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city are readily seized upon by the pupils. They are keen to discern matters of more than passing interest; and, in the light of previous training, even these twelve- or fourteen-year old children are able to handle such topics with profit and with evident pleasure.

By the kindness of the city merchants, the schools obtained invoices, freight bills, contracts of sale, and other like papers of trade and these, in part, take the place of the time-honored books of arithmetic. The work is made as interesting as possible to the children; for they are doing problems of real life, and the names in the problems are the names of firms and businesses that they hear and see every day.

The public school children of Nashville are having their minds trained to work by studying real life, and the people of Nashville cannot help taking a keen and active interest in schools which take such an interest in them. The schools are a part of the life of the city, not, as is often the case with public schools, institutions apart from the life of the city.

THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY

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WORE than twenty thousand motion picture theatres in the United States take every day the nickels and dimes of probably five million patrons. A recent estimate is that approximately 200 million dollars are invested in the business and that it utilizes the labor of about five hundred thousand people people directly or indirectly.

Here are the sums invested in a few of the old and basic industries of the United States, as shown by the last census: copper, tin, and sheet iron products, 217 millions; furniture, 227 millions; petroleum refining, 181 millions; anthracite coal mining, 246 millions. The motion picture industry already ranks with these. Perhaps an even more striking comparison is with the printing and publishing business, which is one of the oldest and most widely distributed of all industries. Motion pictures utilize more than a third as much capital as is used by that great business.

Perhaps no industry except the manufacture of automobiles has recently shown

such astonishing growth as this, for the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures was made only seventeen years ago. But even more noteworthy than their financial importance is the educational influence of the pictures. They reveal new possibilities to teachers of history and science, and they put a new weapon in the hands of social reformers and sanitary engineers. Elsewhere in this magazine the educational service of the pictures is described at length. Both commercially and educationally they are a remarkable and most useful addition to the resources of modern civilization.

ABOUT JOY IN ONE'S WORK

N INCIDENTAL word was recently published in these pages about the enjoyment of life while a man's work goes on. Should a man look upon his bread-earning as an unwelcome task, to be hurried and done with confusion and at the risk of his health, with the hope of reaching an early period of retirement when he may do what he will and "really enjoy life?" This has provoked inquiries. and experiences.

In the first place, the subject lacks a wide interest, for few men can consider it at all. Those who can ever voluntarily retire before they must do not make a large part of the working community, although they might wisely make a larger part than they now do. But suppose a man can hope to retire at an early period and live thereafter without gainful work, is he justified in regarding whatever respectable occupation he has as a bore or as merely a method of earning enough money to retire on? And, if he so regards it, is he likely to enjoy his retirement?

He will make a very doubtful experiment. Whatever a man do during his active period, he ought to do with such orderliness and thoroughness as to get from his daily and monthly and yearly labor the pleasure that comes from doing his task well and the additional pleasure of so doing it that he performs a real service. To do anything wholly for the money it brings is not to do it well enough. And those men who contract the habit of

working wholly for money are likely thereby to unfit themselves for the enjoyment of a period of retirement. For the rightminded man makes agreeable companionships in his daily work, he finds problems that call for all his brain and characterfor endurance, for fair judgment, for just dealing, for doing as he would be done by; and all these are the very warp and woof of successful living. If he so "rush things" that he sacrifices these enjoyments and this discipline and this human relationship, he will discover that in his period of ease the lack of this very experience will make life seem barren. Few men are better, or are likely to become better, Ithan they show themselves in their daily work.

The kind of man to retire from moneyearning labor with the hope of really enjoying life is the man who has really enjoyed life during his period of hardest work. And you will deceive yourself if you imagine that in idleness you will develop virtues or a capacity for sensible enjoyment that you did not have during your working years.

"I have a library of books that I have collected which I wish to read with continuity of attention"- so writes one gentleman; "and I've been 'rushing things' to get money enough to give years to this enjoyment before I die." If he cannot find time to read before he reaches later middle life, is there any reason to hope that he would read after that period, if leisure should come to him? It would be wise to "rush things" a little less, to get what joy he can from his present work and at least to begin his reading now. Few of us change after we have passed fifty:

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75 feet wide and 12 feet deep, connecting both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario with the Hudson River to New York. Boats of 3,000 tons, capacity will be able to ply between Buffalo or Oswego and New York, transshipping goods from Duluth and Chicago and Detroit and Toronto.

The total length of the canal will be 434 miles. More than 130 million cubic yards of excavation will be dug (Panama, 242 millions), and the total cost will be 108 million dollars (Panama, 375 millions). Fifty million dollars' worth of the work is now done, and the canal will probably be opened in 1915. And one state is paying the bill.

