Florida the increase was about 3,000 carloads, and from Texas about 200 carloads.

In the second place, the Senator advances the argument that a bushel of grain can be shipped from South America to New York for 12 cents, while it costs 42 cents from Minneapolis to New York. This is a common statement, but not a complete statement of the case. The Senator should include the rail rates from the Argentine wheat fields to seaboard.

The truth is that the difficulties which are facing the farmers are not primarily due to the railroads, the wheat pit, the cotton exchanges, or to any of the Senator's pet antipathies. The farmer is undergoing the painful process of liquidation along with the rest of the country. The nature of his business probably makes it more difficult for him than for most other businesses. If any effective help can be given him, it is a national advantage to give it, but anything likely to jeopardize the return of the railroads to sufficient prosperity to provide good service, is not to the farmers' real advantage.

These figures show that the farmers are suffering, but they also show that railroad charges are relatively much below labor costs, and the larger part of railroad expenses are for labor. Nevertheless everyone agrees, that, in the long run, rail rates must come down. The whole economic fabric of this country was built upon the cheapest rail rates in the world. Before we acquire complete normalcy we shall have to have cheap rates again. But it is well to remember that this transportation system is an infinitely complicated thing, which by mismanagement, unwise regulation, and Government operation and war has been thrown

into a desperate condition. One more illjudged attack on it might well make private ownership impossible. The only recourse then left would be to follow the Canadian example, where the Government has taken more than half the rail lines because no one else has money enough to keep them going. If this should happen, the farmers would face the certainty of higher rates forever, unless the public were willing to have the roads charge a low rate and make up the consequent deficit by taxation.

Mr. Hoover gives the following constructive picture of the transportation problem:

The railways in the United States, more than in any other place in the world, are the keys of industry. No one can question the financial difficulties of the railways and the fundamental necessity of producing for them financial stability. But I conceive that the continued use of an emergency horizontal basis of rate increases can be seriously questioned. I believe any examination of the rate-making structure of this country will show that it was based fundamentally upon charges varying to a rough extent with the value of commodities. This method was modified by competition, and by the deliberate policy of the railways to stimulate local industries and local production. Horizontal rate increases have thrown the relativity of these rate scales out of gear, both as to value of commodities and zones of distribution. The increase of the rate may amount to 5 per cent. on the shipper's value of some commodities and 80 per cent. on others.

Our great industries have grown up in the supply of the cheapest transportation in the world for their basic raw materials, with a higher differential on their finished products. We have many complaints of the hardship worked by the upset in ratio; complaints that it is readjusting the commercial and industrial map of the United States; complaints that in some industries the charge can be passed on to the consumer, while in others, such as agriculture, it falls largely upon the producer; and complaints that it is stifling production.

It appears to me that, even though the same total income must be earned by the railways, there must be a commodity and class readjustment in rates, both in the interest of the community and the railways themselves. Such a readjustment of rates was indeed forecast by the Interstate Commerce Commission as a necessity at the time of the last horizontal rate increase. We must also look forward to ultimate reductions in rates if the economic levels of the country are to find an equilibrium.

At the same time Mr. Hoover said:

It is entirely possible for us to maintain our high standards of living if we can secure equitable readjustments all along the line. But we must face the

fact that if we are to hold to our higher standard of living and to maintain employment of our people against the competition of the living standards of Europe, lowered for a whole generation, we must do it with greater efficiency, and by harder work.

And this applies to farming as well as to all other activities. In this new order in which we find ourselves, no industry or occupation can keep its old standards and expect everything else to bear the brunt of the change. The world is on a lower level than it was. The European must work on a lower margin. Neither by regulating the railroads nor by passing a tariff can we escape the consequences of that fact. To keep our standard of living we shall have to use either more brains or more effort than we used to.

The people of the United States are particularly favored. We have a better chance to keep up our old levels, and surpass them, than any other people, but we must recognize that to keep up these old levels of life means production on the old scale plus enough more to pay our part of the cost of the war. Moreover, our part of the cost is not the fixed sum that we spent. It is a far larger and indeterminate amount. We shall continue to pay for the war as long as the world is abnormal. If we had not entered the war or spent a cent, the war would have disarranged our economics so that we should help pay for it as we shall now for many years.

