The foreign born number more than 10 per cent. of our entire population and nearer 15 per cent. of our white population. We have now in force a temporary emergency law restricting immigration, which acts as a restraint upon the rapid influx of people whom our experience has demonstrated are the least assimilable to our civilization. The public should, however, be reminded that this is only a temporary measure and that discussion of permanent legislation will soon be resumed. When that discussion comes, it should not be forgotten that the arguments against restriction will come chiefly from two sources. The first will be from racial groups seeking, for their relatives abroad, an opportunity to escape religious persecution or economic distress. Our humanitarian sym

pathy with these wishes should be strongly tempered by a regard for our own permanent welfare. The United States has grown to political greatness by the steady development of a political philosophy which is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon race, and which is less a reflection of an intellectual formula than it is a reflection of the character of the people who practise the political doctrine. There is a strange fallacy in the world that political institutions mould a people, whereas the truth is that political institutions merely express a people. Our experience with immigration in the last twenty years has opened our eyes to the fact that our form of government did not make Americans -it was Americans who made our form of government.

The second source of pressure toward the removal of restrictions upon immigration will be those corporations and leaders of industry whose operations call for large bodies of unskilled labor. These men, often overeager for profits and thoughtless of the social consequences, are sometimes willing to scour the most backward regions of the world for human hands that will work at the cheapest price. Even from a business point of view, this is in the long run a mistaken theory of business; from a social and governmental point of view it is a short-sighted and ruinous policy. The most valuable product of a country is its recurrent crop of citizens. No temporary considerations of business expediency should be allowed to stand in the way of restrictions that will assure us that our future citizens shall perpetuate the political traditions and the social order which have made this country what it is.

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The Cahokia Mound

N EFFORT is now being made to excavate the Cahokia Mound in Illinois, a few miles east of St. Louis. The hope is that evidences of the state of civilization of pre-historic man in the United States will be unearthed by the scientists who are making the investigation. The Mound Builders antedate the Indians, and the pyramids of earth they left in the Mississippi basin are probably the oldest evidences of human life on this continent. Scores of these earth heaps originally occupied the site of St. Louis, but they were demolished to make way for the building of the city, many years ago, and no systematic work of searching for relics of their builders was undertaken at that time. Fortunately, however, the largest of the Mounds was across the river and if sufficient funds are raised to finance the work, the way is now open to make a thorough study of this

monument.

Already enough relics have been unearthed to demonstrate that the builders were men of the Stone Age, that they had certain religious beliefs indentical with some beliefs in East India, and certain burial customs similar to those of the Egyptians, It is fairly certain, too, that they had a knowledge of astronomy, as the Cahokia Mound is accurately placed foursquare with the cardinal points of the compass a knowledge which was not possessed by their successors, the American Indians.

The study of ancient civilizations in America has been greatly advanced in recent years and the WORLD'S WORK will publish, in an early issue, an account of one of the most interesting of those civilizations, which has hitherto not been widely described. The magazine expects later to publish important facts about the discoveries of the Cahokia Mound. The work there is being done under the direction of Warren K. Moorehead, and is under the auspices of the State Museum of Illinois.

Junior Governments

HE town of Glen Ridge, N. J. has recently blossomed out with a full fledged junior government. Each officer of the regular senior government has as an understudy a boy or girl between the ages of 16 and 21. of 16 and 21. These boys and girls were chosen -some elected and others appointed by those elected by the boys and girls in the town

council of adults to whom the junior citizens and officials may go for aid and advice.

Although in office only a few weeks, these young officials have already tackled several real problems. On the invitation of the Chief of Police their police force is helping the adult force, particulary in respect to motor ordinance violations. They have petitioned the court to turn over to them all such violations committed by minors for them to handle at least in the form of recommendatory decisions. They also have undertaken to help catch stray dogs. They have petitioned the Board of Education to allow a junior to sit in at their meetings as a listener and to present their point of view when called upon. On the suggestion of one of the Junior Councilmen that a dam could be constructed at the falls of a small river which could generate enough electricity to light the town at half the present cost of electricity the junior Mayor appointed a committee to investigate the subject with the understanding that if the findings indicated there might be value in the suggestion the matter should be laid before the regular City Council for consideration. The Junior Mayor in response to a resolution of his City Council, has appointed a "National Publicity Committee" to carry the gospel of junior government to other towns. They have persuaded the young people of the neighboring town of Bloomfield to start a similar government. Some of the Oranges are doing likewise. Initial steps have been taken in Newark. In New York City a single district is in process of organization.