The hotly controverted questions, whether it will ever be sufficiently used to justify its cost, whether railroad development has made canal traffic obsolete, and whether in any event the mere existence of such a canal will operate to keep freight rates reasonable and thus justify itself, time alone can answer. At least it is a monumental undertaking.

THE SEA-LEVEL OF FINANCE

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HE danger of a European war is. passed there is a new danger of a European war. So the changing game goes on; and, while nobody regards a general conflict as imminent, almost every man who knows European politics fears that it will come. This expectation already very seriously affects the finances of the world. American securities that were held in Germany in particular have been coming home in sufficient quantities very seriously to lower their price. The governments of Europe, especially the German, have been having trouble in marketing their own securities.

All this means that the financial world is perfectly aware of the necessity, as Germany looks at it, of German expansion; and, by some unhappy event, which no one can forsee, this may lead to a conflict. Finance, of course, has its sea-level. Whatever disturbs the markets or the credit or arouses the fears of any people has its immediate effect in the market places of all other nations. A slowly subscribed loan of the German Government affects the

prices of American railroad securities. It affects the chances of China's borrowing money. It affects, more or less, the domestic markets of every country in the world that has a considerable foreign trade.

A FEW ANNOUNCEMENTS

OLLOWING Mr. Hale's article on "Watching President Wilson at Work" will come others by him on "Who Governs the United States," a graphic picture of the men who make Washington what it is, and an intimate picture of the machine that governs us. There is no more interesting study than a study of

the way Congress really works. It is more interesting now than ever because of the new players in the game.

In early numbers of the WORLD'S WORK Miss Sarah Comstock will write true portraits of women of real achievement - not stories of women whose achievements are notable only because they are the deeds of women, but because of their inherent and fundamental significance.

Mr. C. M. Keys, who writes in the next number "Canada's Cure for Strikes," was a classmate of Mr. Mackenzie King, the author of the Canadian Arbitration Act, when he first achieved prominence, curiously enough, by leading a student strike.

SMALL INVESTORS' MONEY FOR HOME BUILDING

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VERY year, as the building season comes around, the WORLD'S WORK hears from people all over the country who are trying to save money to invest in homes of their own.

"But it will take such a long time to accumulate enough in the regular way," complain most of these folks. "Isn't there some way to build and pay back?"

A question like that was asked three or four years ago by a man who recently wrote again to this magazine about another kind of investment, and incidentally told how he had followed the advice that had been given on the former occasion, and how pleased he was with the outcome.

It is timely to refer to his case, because it is typical. He was a salaried worker, living in a small town in New Jersey. He explained that he had managed to save enough out of his monthly earnings to pay on the instalment plan for a good building lot. But, even with a start as good as that, he had begun to despair of realizing his ambition, until he heard of a certain building and loan association in a neighboring town, and learned how it had for years been assisting people just like himself to earn their homes for good and all. In

due course he "took out" ten shares of that association's stock; and a little more than a year ago he moved into a fine new house, built with the aid of $2,000 that the association had lent him.

Without going into the mathematics of this investor's experience, a few of its phases may be explained briefly, to show how such associations work. Every share of this particular association's stock represented an ultimate value of two hundred dollars, and called for monthly payments of one dollar in dues, to be continued regularly by the holder, or subscriber, until the total of the sums paid in, increased by the pro rata distribution of the association's profits, amounted to the fixed value of the stock.

Ten shares, then, gave the holder an ultimate claim against the association amounting to two thousand dollars. Against this he had the right to borrow, upon presentation of satisfactory real estate security. The procedure was for him to apply for his loan in accordance with certain rules laid down in the association's by-laws, to be awarded his money by entering into an agreement to pay a "premium" of one dollar a month, or ten cents a share, besides his dues, with an interest charge of 6 per cent. a year. He

was then ready to sign the contract with his builders.

Meanwhile, it was necessary for him to pledge to the association the shares which represented his future savings and, in addition, to give a first mortgage on his property. Upon becoming a borrowing member he had to pay into the treasury, in addition to the regular dues on the shares, the premium and the interest on the loan, all amounting to twenty-one dollars a month. In from ten to twelve years after the first payment at this rate he will have paid off the mortgage, principal and interest.

This illustration is of the working of one of the many plans used by the true, or "local," building and loan associations - the kind that stand for savings and for homes through coöperation. Of these there are more than six thousand in the United States. Most of that number are strictly mutual: that is, they extend only to members the right of management and the privileges of borrowing money and sharing profits. They are called "local," "neighborhood," or "homestead" associations, or sometimes, as in Massachusetts, "coöperative banks," because they lend money only on property whose value can be determined easily through personal inspection by their own competent officers, and, obviously, only to people whose responsibility is known, in a general way at least, to all whose interests are at stake.

