of production of all the world. Many other industries do not have to make any changes, for they are already meeting all this competition. But there are still others which, because they have been under the shelter of the tariff, have not felt very keenly the necessities of efficiency; and some of these which will be most seriously affected adversely by the changes have been the slowest to readjust themselves. Their dependence has sapped their courage. Some of these concerns will probably succumb, and will be replaced by industrial plants that more nearly represent our new age, for we are no longer on the defensive industrially. no longer need to hide behind a wall. We have climbed over it and gone to meet foreign competition in the four corners of the earth. The United States is now one of the three great exporters of manufactured goods. Almost half our exports are the products of our factories. We have come to the time when we must frankly face the fact that we can adjust ourselves to foreign competition in our home markets as well as elsewhere, especially when the lower duties on raw materials overcome for many of our manufacturers a handicap under which they formerly labored. And our domestic business needs the impetus of more and wider markets.

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Meeting new conditions and conquering

foreign markets is a task that requires patience, courage, and sagacity, but we have happily come to a time when we in truth look to our manufacturers to become captains of industry ready to lead their well organized forces into the battle for the world's trade without the helping hand of the tariff at home or its hindering effects abroad.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING A

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DIRECTOR

RECENT decision in the New York state courts reaffirmed the well known legal fact that directors are responsible for the acts of their corporation whether the acts are done under their direction or their neglect. A director is, in fact, a trustee of other people's interests. Theirs is an active responsibility-at least legally it is so. Practically, in spite of the discussion of recent years, the dummy directors are not extinct. There are hundreds of directors of corporations who give their name and their influence to a concern, but not their direction. Usually, no serious results happen, because the manager, the president, or some other directors do their work well.

Even when

things do go wrong, dummy directors are not often sued for their neglect. The business of being a director is one of those things for which the law sets very high ideals but which without ill intention have slipped into loose practices. These loose. practices might easily become a colossal scandal if two or three flagrant examples should fix the public mind upon them. If a critical eye were turned upon them a great many men of only the best intentions would be found in the embarrassing position of having accepted a position of trust and of having failed in its execution. The time to prevent a scandal about directors who do not fulfil their trusts is now, when the public mind is not inflamed.

And such a reform in the business of being a director would have a very important bearing upon what the Congressional Committee under Mr. Stanley dubbed "The Money Trust," which is nothing more or less than a series of interlocking directorates.

For example, suppose one man is a director of a steel company, a banking house, and a railroad. The railroad sells its securities to the banking house and buys rails from the steel company. This one man is directing business with himself in his various capacities. He is acting as a trustee for three sets of investors that deal with one another. It is hardly-conceivable that their interests should always be identical. When they are antagonistic, which interest does he favor? Legally, a man cannot be trustee for two conflicting interests. The same principle would seem to say that when we look upon the duties of directors with a close scrutiny they also should not direct conflicting interests. But there has not been this close scrutiny by investors, and a nice regard for these conflicting interests is not generally observed. The control of many corporations has been in the hands of the "interlocking" directors, and their good will is a very tangible asset. Yet as Mr. Baker, of the First National Bank, said, "the concentration has gone far enough. The law and morals of trusteeship point to many cases of interlocking directorates that are not strictly defensible. It is a good opportunity to clean house before some flagrant scandal call down the public. wrath upon the present habits and find well meaning directors exposed to public indignation and beyond the pale of the law which they have long disregarded.

The rights and duties of corporations, and corporation directors and officers, are such active questions in the public mind and in legislative chambers that it is only a wise provision of safety for directors actively to direct such corporations as they can with propriety direct and to cease to be directors in corporations in which conflicting interests prevent them from giving their undivided efforts.

sota, forbidingly entitled "A Social and Economic Survey of a Rural Township in Southern Minnesota." Under this dryas-dust title is Mr. G. P. Warber's sympathetic and luminous study of the life of a group of farmers in the Northwest.

Mr. Warber spent three months - June, July, and August of last year-visiting and questioning the inhabitants of a typical farming community six miles square. He learned from the men how farming has changed and what the change means in money and labor; from the women, what housework on the farm is

the country girls dress in the styles of the cities. Not one farmer in the township has ever heard of the new agitation for better agricultural credit. Interest in politics has very greatly declined. Although farm journals are kept in 84 per cent. of the homes, only 47 per cent. of the farmers read them. The farmers read little of their newspapers except the headlines, and rarely ever the editorials. Only 14 per

cent. of the farmers ever attended farmers'

institutes, and a majority are prejudiced against scientific methods of farming.

