produces a retrogression; they jump to the conclusion that they have found the answer to the riddle. They do not know, or close their eyes to the fact, that any number of substances will accomplish the same results. Their tumors, after a period of retrogression, spring into life again. In a rare case, as with Dr. Gaylord and his boy patient, there may be an actual cure; the treatment, however, never proves generally useful. These circumstances particularly explain how easily experimenters who work with mice may be misled. The fact that a mouse tumor disappears has absolutely no significance; as I have already said, 20 per cent. of cancerous laboratory mice recover of their own accord. These results, however, have the greatest scientific value.

And these experiments give some idea of the new facts which the scientific world is accumulating concerning cancer. Laboratory investigation at present, however, centres not so much on elaborating a cure for cancer as in finding its cause. Once this cause is discovered, the workers believe the cure, so hopefully foretold by Ehrlich, will soon follow as a matter of course. For the last ten years the scientific world has been divided into two camps on this great question of causation. One camp has argued fiercely for the microbe theory; the other has as fiercely fought against it. At times the dispute has passed the bounds of scientific propriety and has taken on a personal bias.

Is a transmissible germ the cause of cancer? Properly to approach this question we must have some idea as to what cancer is. In its external manifestation, a malignant tumor is merely the growth of tissue. For some mysterious reason a particular part of the body—almost any part begins to grow and ultimately forms a large shapeless mass. In itself, so far as science has discovered, there is nothing in this growth that suggests a specific disease. It contains nothing inherently destructive to human life. The cancerous tissue, placed under the microscope, is not different from normal tissue. In its earlier stages this growth causes no pain or sensation - this is especially unfortunate, for, otherwise, the disease, which so com

monly attacks internal organs, would be more easily discovered. Indeed, the popular mind exaggerates the pain of cancer even in its final stages; the cancerous mice in laboratories, for example, even when afflicted with abnormal growths as large as themselves, seldom give any signs of suffering. The terrible thing about cancer is this unlimited power of growth. The human body may be compared with an orderly constructed house. It is built of an infinity of minute subdivisions of protoplasm known as cells, just as a house is built of bricks. Each one has its appointed place and its appointed duty. Some mysterious law of growth keeps the various parts of the body in equilibrium the nose, for example, grows to a certain size and then stops - just as certain natural laws keep in place every brick in a well proportioned building. Suppose, now, through some mysterious freak, in defiance of all known laws, the bricks on a house should start reproducing themselves. A great bunch grows out at the second story, the chimney spreads itself in all directions, the cellar sprouts up on all sides, from one wall a mass grows inward and fills an entire room. We should certainly stand aghast and wonder what remarkable unknown natural laws could produce such weird results. If we should place the tumorous bricks under the microscope, and discover that they differed in no way from the original bricks, the mystery would certainly deepen. That is precisely what takes place when a cancerous growth attacks the human body. All that we can say is that certain cells, anarchistic in their nature, defy all the laws that regulate growth and start off on a wild, independent, crazy existence of their own. When they attack and sometimes fill up a part of the body, such as the stomach, indispensable to existence, death soon follows. What more frequently kills, however, is not the cancer itself, but intercurrent disease, including blood poisoning. When the tumor ulcerates, all kinds of poisonous organisms develop in it, as they do in any other open wound, and find their way into the general circulation.

Now the cancer problem is simply this: what force gives these cells this fearful

power of growth? The men who deny the possibility of a germ have elaborated many ingenious theories, all which are too technical for description in this place. They generally fall back, however, upon the statement that cancer, as observed in laboratories, possesses no traits in common with any known bacterial disease. In the first place, it is not contagious. Any one can associate indefinitely with cancer patients and not "catch" it. Cancer "epidemics" are unknown. This school of scientists, however, has rested its case chiefly upon the phenomena of transplantation. As already described, cancer can be communicated from mouse to mouse by transplanting a piece of cancer tissue. But it is only when the cell itself is transplanted, declare the anti-germ investigators, that cancer is obtained. Moreover, this transplantation can be made only from one animal to an animal of the same species. A mouse cancer will grow upon another mouse, but not upon a guinea pig, a dog, or a man. But tuberculosis or diphtheria can readily be communicated from one animal to an animal of an entirely different species - for example, from a man to a guinea pig.

