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fall, it does not seep in but rushes away as foul erosive floods on the surface, wasting soil and plant food, gullying the surface, flooding the valleys, silting the pools, washing away reservoirs and dams, barring the streams, and carrying its multifarious influences of destruction through the long course to the ocean.

The most obvious method of control, the building of levees, we already practise on a tremendous scale, but not on a scale commensurate with our needs, nor upon a comprehensive enough plan; the building of storage reservoirs to catch flood waters is still chiefly in the plan stage; forestry and proper tillage are still, in spite of the progress of the last few years, generally unobserved.

The proper control of this one great drainage system, beginning in the forests and on the farms, including storage reservoirs, power plants, dredging, levees, and revetments, and extending through nearly half the states of the Union - this is probably the most pressing physical problem confronting the Nation. The political difficulty is to keep the vast engineering problem out of politics, as the construction of the Panama Canal has been kept out, only it is a much harder task. Panama is not in any Congressional district.

There is no local interest to bring pressure in favor of one particular scheme or another. In the great interior basin are thousands of local interests which, if permitted to do so, would wreck any comprehensive scheme to treat the problem as a whole. The question comes also of who should pay the bills, the National Government, the states, or the smaller units of government; or, if they share the expense, in what ratio should they share it. The problem of the Mississippi is the problem of the other drainage systems of the country, but they are, of course, on a much smaller scale. If it can be successfully solved they can be handled also. To formulate a plan comprehensive enough to solve this great problem in its engineering, political, and financial aspects is a task worthy of any administration of economic statesmen. It is an imperative duty before the Nation, the next great task of conservation.

OUR TRADE TO THE SOUTH

F

URTHER facts concerning the vast possibilities for trade that open in South America to the manufacturers and exporters of the United States appear in an analysis of "Latin American Foreign Trade in 1911" in a recent bulletin of the Pan-American Union. The total imports of the ten South American republics during 1911 were valued at $893,000,000. Nearly $130,000,000 worth of these imports came from the United States. But Great Britain supplied more than $261,000,000 worth of them, and Germany more than $165,000,000. France sent only about $78,000,000.

But when the net value of the goods. sold to South America is figured, the United States probably makes the poorest showing of all. The reason is that the goods sent by this country are mostly raw materials or goods upon which the work of fabrication was so slight that their value was little increased by the skilled labor of American artisans. The goods from the other countries, however - and especially the imports from France were generally much more highly finished products, upon which the French people made not only the profit from the sale of raw materials. but a larger profit from the application of brains, mechanical skill, and organized manufacturing industry. In other words, France and Germany and Great Britain made several profits upon every dollar's worth of goods against only one profit upon the American goods.

Nevertheless, American manufacturers are making headway in South America — especially manufacturers of farm implements, of windmills, of electrical supplies, and of railroad equipment. These products have been pushed successfully because they are manufactured by corporations of such gigantic size that they can overcome the great disadvantages of imperfect banking facilities and of the general lack of American salesmen who are trained in the languages and trade customs of the South. The United States should find in South America for many years to come a sufficient outlet for the products of the new era of export trade.

THE PASSING OF "DOLLAR DIP

P

LOMACY"

RESIDENT WILSON will have no "dollar diplomacy" in China nor, inferentially, elsewhere. "Dollar diplomacy" meant the promise by the Government to use force, if need be, to collect the loan that American citizens would make to the Chinese Government, as the principal European governments were to use force, if need be, to collect loans made by their citizens. On these conditions money was to be lent to China. The whole plan, so far as we are concerned, originated with the preceding Administration, which asked American bankers to enter the syndicate. It did not originate with the bankers.

As an American policy, the plan would never bear analysis. For it meant first our prescribing the kind of taxes the Chinese Government should levy, and secondly, it meant the putting of our navy and army at the service of American bankers, if they should need it,. for the collection of their debts in a word, to help them do their business safely. To state the case in this way is to make its impropriety obvious.

Yet as the policy of dollar diplomacy arose it was not so simple as this statement makes it appear. China needs money. It must borrow it from the great bankers of Europe. The great bankers of Europe know the land-hunger of their governments. The partition of China was an old dream that came near coming true a dozen years ago. May it not come true yet? No great European Power is willing for the other European Powers to gain a possible advantage in China to its exclusion. If one should guarantee a loan made by its citizens, the others would follow. Well, then, if the Powers of Europe are to have this hold on China, does not our hope of influence and of trade require that we should be in the "deal?" This is plausible and insidious reasoning. We do not want Chinese territory. As for trade, it does not follow a loan, at least till after foreclosure. American bankers may make loans where they will. But the American Government, that is, the

American people, cannot guarantee their collection, whatever other governments may guarantee to do.

Apply this same policy to Central America. If we guarantee American loans to those governments, we thereby guarantee also European loans to them. For we will not permit any European government to seize American territory; and, if we use force to collect debts due to our citizens, we must either permit other governments the same privilege or else collect their debts ourselves.