Only two schools are well enough equipped to get first-class state aid. Teachers' salaries vary from $30 to $50 a month. The farmers

country life does not attract them. Here are a few of his observations and conclusions, from seventy-five pages that are crowded with many interesting human experiences:

Under the old-fashioned system of grain farming, the rush of work was limited to a few months of the year, and the labor was made easier by the use of farm machinery. Under the new diversified farming, and especially because of the care of more live stock, farm work demands the farmers' whole time the year round; and consequently social life, in spite of rural telephones, has declined. Twentythree per cent. of the farmers declared that their "biggest problem is to get satisfactory help." Women's work on the farm has been eased by running water, washing machines, etc., but in 29 per cent. of the homes the women run the lawnmower to keep the front yard (average size, one eighth of an acre) neat and trimmed; in 32 per cent. of the families the women help with the milking and the barnyard chores; in 16 per cent. the women help in the field work at the rush season; and in practically all the families the women work from five o'clock in the morning until nine or later at night.

The marketing of farm products is much more convenient and efficient than it was in earlier days because the railroads, grain elevators, and creameries have brought the markets nearer. Coöperative enterprises have generally succeeded, but oddly enough many of the farmers even those who belong to the successful associations doubt the capacity of their own class to coöperate.

The rural free delivery service has finished the work of the railroads and the towns in putting the crossroads stores out of business. Most of the trading is done in the towns, and

nearby towns tend to lower the moral standards of the children. Membership in and attendance at church have fallen off — partly, again, because of the unremitting care of livestock. Social distinctions have grown up between rich and poor and between the country folk and the townspeople. Dancing is the most popular recreation of the boys and girls. Baseball is the most popular strictly-boys' amusement. The girls are leaving the farms in larger numbers than the boys, though among the grown people the men are more anxious to move to town. Social causes account for the removal in most instances.

These quotations give only some of the results of Mr. Warber's researches; they do not even suggest the freshness of his viewpoint nor the convincing verisimilitude of his narrative. Any one who wishes to understand what country life is in a characteristic American farming community, as distinguished from our conventionalized or preconceived notions of it, cannot do better than to read this pamphlet. It makes plain nearly every aspect of the problem that lies before those earnest folk who are trying to organize rural life and, of course, such surveys are the foundation upon which improvement can be effected. They form the diagnosis of our rural ills.

There is still much dirt to dig. There is still much work to do, but the minute the water gates are opened, North and South America are divided, the Atlantic and the Pacific are joined (not literally, for it is not a sea level canal, but commercially). When the ships begin to pass through, the trade maps of the world will have to be drawn again. Our East and our West will be many dollars a hundred tons nearer together, for that is the measurement of distance that counts in the heavy freight of the world. "Rounding the Horn," on which hangs so much of the romance of the sea, will dwindle in significance, and the change will make our battle fleet as two. The continents that Nature has joined, man has put asunder. Even our long mental preparation for the event can not rob of its dramatic significance the meeting of the shovels in the canal at Panama.

THE UNNOTICED FLOODS

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FEW days before the first of June the following newspaper item appeared:

Guards are being withdrawn from the levee districts of Vicksburg on both sides of the Mississippi, although the distribution of supplies has not yet wholly ceased. Planting of cotton and corn will be general by the beginning of the coming week in Red River districts. Congressman James B. Aswell, of Louisiana, has toured the parish of La Salle and the Black River section. He reports that water covers the entire territory for a stretch of fifty miles. At the end of last week there were 800 families in need of help, and the greatest

need was for seed for planting and feed for

livestock.

Crop conditions in the Melville district of Louisiana, where the overflow from the Atchafalaya break occurred, are excellent. Water is receding slowly.

