Mr. Hughes is the latest and one of the best additions to the fast-growing list of political leaders of the people away from servitude to bosses, away from corrupt political organizations, and from organizations of capital that put their own profit before the public welfare.

HOW A NOVELIST WOKE UP NEW HAMPSHIRE

NE by one the states are rousing them

ONE one the statesolk woke up Mis

souri; Governor La Follette woke up Wisconsin; Governor Cummins woke up Iowa; there are other signs of stirring; and Mr. Winston Churchill woke up New Hampshire. We shall never solve the problems of our democracy while the states continue to look to the National Government for cures for local ills. The people of Wisconsin, for example, were as eager as those of any state to have Congress pass the bill to regulate railroad rates, but they first began to curb the railroads within their own borders. It did not occur to the people of New Hampshire that their demands for national rate regulation and they were as keen for it as anybody --came with poor grace from a state whose political life was ruled by a railroad corporation -until Mr. Winston Churchill told them so. But, once told, they gave at least some heed; and though Mr. Churchill failed of a nomination for Governor, his educational campaign bore fruit in his party's platform, and it is likely to bear more. He set the people to thinking robustly that managing the public concerns of the state is a job that it is their business to do, not one that they can safely delegate either to the Boston and Maine Railroad or to the National Government. By defeating Mr. Churchill's candidacy and nominating Mr. Charles M. Floyd, the New Hampshire Republican party organization, through which the railroad has kept its grip on the state, settled on a Governor who cannot be expected to enforce Mr. Churchill's platform with a reformer's zeal. But a body of earnest citizens, the Lincoln Republican Club, which stood behind Mr. Churchill, will now watch state. affairs with a new scrutiny. The mood of the whole movement is the mood that all the states must have to keep their heritage.

The Boston and Maine Railroad had been for years the supreme political power in New Hampshire. It dictated nominations and elections. Free passes and an active lobby kept

tising contracts kept the newspapers friendly. The prominent lawyers of the state were retained as the corporation's counsel. Political bosses were made its servants. Former Senator Chandler defied it, and it prevented his reelection to the United States Senate. Its power was so great that even those desiring to oust it from politics refrained because their effort would be of no use.

Mr. Churchill went to live in the state eight years ago, and was presently sent by his neighbors to the Legislature. He was independent from the start, and his experience at Concord taught him the menace of the railroad to the state. He spoke in plain terms of what he knew. When friends urged him to run for the nomination for Governor, he consented; and though defeated, he and the Lincoln Republicans and the sentiment they had created forced into the Republican platform provisions for a direct primary law, an antigambling act, the abolition of passes, the registration of the lobby, and the establishment of a new tax commission. These reforms are now before the next Republican administration to enforce. Their enforcement would break the grip of the railroad.

GOVERNMENT MONEY AND WALL STREET

ECRETARY SHAW recently upbraided

SECRE

Wall Street because that institution had monopolized the funds of the United States for gigantic speculation in the stocks of the Union Pacific Railroad, the Southern Pacific, and other corporations. The rebuke is novel enough to attract attention. The spectacle of the United States Treasury carefully measuring out so many millions of dollars to be deposited in banks at various places for the assistance of business, and of Wall Street stretching out its tentacles to gather to its own uses these funds so carefully deposited, is a spectacle startling enough to cause thought.

But is it true? In a measure, it is. In general, it is not. Money, of its very nature, flows to the point where it will bring the highest immediate return. At the time the Secretary wrote his message of rebuke, Wall Street was offering high rates of interest-higher than the ordinary bank loans would yield in outlying states. The extent of the crime committed by the Wall Street powers was that they offered to the Western banks so high a rate of interest that the Western banks found it profitable to

lend their money in Wall Street rather than to hold it to meet their ordinary demands.

It is, of course, disappointing to the Secretary of the Treasury, after he has put $10,000,000 into Memphis to finance the cotton movement, to find out, two weeks later, that Wall Street has coaxed the whole fund away; but there seems to be no remedy for it. Nor is Wall Street to be blamed, for it pays good interest for the money. If there be blame, it must fall on the general financial and commercial organization.

THE PRESSING NEED OF MORE RAILROADS

FROM

ROM almost every section of the United States comes the cry for more railways. The South and the West, in particular, have outgrown their traffic facilities. The Union Pacific, the Santa Fé, the Great Northern, and the Canadian Pacific, the highways of transcontinental traffic, are jammed with freight, and shippers clamor for more cars and better service. Of what avail the hundreds of millions of dollars already spent on the great railways if they do not serve their public?