This incident admirably illustrates the difference between the conception of government as an ally of business and the conception of it as an agency of order and justice, "of the people, by the people, and for the people." The conception of it as an ally of business that is, of one class of men has had expression and exemplification in many ways for a long timein so many ways and for so long a time that it has become warp and woof of the thought of a large part of the American people. It is a fundamentally erroneous view of a republican government, apply it how you will, whether by protective tariffs or by river-and-harbor bills or by any form of special legislation.

President Wilson is to be congratulated on having had presented to him so soon an opportunity to apply his conception of our Government's proper functions.

Τ'

A GOOD RIDDANCE

HE little postmasters, as other little public servants, cause much more trouble than they are worth. Mr. Taft put the whole army of the fourthclass in the classified service — a suspicious action, as the spoilsmen regarded it, because this fixed Republicans in office. But the Democratic Administration has met this situation very wisely. Let so many of them, it says, as can stand a fair civil service test remain; but let all be put to the test. That's fair. Several thousands of them have resigned because their offices were not worth the trouble e standing an examination. These H at the first mention of merit, places are made vacant witho

The President, the Postmaster-General, and members of Congress have more important duties than appointments to these small jobs; and it is a long step toward common sense to keep them under the civil service rules. Incidentally, they cannot again pack political conventions of either party.

II

There's something so fascinating about an office that men lose their common sense in seeking it and their official friends lose honesty in aiding them. This story is told at Washington and is typical: Two Senators and an important Representative in Congress called on a Cabinet officer and made most earnest pleas for the appointment of a man to an office that no one of first-rate ability could afford to accept. The Secretary listened patiently to their several orations in praise of the applicant. Then, when silence came, he remarked:

"Of course, you gentlemen know that this office is in the classified service and no appointment can be made except under the civil service rules."

One of the honorable callers asked the company out to have drinks; and, as they were leaving the room, one with a sly smile put his head again in the door and said: "Well, Mr. Secretary, you'll bear witness that I've done my duty by him."

We pay Senators and Representatives rather meagrely; but the most niggardly salary is a shameful waste of money to men who waste time and character in this way. For at the bottom of this whole advance on the Secretary, there was an essential lie. They knew that the fellow was unworthy of the office, and they knew he couldn't get it, and they didn't wish him to have it. But they lacked the courage of common decency to tell him the plain truth about the case.

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These items of food for man and beast cost $37,496,000 more than the cotton brought. The point is that practically every bushel of this corn and oats and every pound of hay and all this meat and poultry and dairy products could have been produced in Georgia at a profit, in addition to the cotton. In fact, the cotton would have been the better for it.

Why wasn't it done? This buying of corn and the rest, on its face, seems so idiotic, that there must be an explanation. The explanation is this:

The market for cotton is thoroughly organized. A farmer can take a bale of cotton to any town or village and get cash for it on any working day of the year. The market for corn and hay and butter and meat is organized (so to speak) against the Georgia consumer. These products have been imported by jobbing houses for many years, and they have the distributing machinery. A uting machinery. A Georgian knows where he can buy hay and corn and meat, but he doesn't know where he could sell them if he should raise them. That is why he has grown only cotton.

Of course, thorough-going business men would have no difficulty in dealing with such a situation. But the scattered and usually unorganized farmers are not thor

AN IDIOTIC ECONOMIC SITUATION ough-going business men. Here are need

R H. G. HASTINGS, of Atlanta, Ga., has published the following somewhat startling statement of the production of the money-crop in Georgia last year and of the farm prod

and chance for coöperative marketing. Suppose, for instance, in a given neighborhood, every farmer belonged to a coöperative society which employed a secretary, whose business it should be to keep a record of what every member had to sell

and needed to buy. He would find a home or near-by market for all the hay and corn and oats and meat that every man could produce. Then, of course, rotation in crops would follow.

The silliness of this situation - well, in a world wherein everything has been done by organization for a generation or two, those regions and industries which have not organized are precisely where they were in the old times of primitive commercial life. But the way out of this idiotic economic situation is, let us hope, imminent throughout the country.

tional highways are not primarily designed for the farmer or the city delivery people or for any such commercial uses.

More real business would be done on roads built in radiating spokes leading to every nook and corner of the surrounding county from the cities than will be done on thousand-mile highways from one part of the country to another. The proposers of the multifarious Federal aid schemes (there were seventy bills on this subject before the last Congress) come to the Federal Treasury because they feel that a Government that wastes money on river and harbor improvements and public

NOTICE OF A NEW PORK BARREL buildings can be induced to waste money

HE National Highways Association, believing in the building and permanent maintenance of 50,000 miles of highways by the Federal Government, lately sent to the press a circular letter and five elaborate pamphlets, maps, bulletins, etc., in support of its propaganda.