On the other hand, the upholders of the microbe theory, of whom the leaders are Dr. Borrel, of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. Gaylord, of the Gratwick Laboratory of Buffalo, can make out an excellent case. There is only one process known in Nature, they declare, that is comparable with the unlimited growth of the cancer cell, and that is the growth of micro-organisms. The cancer cell, they add, behaves exactly like a micro-organism. For example, it develops increased virulence as it is passed through different animals, just as a microbe does. A typhoid culture, injected into a guinea pig, grows slowly; taken from this guinea pig and injected into another, it grows more rapidly; and so on indefinitely. A cancer cell obeys this same law. An especially powerful argument is the fact that the body develops an immunity against cancer, just as it does against scarlet fever and measles. The mice that have spontaneously recovered from cancer do not have it again. Certainly this, as well as the possibility of vaccinating

against malignant growths, suggests the presence of an organism. The anti-germ critics have always had one ready taunt: "If you think a microbe causes cancer. why don't you produce the microbe?" No cancer-producing organism has ever been found. This, however, has no practical significance in the argument. No one denies that smallpox, scarlet fever, and measles are infectious diseases they are about the most infectious known - and yet the microbes of these diseases have never been found. The reason is plain: they are so ultra-minute that there is no microscope powerful enough to disclose them. "That is the reason," say Dr. Borrel and Dr. Gaylord, "that we can't find the cancer germ. But that doesn't prove its non-existence. We are in the position of the astronomer who knows by the behavior of a particular part of the heavens that a new planet is somewhere about. But he can't see it, simply because he hasn't a strong enough telescope."

At this point, however, the anti-microbe men have had rather the better of the argument. Smallpox and scarlet fever, they say, are unquestionably caused by micro-organisms — notwithstanding that these micro-organisms have never been found. They know this because they can produce the infections by what is technically known as a "filterable agent." They take a section of tissue from a sick patient - such as the "peelings" from a scarlet fever patient or an extract from the pustules in smallpox - make an emulsion of it, and cause it to pass through a Berkfeld filter. This filter is so fine that cells and tissue cannot pass through it; what comes out is a clear, watery fluid. This fluid, injected into a human being, will immediately cause the disease. There are about twenty infections produced by these so-called "filterable agents." The germ that causes infantile paralysis, just discovered by Dr. Simon Flexner and Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, of the Rockefeller Institute, is one of them. "Now if you think cancer is caused by a filterable agent," said the anti-microbe men, "just go and produce it in this way." Only the cancer cell could produce cancer. A clear filtrate, free of cells, such as was

obtained in the smallpox experiments, never transmitted the disease.

"If you once produce cancer without the cell," was the conclusion of the opposition, "we shall believe in the germ theory."

And for several years the other side could I not meet the challenge.

And now cancer again showed what an extremely queer and unreliable process it

was.

The laboratory workers who struggled so many years to transmit the disease without the cell with a "cell-free filtrate," to use the technical description worked exclusively with rats and mice. But about three years ago Dr. Peyton Rous, of the Rockefeller Institute, obtained possession of a Plymouth Rock hen that was suffering from a large sarcoma a particularly virulent type of tumor. After experimenting for some t me, it occurred to him to attempt once more the hopeless experiment of obtaining cancer without the cancer cell. He made his emulsion, passed it through a Berkfeld filter, and obtained a fluid free of cells. To make sure that no tissue survived, he submitted the product to various procedures any one of which, such as freezing and crushing, would have killed it. He then injected his "cell-free filtrate" into other Plymouth Rock chickens; and, greatly to his surprise and bewilderment, the inoculated animals developed malignant

The scientific world has not yet digested this momentous discovery. It may mean that there is no such disease as cancer; that each kind of the many malignant growths grouped under that name has a separate cause. One distinct organism may cause cancer of the mouse, another cancer of the chicken, and still another of the human being; again, a different agent may cause each different type of cancer in each species.

Far from clearing up the cancer problem, Dr. Rous's work has made it still more obscure. Practically, however, it has not affected present clinical methods of treatment. The only cure is still operation in the early stage. Nor should any one assume, from these researches, that human cancer is contagious. The experience of centuries shows that there is no danger in associating with cancer patients.

offices and in the newspapers, but they still call him Dan on the railroads where he works and has worked.

The job on the Vermont Central turned into a job firing a locomotive on the old Passumpsic Road, in New England. That naturally led to the job of engineer on the same road. A journey farther from home took young Willard to the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, and he ran ⚫ an engine on that road for about two years. Then he went to the old Soo Line, properly called the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie, in 1884, as a brakeman. The next year he went back to Vermont long enough to marry. He took his wife to the West and went seriously to work to win his way up the long and treacherous railroad ladder.

Progress from the bottom up in the railroad service is no round of pleasures. In time the road made him conductor, then roundhouse foreman, then engineer, then trainmaster, then a great step - assistant superintendent, and finally a superintendent of a division. It sounds easy enough, but it took fifteen years. Mr. Willard started it at twenty-three and finished it at thirty-eight.

A workingman's life is two thirds work and one third luck. Mr. Willard has both. His natural aptitude brought him into close enough contact with hard labor; but Mr. Frederick D. Underwood, now president of the Erie Railroad, brought him the necessary element of luck.

In 1886, Mr. Underwood came to the Soo Line. He had just finished serving sixteen years with the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. He had been a little bit of everything on that road. The records show him clerk, brakeman, foreman of elevators, conductor, yardmaster, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of a division. In June, 1886, he came to the Soo Line as a superintendent of construction on a division; and in September they made him general manager, just a year after Mr. Willard had joined it as a brakeman. Mr. Underwood had just finished his own long climb from day labor to the fringes of the executive world. In the next fifteen years Mr. Willard almost exactly duplicated on the Soo Line the

jobs that Mr. Underwood had held on the St. Paul. In 1899, both left the Soo Line Both went to the Baltimore & Ohio.