The growth of the cities of the West has far outstripped the growth of their traffic facilities. The railways have done much, but the country has done more. Between 1895 and 1905 the number of locomotives increased more than 35 per cent., and the number of cars more than 40 per cent. Yet in 1905 the cars were far too few to carry the freight; and the situation is even worse this year. The number of tons to be carried one mile by the railways increased. during the decade nearly 115 per cent. Allowing for the larger capacity of engines and cars, the shippers of the United States are not so well served as they were in 1895.

The need does not stop here. If it did, the appropriation of $25,000,000 for new cars by the New York Central, and the appropriations of nearly $10,000,000 each by the Rock Island, the Chicago and Northwestern, the Santa Fé, and other Western railroads might be taken to demonstrate that the railway managers are making extraordinary effort to catch up with the traffic demands. There is a crying need for more roads. In the Pacific Northwest, Oregon is clamoring for them. California is eager for development. Big counties in the states of Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and Texas are still untouched by the railroad prospectors and engineers. Central Wyoming is just now getting its first east-and-west railway line.

The fashion of the times is changing.

For

the last ten years there has been a period of consolidation, of reconstruction, of development along the existing lines; indeed, the mileage of the Union Pacific is less than it was five years ago. But to-day, the West stands upon the threshold of a new era, an era of great railway building.

INCREASING RAILROAD DIVIDENDS

HIS is a year of liberality in dividends. In October, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad Company increased the dividend on its common stock from a 4 per cent. rate to a 5 per cent. rate. A month or so before that time, the Union Pacific Railroad increased its dividend from 6 per cent. to 10 per cent.; and the Southern Pacific declared the first dividend on its common stock at the rate of 5 per cent. A little earlier, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad raised its rate from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent. per annum. The year has been prolific in dividend increases.

What does it mean? Are the rights of the stockholders to own the surpluses of the railroads coming into a recognition at last? Is it a tendency, or is it merely a reaction from the almost niggardly conservatism that has characterized the Harriman, the Pennsylvania, and other leading railroad policies during the past eight years? There is no doubt that the railroads have been lavish in the expenditure of their earnings on all sorts of improvements and additions. Are the stockholders now to reap the fruit of their long-continued patience? If it be so, it is a laudable thing. The stockholding class is entitled to a fair share of the country's prosperity. The stockholders have been extremely patient. Yet it is surely time for a word of caution about increasing dividends. Wall Street, always suspicious, believes that very many of the increases are made under the direct influence of a clique of great capitalists, of whom Messrs. E. H. Harriman, H. H. Rogers, and Henry C. Frick are leaders; and that they are made with a definite purpose to induce the public to buy stocks at high prices. The opinion of Wall Street on such a matter is worthy of consideration. Therefore it is a time for public caution.

MR. J. J. HILL'S "IRONLESS AGE"

MR. JAMES J. HILL, always a shrewd critic

of economic tendencies, fears that within fifty years, the United States will come to an "ironless age." He believes that within that

period the natural resources of subterranean America will be approaching exhaustion. Upon this theory he bases a warning to the people that they must turn back to agriculture and scientifically develop the farms of the West.

These are big thoughts, from one of the broadest and most successful men of our time. The exhaustion of the iron supply within fifty years is a prediction to be considered, but it cannot by any means be proved. At the very At the very time when Mr. Hill delivered this opinion, he was engaged in a gigantic transaction whereby he transferred to the United States Steel Corporation certain lands said to contain from 300 million to 500 million tons of iron ore. Less than ten years ago, he bought those lands for a song, not dreaming that they concealed a twenty-year ore supply for the United States.

Is it not possible that in the untouched wildernesses of Idaho, Wyoming, or Arizona, some other J. J. Hill may stumble upon another twenty-five or fifty-year ore supply for the great steel industries of the United States? And there are vast unused coal fields in Canada. Has not Mr. Hill based his calculations upon the wellknown supply and the present demand? The total pig-iron production of the United States in 1905 amounted to about 23 million tons. In 1895 it was but 9 million tons. If the same ratio of expansion be carried on for the next fifty years, the annual production will be more than 90 million tons, and exhaustion will become a living question of the hour.

Luckily, civilization has ways of its own to meet such contingencies. The growth of the world's industry is not uniform. The onward march is varied by periods of retrogression, periods of stagnation, periods of rest. New areas of life's necessities are opened up by the ever-restless pioneers. New discoveries relieve the strain upon resources of one kind, then of another. If exhaustion of the iron mines should even remotely be threatened, prices would automatically rise, thereby creating a field for new discovery.

