A NEW WAY TO REGULATE STREET TRAFFIC The New York City Police Department lately, as an experiment, put in place on Fifth Avenue semaphores, as shown in these two pictures, which swing alternately uptown and crosstown. Thus it is indicated that traffic is open either east and west or north and south. The semaphores were worked simultaneously for five blocks on Fifth Avenue so as to allow continuous movement for that distance At the recent oil strike at Bayonne, New Jersey, Sheriff Kinkead took hold of the situation with an iron hand and, as described in The Outlook last week, soon had the rough or lawless element of both sides under arrest The well-known American playwright has now become manager of the Frohman companies. See editorial comment. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Thomas's first play was Editha's Burglar," after Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel. Others of his best-known plays are "The Witching Hour," "The Harvest Moon" and "As a Man Thinks" COPYRIGHT BY AMERICAN FRE 88 ASSOCIATION A STREET PLAYGROUND This picture shows how a public thoroughfare in New York City is converted into a playground where the children may engage in all sorts of games without being disturbed or being and pleasure of the Fast Side children They found that the old theory of early democracy in this country-of as little government as possible-had broken down. Truly the people had exercised little power, but the iron hand of bosses and corrupt interests had been strong enough to thwart the popular will in the governor's chair, the halls of legislation, and the courts. Now they entered upon the course of making government their own, and of making it so strong that it would put the boss and the corrupt interest under its feet. In the Democratic party liberalism took root in the West over the question of the place that fiat money, and later silver, should occupy in the currency of the country. It was an issue doomed to dissolution, but that was of minor consequence. Silver was a symptom of the fever of discontent that was spreading among the many over the usurpation of their rights by the few. It was an evidence of the rising tide of democracy. Associated with it were issues which were destined to live and not die. In Bryan they found a persuasive voice and obtained a National hearing. The cross of gold and the cross of monopoly became within the Democratic party the symbols of a liberalism which came out of the West, attached to itself great numbers of wage-earners in the East, and in 1912 attained dominance in the National councils of that party through the election of Woodrow Wilson. The essence of political liberalism is the development of the National sense of power and of right, and the largest practicable measure of freedom and welfare for all classes of people. In the Republican party its manifestations were different, but in essence it was the same. Whether under La Follette, of Wisconsin, setting the prairies of Kansas and the Dakotas on fire, or Dolliver and Cummins in Iowa, or Hughes in New York, or Johnson in California, or Roosevelt in the Nation, it was the same fight to wrest government from powerful private groups which had usurped it, and to make government more responsible to the popular will and to popular need. La Follette in Wisconsin put the railways under the yoke of fair taxation, established workmen's compensation, an industrial commission, and a railway com mission with power to fix rates. Cummins successfully challenged the right of powerful corporations to sit in political conventions or occupy seats in legislative halls. Dolliver was the giant knight-errant of the movement for an honest revision of the tariff in the interest of the whole country. Hughes brought the great public utilities of his State under sovereign control and made the Constitution applicable to the powerful racing syndicate which had long defied it. He was beaten in his direct struggle with the bosses to deprive them of their influence over the party machinery, but he lighted a fire that will never go out in his State. Johnson broke the forty-year grip of the Southern Pacific machine in California, and there is no freer, fairer commonwealth than the State at the Golden Gate. And the roll of reforms for which Roosevelt is responsible, both in office and out, is a genuine part of the long roll of the hopes and desires of men since democracy began. Liberalism seemed about to break through the crust and conquer the leadership of minority privilege and conservatism in both the great parties. In this crisis for governmental Bourbonism, the old political leaders threw their party devotion to the winds. Their corporation masters had long ago done this, and had for years contributed with amazing impartiality to the coffers of both the great political organizations. Now in the State legislatures, and finally in the last-ditch stand of the Cannon régime in Congress, the bi-partisan intrigue of the political machines against liberalism became obvious to millions of men whose traditional habit of mind and deep-seated party affection had beforetime blinded their eyes. Long-continued bi-partisan alliances between corrupt business and · corrupt politics in California, in Colorado, in Illinois, in New York, and in many other States were clearly revealed to the astonished gaze of the rank and file of loyal voters of the country. In the particular States which I have named the corrupt alliance is judicially proved. And then came the revolution. Personalities entirely aside, this is the inner meaning of 1912. The four millions of the Progressive party were the more daring of the gathering hosts of liberalism in the United States. They were shocked by the absence of integrity in the party leaders as it manifested itself in the Chicago Convention. They broke the shackles of bi-partisanism. They blew off the lid. They lifted liberalism, which had before been more or less a Western movement, to the plane of a National movement and inoculated all States and all parties and all sections of the country irrevocably with the |