One of the pamphlets is devoted to proof of the economic advantage of good roads, a proposition now generally admitted, and jumps from that to the conclusion that because they are economically beneficial it is in the province of the National Treasury to pay for them.

This illogical deduction is reached notwithstanding the very examples of good roads which were used to prove their economic advantages are state and county built roads.

The obvious logical deduction is, if these state and county roads are so beneficial, to build more state and county roads. Before good roads can be had all over the country in this manner, the people all over the country will have to come to believe in roads earnestly enough to pay for them. When good roads do come in this manner they will serve their most useful purpose.

But this solid, substantial way of doing things from the bottom up is too slow for the national aid propagandists, with their get-rich-quick kind of road building schemes to get good, long distance touring roads for automobiles through states and counties which are not themselves ready to build and maintain them. The proposed na

on public roads, particularly if the roads are planned to traverse Congressional districts represented by men whose support for a measure can be forced by the price of a piece of "pork". But such districts are, happily, fewer than they used to be, and if the public once gets an insight into the true inwardness of the colossal scheme of Federal appropriations which this national aid to roads involves, there will be no political glory to be had by championing it.

We should and must have the good roads, but we ought not to have them until each community wants them earnestly enought to pay for them. We should not have them given to us willy-nilly from the bountiful hand of a wasteful Government at the behest of an automobile and road-machinery propaganda. The real good roads movement springing from the needs and desires of the people throughout the country will be retarded and blocked if this new pork-barrel scheme spreads its corrupting influence through the land.

THE CITIES AND THE FARM
MOVEMENT

HE INTERSTATE Agricultural and Industrial Congress, which met at St. Joseph, Mo., for three days in the second week of March, well illustrates the new spirit in agriculture that is engaging the best thought of the Nation, both of city dwellers and country folk. Several thousand farmers from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri joined the citizens of St. Joseph, at the invitation of the

Commerce Club, to hear addresses by distinguished speakers from all parts of the United States and to discuss the improvement of farm management, of farm living, and of the relations between town and country.

Both the invitation and the congress were typical of the new movement. St. Joseph is one of the oldest settlements of the Middle West, and it has lived for the last forty years in the memory, and in accordance with the traditions, of its first. prosperity as a trading and outfitting post for the gold seekers of '49. The other day its citizens awoke to realize that St. Joseph was at the centre where the border lines of four of the richest agricultural states converge and that it was losing its opportunity to become a great agricultural market by clinging to its vanishing commercial glory. Upon that realization the Commerce Club engaged a farm adviser under a three-year contract to help develop the resources of its farming neighborhood. Then the club, under the inspiration of Col. R. M. Bacheller, announced the agricultural congress.

Such men as President W. C. Brown, of the New York Central Railroad, President H. J. Waters, of the State Agricultural College of Kansas, Dr. L. L. Lumsden, of the United States Public Health Service, and other distinguished men, came to speak on the best methods to extend farm credit, on coöperative marketing, on sanitation on the farm, on diversification of crops, on soil renewal, and on other subjects that are vital to the regeneration of country living.

One of the first results of the congress was that one thousand farmers pledged a dollar apiece for prizes for the best corn at a corn show which they arranged to hold next year. The farmers who were present also proposed another meeting of the congress, which they will help to manage, and which will be held probably next December or January.

Here, again, as at Duluth and at other cities, the town and the country have united to further that agricultural advance which is one of the most inspiring and most hopeful movements in the upward march of American life.

SCHOOLS THAT DISCOVERED A
CITY

S

EVERAL years ago Mr. J. W. Sewell, supervisor of the grammar schools of Nashville, Tenn., led his schools to discover the city in which they were and the city in turn to discover its schools. The children are taught their daily tasks in the terms of the life around them.

In the English course, for example, at least one careful exercise must be written during every term on some such subject as: "Points of Historic Interest Around Nashville;" "What Nashville Manufactures;" "The Value of the Cumberland River to Nashville;" "How Our City is Governed;" "Our City Schools." By the time the pupil has passed through the ten terms of the grammar school grades, his ten exercises have driven into him the fact that he lives somewhere, that his city has a reason for being, and some relation to the rest of the world; and in doing this the child's mental training has not been neglected.

In geography and history, the boys and girls are required to touch over and over again upon Nashville's trade and industries, as well as the lives of Tennessee's eminent men. For example, in the sixth grade the students learn about the lumber, textile, and other industries of Nashville, something about river and railroad transportation, the territory covered by the domestic and foreign trade, etc.

Besides classroom work, the pupils, under the care of their teachers, have been sent out in groups to study the work of factories, foundries, warehouses, coffee roasting plants, mills, etc., as well as municipal institutions. After returning to school they spent one or two periods on another day in comparing notes, discussing the industry, and clearing up more or less. indistinct impressions. Later every child. wrote his own account of the visit, and one or two of the best papers were sent to the factories that entertained them.

Furthermore, in the study of current topics, which is required in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, all questions relating to the progress and welfare of the

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