Mr. Hill's contribution to the "literature of exhaustion" is interesting, but hardly accep'table as a whole. Learned men, at different periods, have sought to demonstrate the impending exhaustion of very many things-but the earth is a bountiful mother. Science has demonstrated that the coal fields of England, the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, the forests of the pine states, would presently fail of their wonted supply for the needs of men. Fifty years ago

England was told, and many believed it, that the coal supply could not last one hundred years. Many times since, the same theory has been advanced. Yet England still mines coal, fearless of impending depletion. Perhaps the spectre of an "ironless age" is no more fearful a thing than this other spectre of a "coal-less England."

Yet, in spite of man's ability to take care of himself by invention and adaptation, Mr. Hill's sermon on the need of economy in using our resources is good economic doctrine, and therefore good morals. The general soundness of it becomes clear when applied, for instance, to our timber.

THE

PATCHING OUR CURRENCY

HE Special Currency Committee of the New York Chamber of Commerce has proposed a cure for the evils of the currency system. The suggested plan embraces features entirely at variance with the present laws. The most important of these features may be outlined briefly:

(1) The establishment of a central bank of issue, similar to the Bank of Germany or the Bank of France, under the control of the Government.

(2) In lieu of the above method, let every national bank whose circulation equals 50 per cent. of its capital have power to issue notes to the extent of 35 per cent. of its capital.

(3) Repeal the law which restricts the retirement of national banknotes to $3,000,000 per month.

(4) Future issues of United States bonds should not be available as a basis for circulation. (5) All treasury funds over and above a reasonable working capital should be deposited in national banks.

If these changes were put into effect, the entire currency system of the country would be altered. It is not likely that the country is prepared for any such sweeping change. That some of the suggestions will be adopted, and that their adoption will go far toward relieving the occasional strain of large demand for credit and currency, may be taken for granted.

The proposition for a great central bank is a recurring one. The public does not take kindly to it. Illogical as it is or may be, the experiences of the First and the Second Banks of the United States and the bitter and destructive opposition of politicians and financiers to these institutions, are still held up as a

deterrent to the foundation of a central bank under government control. Moreover, the popular feeling on this point is strongly against a step that would tend toward a still greater centralization of the banking power-already too much concentrated in the hands of three or four great interests.

The other suggested changes are not open to such opposition, except as the ultra-conservatives of the banking world may range them

less districts are almost things of the past. Might not reasonable tax exemptions, for a limited period, make farms devoid of cottages for the use of farm help also things of the past, and hasten the reëstablishment of the equilibrium between rural and urban populations?"

The presentation of a general need is one thing. A definite plan to supply it-such as this is another thing.

THE MENACE OF THE DAIRYMAN

HE truth about tuberculosis in dairy

currency. There is room for much change, and it would not be surprising if the Government should go to work to bring about the change along the lines suggested in the plan of the Chamber of Commerce.

A PLAN TO INCREASE FARM POPULATION

THE

HE article in this number of the WORLD's WORK by Mr. Ficke, of Iowa, about the great hindrance to any movement of a working population from the cities to the country has the merit of a very definite suggestion. He has made a long and thorough study of the subject with especial reference to the needs of one of our greatest rural states. So long as the conditions of life for workingmen on farms practically forbid the employment of married men, farm labor will be scarce; and much of it will be of the less stable and less desirable kind.

Mr. Ficke proposes for the very brief space that his article takes in this number prevented the presentation of his suggestion of a remedy that cottages built on farms to attract working families should be exempt

from local taxation.

He says:

"The erection of homes for the use of farm help would be for the common good. Numberless families would be taken from overcrowded cities and placed upon God's broad and fertile acres, where their members would be

filled with new hope, and could lead a self-respecting life.

Not only the future occupants of these homes, but millions of persons in addition would be immeasurably benefited. Why then not offer encouragement, of some kind, to those who will build these homes?

"Farmers, when offered encouragement, heretofore solved a problem that seemed difficult of solution. Western farm districts were once the picture of monotony. The unbroken lines of the horizon furnished sad proof of the total absence of trees. Those would have been called idle dreamers who had predicted that these districts could be converted into regions of park-like beauty. Yet the miraculous happened. Legislatures of many states granted long time exemptions, on specified sums, on tax assessments, for every acre planted in timber. As a result tree

had been lulled by Dr. Koch's assertion that bovine consumption is not transmissible to human beings. Now it appears that Professor Koch's dictum was a hasty conclusion. Worse than that, it was a false conclusion. For not only is tuberculosis now known to be trans missible, but the contagion from cattle is more virulent than contagion from a human being.

The bald statistics of tuberculosis are among the most awful facts of life. Of every herd of range cattle for beef, two in every 100 are consumptive. Of every dairy herd that feeds our infants and our sick, from ten to ninety in every 100 are infected. And of every man, woman, and child of the human race, one in every seven is infected with the contagion.