These are mere records. The story is better than that. Mr. Underwood's eve discovered young Willard on the line very shortly after 1886. Mr. Underwood watched him. They got to be good friends the man well up the ladder and the man coming up. How much help came from above to the man who climbed, the writer does not know. Whatever it was, it seems to have been deserved.

In many things these two men are alike Both are plain and simple citizens. Both seem to think work is more important than anything else they do. Both want action all the time. As railroad executive officers, both seem to pay more attention to the men who work for them and to the job of running the road than they do to either the stock market or the ordinary business of having a good time and growing rich, as was the habit of the dying generation of railroad bosses and presidents.

Mr. Underwood became general manager of the Baltimore & Ohio in January, 1889. and Mr. Willard came on in February to join him as assistant general manager. The combination was effective. The gen eral manager's job on the Baltimore & Ohio was handled as it had not been handled for some time.

In those days the Baltimore & Ohio had been through purgatory, so to speak, and had not by any means arrived at that financial pinnacle to which railroads as a whole were lifted in the next era. The Baltimore & Ohio was a crooked, poor, and bedraggled thing at that time. A few years before, it had held its head pretty high; only to be found out at last and toppled into the mire of bankruptcy and disgrace. There had been reconstruction. There had been reorganization. There had even arrived the era of "gentlemen's agreements," whereby rates were maintained when the other road was looking. Because the Baltimore & Ohio did not know a "gentlemen's agreement" when it saw one, the Pennsylvania had bought enough of its stock to make it behave.

When Mr. Underwood and Mr. Willard came to it, it was in a fairly good position.

It was being made better physically. It was growing rich very slowly. It was learning the Pennsylvania way of sinking money into track and cars and engines. The job these two men had was to help that business along by making the Baltimore & Ohio a better transportation machine and by giving it some excuse for getting competitive traffic besides the simple excuse that it would do the same work for less money.

These railroad twins did not stay long with the Baltimore & Ohio. In May, 1901, Mr. Underwood was called to New. York to become president of the Erie Railroad a man's size job if there ever has been one. They elected Mr. Willard general manager in his place. He held that position for about thirty days. Then he came to New York to be assistant to President Underwood. Pretty soon he was third vice-president. Then he was first vice-president and general manager. They named one of the Erie tugs on the harbor after him, and he liked it better than if it had been a yacht or an ocean liner.

The main objection to working in couples is that there is only room for one at the top. Mr. Underwood did wonders with the Erie Railroad, that sad remnant of half a dozen eras of exploitation and rapine and high finance. Other men worked with him and under him; but over them all, from Mr. Underwood down, hung the shadows of Morgan and Harriman in turn. They did their work, just the same. The reconstruction of the Erie was well under way in 1904, when Mr. Willard left it. He went back West to Chicagoif that is West to become vice-president of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.

At that time one of Mr. Willard's friends on the Erie made a remark that contains in a few words much of the philosophy of Daniel Willard that has made him what he has become. An editor had just remarked that the move to the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy was a big step for Mr. Willard.

"Yes," said the Erie man, "but I guess he won't stand it. Willard wants to be trying to make a poor road rich. He is always figuring on the fellow down below

rather than the fellow up on top. He won't stay long with the aristocracy."

Yet, he did stay on, and he did some wonders with the transportation business on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. To be sure, it looks, from a distance, like a fairly easy task. The Burlington is peculiarly one of the railroad aristocracy. Control of it, since 1901, has been safely tucked away in a trust company in the interest of the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, Mr. Hill's road. It does not need to beg for crumbs of traffic. It is, as it were, the Pennsylvania of its territory. If it wants cars, or engines, or rails, or anything else, it just goes and buys them. It does not have to play both ends against the middle all the time and keep both eyes on the sheriff. It is so powerful that it takes what it wants, within reason; and so rich that it rarely has to borrow. Of course, it does borrow. All railroads do that, except the Lackawanna Railroad.

Mr. Daniel Willard, vice-president and general manager of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, was a large figure in the railroad world. Everybody knew him. All the railroad men prophesied that some day soon, when some giant system needed a president, Daniel Willard would be a railroad president. The New York Central was suspected of wanting him once, but the line of succession ran elsewhere.

It was chance, more or less, that the Baltimore & Ohio, on which he and Mr. Underwood had both worked during their upward climb, was the road that finally put him in the presidents' list. He was frankly glad to be back, and said so. The newspapers printed sketches of him and of what he had done. He did not make a very spectacular subject. He never did anything very spectacular. He is not a railroad "magnate." He has no ambition to dominate the whole American railroad system, to upset any of the established theories of railroad business, to build or buy any transcontinental lines, or to do anything except run his railroad in the best way he can. He has a job to do and he always seems to want to be at it.

So far, this is the biography of a plain