This news was printed in the Wall Street Journal, not as human news but as crop news. The ordinary newspapers in New York, as elsewhere in the country, had by this time ceased to regard the floods on the Mississippi or their after effects. The papers reflect a common attitude. The floods are an old story. They happen

every year. Their true significance has not taken hold of the public mind. This spring there were floods in parts of Ohio and Indiana, where they were unusual, and all eyes were focussed on the stricken districts. The cost of the destruction was figured and discussed. Yet the tremendous direct losses and suffering on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers every year, and the even greater indirect losses that we bear because of the backward state of the Mississippi Valley, passes with little attention. Now that the Panama Canal is nearing completion it is time to turn our attention to the even more important task nearer home, the control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

THE PHYSICAL VALUATION OF RAILROADS

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HE first steps have been taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the organization of its small army of experts and assistants who are to make a physical valuation of the railroads.

There are in the United States 250,000 miles of railroad lines, with a combined capital value of more than 15 billion dollars. By the Act of Congress which provided for the valuation, the Interstate Commerce Commission is required, among other things, to "ascertain and report in detail as to each piece of property owned by every common carrier, the original cost to date, the cost of reproduction, the cost of of reproduction less depreciation;" to analyze the methods by which these costs are obtained; and to "ascertain and report separately other values and elements of value, if any."

Put briefly, what this contemplates is a huge inventory, which the Commission is allowed five years to complete, and which it is estimated will cost the Government $6,000,000 and the railroads themselves as much more.

The Commission has always contended that it could not determine the reasonableness of railroad rates, as it is expected to do, without knowing the actual value of railroad property; though there are a good many people, even outside the ranks of the

railroad men, who believe that it would be difficult to show that such value properly enters into the question of ratemaking at all. But there is less difference of opinion about the suggestion that the figures of the railroads' valuation could be used to determine their proper capitalization. The Commerce Commission, however, does not now have the power to regulate the issuance of railroad securities, and though it believes it ought to have this power, that is a question for some future Congress to settle.

Meanwhile, the railroad officials are giving to the Commission their most cordial support and coöperation. They make no secret of their belief that a fair

appraisal of their properties will show the

actual value to be much in excess of the present capitalization; and that they will, therefore, benefit ultimately by having much of the investors' lost confidence restored to them.

POSTAL SAVINGS BANK

SUCCESS

HE United States postal savings banks have been in operation for two years. In their first year they had deposits of $11,000,000 which in the second year rose to $28,000,000. The money orders sent abroad in the meanwhile dropped $12,000,000.

The success of these Government banks has not lain altogether in expected lines. They have not tempted the savings of the farmer to any great extent. They have not been as well patronized in the South or in New England as Government officials had expected. On the other hand, in the large cities in the other parts of the country, particularly among the foreigners, they have been popular. Chiefly from this foreign patronage the postal savings banks have brought nearly $30,000,000 into circulation in the United States which otherwise would have been hoarded or sent abroad.

From a financial standpoint, as well as from a wish to give encouragement and safety to the men who can save only a little money, the postal banks have deserved their place in our scheme of things.

AN ENGLISH VIEW OF THE JAPANESE QUESTION

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ITH few exceptions the American newspapers have maintained a cordial attitude toward Japan. Even those which considered its protests groundless and its wishes inimical to our welfare phrased their beliefs in a way that showed all friendliness underneath their disagreement. It was treated as a temporary difficulty.

The English, on the other hand, if the London Times voices their views, look upon the California anti-alien agitation as a little part of a great question. Editorially the Times said:

The ultimate point in dispute does not affect the United States alone, still less the state of California. It is essentially a world question. That Japan's claim should first have become an acute cause of trouble in California is due to the accident of propinquity. California is now the frontier line of white races, beyond which are the teeming populations of Asia. We shall not judge this question aright unless we first seek to make allowance for the nervous apprehension which undoubtedly pervades the inhabitants of the Pacific slope. Their fears are exaggerated and premature but they are not entirely groundless.

No useful purpose will be served by blind condemnation of the tendencies of public opinion in Western states. They spring not so much from race hatred as from the instinct of self-preservation, and even if the present minor dispute is disposed of they will assuredly recur. It is an issue that will become more and more insistent whatever may be settled now, and it will have to receive the earnest attention of all white races in time to come.

Wherever the Japanese as settlers have come in contact with the Anglo-Saxons in the same capacity, in British Columbia, in Australia, and in California, the result has been mutually unsatisfactory. The two peoples do not mix well. The restrictions that Japan has maintained against American land-owning within its borders would seem proper to continue, and wherever the owning of land by Japanese in this country would lead to unpleasantness it would seem wise not to allow it, providing, of course, that all treaties shall be observed.