These facts suggest the menace of consumption, and especially of the part that dairy cattle play in its spread. Fortunately for the peace of mind of the world, methods of eliminating tuberculosis in cattle have been perfected. Unfortunately these methods are too generally ignored, though there are hopeful signs of a growing use of them. These methods are, first, the discovery of the existence of the disease in its carliest stages, by means of the tuberculin test. The Government supplies the tuberculin, and the test itself is simple and subject only to about one per cent. of error. Second: rigid separation of healthy from infected herds. Third: more sunny and airy winter quarters for the cattle. And fourth: cleanliness in everything that pertains to dairying.

So long as tuberculosis in cattle persists, no preventive measures can entirely check it among human beings. These facts, therefore, call for earnest consideration: that bovine consumption is on the increase; that it can be eradicated; and that the responsibility for the health of humanity rests largely on the owners of dairy herds.

An investigation of this vital subject was undertaken by Farming some months ago, and

the results appear in its October and November issues. These articles show the imminent peril of the dairy industry to humanity, and point out the remedy. The author, Mr. F. E. Bonsteel, was assisted in their preparation by Dr. W. K. Jaques-the bacteriologist whose work at Chicago was a conspicuous contribution to the exposure of insanitary packing of beef and by other eminent authorities throughout the country. This related investigation into an even more intimate source of infection from cattle promises to yield results much more important.

OUR SCHOOLS AS MODELS FOR ENGLAND

NE day when Mr. Alfred Mosely, the English philanthropist, whose attention was attracted to the United States by Mr. Gardner Williams, as described elsewhere in this magazine, was visiting a Pittsburg factory, he said to a young superintendent:

"What strikes me most about your country is that your workshops are filled with collegebred young men like you. At home a 'varsity man is graduated into a frock-coat and gloves. Here he is educated into overalls."

"Well?" said the young superintendent. "Why, that seems to be the keynote of American education. It trains for efficiency. And

twenty will come over at a time, at the rate of about one hundred a month. They will examine the New York schools, and then some will go east, some west, and some south. Each party will spend about twelve days in the country at Mr. Mosely's expense. Every teacher will write a report on returning, and suggest in the light of experience, ways in which the admittedly bad English system of education can be improved.

So mediæval is the English common school system that Great Britain can hardly be said, in one sense, to have popular training at all. The visiting teachers can learn something from even our poorest city schools, and much from the better schools, like those of Menominee, Wisconsin, in the Middle West. But now that our schools are in a fair way to become models for a foreign nation, we might well engage in their long needed improvement. When our country schools give as good a training as our best city schools, and our city schools pay as much attention to hygiene as they do to perfection in the three R's-for both objects are compatible-we shall be prouder of them.

THE MURDEROUS PERIOD IN RUSSIA

The more he studied American life, first on a tour with a group of trades-union officers, and later with a commission of men prominent in the British educational world, the deeper became Mr. Mosely's impression that our industrial success is the result of our system of education. Very lately he declared:

"The Americans believe intensely in the education of the masses. Three striking features are: first, the large amount of money devoted to educational purposes, the magnificent buildings, and the lavish equipment; secondly, the teachers are enthusiastic; and, thirdly, there is a thirst for knowledge shown by pupils of all ages which is largely lacking in England."

Now, fortified by the reports of the educational commission which bear out his observation, he has arranged a tour of investigation in the United States for parties of English school-teachers. Presumably the teachers have read the reports of their superiors, but he believes that they will learn more from a two weeks' visit to our schools than from any number of volumes of reports. Several thousands of teachers have applied for an invitation, from whom five hundred in different parts of England will be selected. Groups of fifteen or

as Russian Premier, has frankly said in an interview: "The task I have before me is one which can hardly be done by any human hand." His is surely the most unenviable eminence in the world.

Count Witte failed not only on account of the inherent difficulty of the task of governing Russia with the bureaucracy still in power behind him, but also because he could not command the loyalty of any party. He had made his career by intrigue, and nobody trusted him. M. Stolypin is a far better, if less astute man. He is the only member of the old Cabinet who made himself heard and respected before the Duma.

But his programme, which is logical, is now impossible. It comes too late. Over and over again he has said that he favors reforms. He has promised in good faith to carry out the liberal promises of the Czar. "But first," he says, "we must have order in the Empire. No reform can be carried out so long as violence continues." True enough; but violence begets violence. All parties in Russia have now become more or less violent, and the Government also is everywhere a party to violence. The state of things, therefore, is practically