We shall have to work with increased energy ourselves and try to help other people to their feet at the same time.

Like Chief Justice White, Franklin K. Lane was a man of such transparent fairness and humanity that partizanship passed him by. He was a Democrat and a democrat, but Democrats and Republicans, mugwumps and Socialists, all liked him.

He was a man of great ability and great force, and a good two-fisted fighter when aroused, but his chief characteristic was his love of men. He was passionately devoted to the welfare of mankind, but his interest did not stop there. He had, in the same remarkable degree that Mr. Roosevelt had, a love for all kinds and conditions of men singly and in crowds. And this feeling was so genuine that it made everyone like him. No one who knew Franklin K. Lane can forget the kind of inspirational belief and affection he had for humanity and the cheeriness which this imparted to his view of life. It is not so often that one man's wholesomeness is so great as to affect a whole nation. It was so with Mr. Lane and his countrymen will miss him, his optimism, energy, and confidence, and long remember his cheerful figure on the national landscape.

III

The editor of this magazine once went to Colonel Roosevelt to ask his opinion on certain aspects of a budget system for this country. His answer was, "I should not like to give an opinion on that subject until I have talked to McCarthy."

When Charles McCarthy died, the Wisconsin legislature passed the following resolution which all men in this country should know, for it is not proper that McCarthy's modesty should dim his light after death as it did in life.

Whereas the state of Wisconsin has lost a great public servant.

Charles McCarthy, known throughout the world, friend and adviser of statesmen, diplomats and presidents, of industrial, labor and agricultural leaders, was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. . .

As he has labored and fought in the fields of in

dustry, of athletics and of scholarship, so Dr. McCarthy has fought and labored in the fields of statesmanship, administration and education. To his own Wisconsin he has given his health, his strength, his life. Wisconsin's famous system of part time day continuation schools, and the university extension must always stand as monuments to the boy whose whole education was a part time continuation school education forced from ill adapted schools and reluctant authorities. The primary elections law, the public utilities act, the workmen's compensation law, the industrial commission itself, the marketing department, the forward looking planks in the state and national political platforms for many years, all bear the marks of the steady hand of this great public servant.

Resolved, That as a last mark of respect and affection, the body of Dr. McCarthy shall lie in state in the capitol where he has lived and worked for twenty years in order that all who loved him may have an opportunity to do honor to the great public character who was their fellow worker-the faithful servant of the legislature and of the people-Mc Carthy of Wisconsin.

The public hardly realizes how much of our national and welfare institutions is due to Dr. McCarthy. He was a great American citizen.

T

The Ex-Service Men

HE United States is conducting four large enterprises for the benefit of its soldiers of the World War and their families. It is carrying on the largest insurance business in the world. It is paying compensation to men who were disabled in any way. It also has assumed the obligation of paying for the medical keep and care and the rejuvenation of all men disabled by the war. It has further agreed to arrange and pay for the vocational training of disabled men so that upon their final discharge from Government supervision they may be self-supporting.

The

In all four of these enterprises the Government has been under severe criticism. administrative task of keeping the records of the sick and disabled and getting their allowance checks to them seems to be getting fairly well organized. As complicated as it is, it is the easiest of the problems.

The task of providing hospitals and proper medical care for the tubercular, the mental or shell shock cases, and other disabled has dragged on miserably. At last it has been organized, and the facilities are being acquired that should have been in readiness two and a half years ago. A good many men have committed

suicide who could have been restored to sanity and health. A great many sufferers are in unsuitable hospitals now. There has been, however, considerable improvement in the supervision and organization of this work.

The task of providing vocational training for the disabled is still in a chaotic state.