Such associations have to be distinguished sharply from the so-called "national" associations, and other types of loan companies, organized, not like the locals, as semi-philanthropic institutions, but as ordinary business corporations, conducted solely for the personal profit of small groups of stockholders and officers, lending money on "risks" in remote places, and not infrequently managed as purely speculative enterprises.

The pity is that the local building and loan association idea is not wider, geographically. The six thousand in the whole United States have nearly two and a half million members, who own coöperatively more than a billion dollars of assets. Yet one half of their total membership

is in four states - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey. There is room, even in the states where they are now most numerous, for more institutions of the kind. An extension of their usefulness was recently urged officially by Mr. George C. Van Tuyl, Superintendent of Banks of New York state, in which are 229 local associations with a membership of 140,000. In his report to the legislature on the 15th of March, the Superintendent said:

"There is probably no considerable village in the state in which a properly conducted savings and loan association could not be organized to advantage, and it is quite possible that their development in the rural districts of the state would satisfy existing demands for coöperative lending institutions. They certainly encourage thrift and home-owning, and enable the honest and the frugal to obtain loans whenever adequate security can be furnished, either by the individual borrower, himself, or through the coöperation of other members."

But the usefulness of these societies is not all on the side of the borrower. Indeed, if they did not afford to the man who can save only by fives and tens a safe means of investing for income, they would fail in their purpose of promoting the ownership of homes. ownership of homes. Reports of the associations of two typical states show that for every borrowing member last year there were four who were merely investors.

In scarcely any other way can an investor of limited financial experience keep his savings so closely under his own eye. Jones may not want to build, but he does not hesitate to entrust his monthly surplus to his local society, because he knows it will be wisely employed in making up a loan to some fellow citizen whose house, which he may watch grow from its foundations, will be mortgaged to protect him; and because he believes his neighbors, Smith, Brown, and all the rest, wiii keep up their payments of dues, premium, and interest to the last extremity to protect their properties from foreclosure.

Perhaps Jones may have studied the reports of Mr. C. S. Cellarius, Secretary of the National League of Local Building

and Loan Associations, which show that these are among the most economically managed financial institutions in the world and that, even in localities where the lending rates are comparatively low, they have, as a rule, no difficulty in declaring dividends of at least 5 per cent. He probably knows that, if he wishes to withdraw his savings before his shares have obtained their full value, he may do so by giving reasonable notice and by agreeing, perhaps, to accept a slightly smaller division of profits than he would otherwise be entitled to.

It should not be imagined, however, that the building and loan society can assure investors of "absolute safety." There have been not only mistakes, but

abuses, of management, serving to bring home to investing members the stern fact that they are not depositors entitled to interest, as they sometimes erroneously believe, but stockholders, every one entitled to his proportion of the profits, but also liable for his proportion of the losses.

But, after all, the record of these local societies is remarkably clean. Next to the carefully regulated savings banks, probably no other kind of institution is more fit to cater to the needs of the small investor. It would be a wholesome thing to see them commanding a larger part of the small savings of the Nation, to the exclusion of some of the more modern instalment investment schemes of doubtful suitability for the financial novice.

THE NEW CHIEF OF THE SECRET SERVICE

MR. WILLIAM J. FLYNN AND HIS ADVENTURES TO ENFORCE THE LAW AGAINST COUNTERFEITING - HIS SEVEN-YEAR CHASE TO CAPTURE LUPO AND MORELLO, TWO LEADERS OF THE AMERICAN "BLACK HAND"

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BY

FRANK MARSHALL WHITE

TANDING just inside the door of one of the Federal Court rooms in the New York Post Office building one afternoon in the summer of 1903, Mr. William J. Flynn, now head of the United States Secret Service, and an Assistant United States District Attorney watched two of the worst Italian criminals stroll jauntily to liberty. One of the criminals was small and dapper, the other powerfully built and of medium height, his right arm crippled and the hand thrust into the edge of his coat.

"These pigs of the American police are not of the calibre to deal with you and me," remarked the Italian with the maimed arm in an undertone that reached Mr. Flynn, as it was intended to do.

"A new broom sweeps clean observed his companion.

nit,"

Mr. Flynn had just been made chief of the Eastern division of the Service.

"This new broom will sweep you both into a long term prison before it's worn out," said the big man to himself.

The dapper little Italian was Vincenzo Lupo; the man with the crippled arm Giuseppe Morello, both ex-convicts from Sicily. Mr. Flynn's first important task as head of the division had been to arrest Morello and Lupo, with several of their gang, for counterfeiting. But the two principal rogues had been mere spectators at the trial and conviction of their subordinates, for the Secret Service agents had been unable to connect them with the counterfeiting enterprise. Hence Morello's complacent reflection that the American "police pigs" were not competent to cope with him and Lupo.

Morello and Lupo are now serving 25

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