There are only comparatively few trade or vocational schools in this country which have succeeded in training men who have not been disabled. Most of these schools have a high grade of students to deal with. Practically all have had the advantage of having the pressure of society upon their students to make them work. The ordinary young man learning a trade, business, or profession realizes that public opinion allows him no excuse for failing to work. This compelling force is not brought to bear on the soldier recovering from disability. His service and his misfortune excuse him. This makes the task of the vocational trainer doubly hard. The best thing that could happen to many of the ex-soldiers taking vocational training would be to put them under the discipline of an oldfashioned "top sergeant." But the tenderhearted and grateful public would much prefer to let these men take their training softly and with negligible results than to have them undergo any vigorous and effective schooling.

Leaving out such discipline, if a set of great teachers with ample equipment could take these men, a very few to each teacher, they could make up in inspiration the lack of discipline and social pressure. But such an organization of teachers is not to be had in this country without great effort and expense, nor are the facilities and equipment.

As the work goes now, a small proportion of the abler and more energetic men are mastering themselves and learning a craft through the vocational training. Thousands of others are passing through the course with little or no benefit; and many others are definitely damaging their characters and future prospects by using the vocational training as a soft and sympathetic, even if temporary, living. A recent investigation by Mr. Clark, formerly with the Vocational Board, brings forth very clearly that at present vocational training is practised in a soft and inadequate form, and benefits so small a proportion of the men as to be fairly called a failure. His report also makes it clear that, with the difficulties, if success

were attained, it would be one of the great educational achievements of the time. Moreover, his report does indicate that success cannot be attained by investigations or abuse of the present Vocational Board. One of its chief difficulties has been that so many organizations and individuals interested in the soldiers have browbeaten the directors of this work that they have had to spend as much time trying to please the soldier and his friends as they have trying to train him.

Informed Optimism About Russia

O

NE of the great dramas of human history, the birth of economic freedom for Russia's 170 million people, is in progress.

In an age when news from almost all parts of the world is common knowledge within a few hours, this great event is being worked out behind closed doors.

It is with particular pleasure, therefore, that the WORLD'S WORK published the article "What Russia Thinks of the Bolsheviki," by Sir Paul Dukes, in its May number, and that it will, in this and forthcoming numbers, publish the articles of Lieutenant-Commander Koehler, for these two men have been privileged to see what few, if any other men similarly equipped to observe, have seen.

Many have visited Russia, seen Lenin and Trotzky, and seen what these leaders wished them to see, but few have lived with the Russian people in their time of trial and seen the fundamental forces at work which are shaping the destinies of this great people.

Lt.-Com. Hugo W. Koehler, of the United States Navy, was sent by the American Government to Russia in 1919 to observe. He was with Denikin's army, with Wrangel's army, and has traveled hundreds of miles inside the Bolshevist lines, and talked with all kinds and varieties of Bolsheviki. He spoke Russian well enough to do this.

Sir Paul Dukes, of the British Secret Service, lived in Russia in disguise, traveled over large parts of the country, served in the Bolshevist armies.

Both these men were trained observers. Both spoke Russian, both saw conditions with their own eyes, both talked to all classes and conditions of men in Russia, and both agree on the fundamental facts.

Each of them in different parts of Russia

have attended Bolshevist meetings to celebrate the outbreak of world revolution in England, and in the continental countries of Europe. Both agree that Bolshevist control of all news and all means of communication has enabled them to make the Russian people believe in a fictitious world.

Both agree that of the only choices so far offered the Russian peasant, Czarism and Bolshevism, he prefers Bolshevism, for under Czarism he either had no land, or else he · held it in communism with his neighbors, whereas under the Revolution he seized land for individual ownership, and under Bolshevism, regardless of its theories, holds it individually.

Both of these observers believe that Russia will work out of the Bolshevist period as the French worked out of the period of the Com

mune.

Both agree that the fact of the Russian revolution is the economic emancipation of the peasant on the land, and that this will be the basis of a great Russia in the future. Its political fabric may be in one form or another, but whatever it is, it must validate the peasants' ownership of the land, the rights of property, and the right to buy and sell. Already the Bolshevist efforts to enforce communism have been considerably dissipated in the towns, and in the country where the vast majority of the Russians live, they never took much hold. Both these men believe in the future of Russia. Both are optimistic. This is a particularly cheerful fact because of the few that have studied Russia at first hand none have better qualifications to judge than these two men, and it is particularly significant that while they disagree with much, if not most of the common gossip about Russia, their deductions agree in all essentials.

In 1919 the coal miners and coal-mine owners were again debating their grievances with the result that, in Kansas, Governor Allen fathered a law creating a court to make the interest of the whole people law. In the introduction to his book concerning the court, "The Party of the Third Part," the Governor says:

"In the evolution of civilization and its industrial implements a third party has come to the front, and the party of the third part is greater than the parties of the first and second parts. That third party is the public, and that means all of us." The purpose of the industrial court is therefore not "friendly to capital" or "friendly to labor," but justice for both and all.

When Governor Allen met Samuel Gompers in debate at Carnegie Hall a year ago last May he asked the President of the American Federation of Labor a famous question: "When a dispute between capital and labor brings on a strike affecting the production or distribution of the necessaries of life, thus threatening the public peace and impairing the public health, has the public any rights in such a controversy, or is it a private war between capital and labor? If you answer this question in the affirmative, Mr. Gompers, how would you protect the rights of the public?" -So far Mr. Gompers has failed to answer this question directly, but it shows very clearly what was the inspiration of the Court of Industrial Relations. How far its purposes have already been achieved after one year of operation may be seen in a letter that Governor Allen has written to the WORLD'S WORK in answer to a recent inquiry on the subject:

The court was established for the purpose of protecting the public against the economic pressure brought either by capital or labor, to guarantee impartial justice to both sides of an industrial controversy, and to stabilize production by preventing the closing down of industries which supply public needs.

The law was the direct result of the coal strike of 1919. After the state had taken over the mines in the winter of that year for the purpose of mining coal during the strike and had successfully met the situation, so far as Kansas was concerned, a special session of the legislature wrote the industrial court law, completing it in January, 1920. The law began to function on February, 1920.

The state mining engineer has just given us his official report of our coal-mining district, comparing the output in 1919 with that in 1920.

In the Pittsburg district alone there was an increased production this year over last of 900,000 tons, and this task was performed by 500 fewer miners than were employed in 1919. In other words, 10,500 miners, working under conditions created by the new law, produced 900,000 tons of coal more than 11,000 miners produced in 1919.

In addition to this, the 10,500 miners drew $4,000,000 more in wages in 1920 than 11,000 miners drew in 1919. The record was made by reason of the fact that in 1919 the average working days of the year were 141. Last year they ran something

over 200.

In 1919 there was an average of over thirteen strikes per month in various mines. During the last year there were only two small strikes, involving altogether less than a thousand men, called by Alexander Howat, the president of the district, to test the law.

The official report of the state mining engineer is a typical proof of the indirect effect of the court, and as the result of its beneficial effect in the mining district the court is rapidly gaining in popularity with the miners, though the leaders still fight it and some of the operators are none too enthusiastic about it. The labor leaders realize that if the state may find justice for the miners in their controversies with the operators, then there will no longer be any need for the miners to pay out of their pockets a large per cent. of their wages for the employment of official labor leaders. Some of the operators fear that some day they will be prevented from taking advantage of a surplus of labor to do what they have often done in the past drive wages down to an indefensible minimum.

As a proof, however, of the growing standing of the law in this state, in the recent November elections a ticket was nominated and a campaign made upon the platform that if this ticket succeeded its members of the legislature and its chief executive would favor the repeal of the industrial court law. In the mining district this ticket was overwhelmingly defeated and one, headed by myself, which pledged support to the industrial court law, was elected. We carried the senatorial election in the home district of Alexander Howat, the president of the district miners' organization. We could not have done this if it had not been for the fact that under cover the miners were voting to sustain the law.

This is typical of what happened in every industrial district in the state where a similar fight went on. In Kansas City, Kansas, where all of the great packing plants of the Missouri valley are located, the candidates chosen by labor's own leaders were defeated, and the candidates nominated to support the industrial court were elected. In the several counties where the railroad vote dominates because of large railroad shops, exactly the same thing happened so that at the end of nearly