This experiment was initiated by that well known social inventor, or social doctor as he likes to be called, William R. George, of the George Junior Republic. Mr. George was one of the first Americans to wake up to a realization that young people do not automatically become American citizens on reaching the age of twenty-one, any more than they automatically become carpenters, milliners, farmers, or lawyers at that age. Just as they must be specially trained for these callings so they must be trained for citizenship. As a matter of fact, boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 21 not only lack means for training in citizenship, but they lack almost entirely the social training which such organizations as the Boy Scouts of America and the Camp Fire Girls give them up to that age.

A recent investigation in connection with

fact that in New York City alone there are over 100,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 21 who have absolutely no occupation. Not only are they not being trained for citizenship but they are by default being trained for vagrancy and crime.

The voluntary committee in charge of this movement is known as Self-Government, Inc., and has an office at 90 Broadway, New York City, N. Y. If the present experiments warrant it they expect to spread junior governments throughout the country, taking six to ten cities and towns at a time as organizing units, until eventually some considerable proportion of the approximately 20,000,000 young people who reach the voting age each year shall have had some degree of training as junior citizens.

Honesty in Business

HE old maxim that "honesty is the best policy" has received a new twist by reason of the operation of the Federal Reserve System. So far as a man's business touches upon banking, the maxim may have to be revised to read that "honesty is the only policy.". Any business man who has had to fill out a "Federal Reserve Bank Statement Form" realizes this. He is asked to give a "statement of all assets and liabilities and other material information for the purpose of obtaining advances on notes and bills bearing our signature or endorsement, and for obtaining credit generally."

That is a fairly comprehensive request, but it does not stop with these generalities. Blank spaces are provided for just the items the bank wants to know about. Under assets, it demands the explicit facts about cash on hand and in banks, bills receivable, notes receivable, merchandise, land and buildings, and machinery and fixtures. But this is not all. Details are demanded. Concerning assets in the form of merchandise, the statement asks these searching questions: On what basis valued, cost or market? How much is finished goods, how much unfinished, how much raw? If any goods are on consignment, state amount and circumstances.

Further particulars are required concerning accounts and notes receivable: If any are past due or doubtful, if any are pledged, if any amounts are due from directors, officers, em

ployees, subsidiaries, branches, or other sources. Other questions are these: If the company has any subsidiaries or branch offices, state how their accounts are handled. What is the practice of the company in regard to trade discounts? Are your books audited by a certified public accountant? Give date of last audit.

The corporation that has to supply this kind of information to its bankers on demand is likely to conclude after awhile that dishonesty is too complicated to be profitable. In answering these questions, it is hard to invent lies that are plausible enough to deceive the discerning banker. Concerns that were disposed to be dishonest found the cost of dishonesty mounting when they had to make out income tax returns for a distant and impersonal government. But these perplexities are nothing to the puzzle of fooling the man whom you ask to lend you money.

The Federal Reserve inquiries set a standard for business men to check their efforts by. The income tax return might do a similar service, but the taxes have been so discriminatory as to divert much energy from honest business toward devious ways of evading taxes. But once the taxes are decently adjusted they, too, will help teach many business' men principles of sound business practice. Such principles, for example, as the virtues of an outside audit of their books, the correct method of accumulating reserves and of depreciating materials and machinery, and the doubtful value of a policy of selling goods on consignment. And above all, the value of thinking straight, of knowing the facts, and of facing the facts, and if anything is going wrong, of doing something about it without delay. These things create success, and the man who is succeeding usually hasn't time to be dishonest.

A Plan to Aid the Small Town Merchant

ERCHANTS in small towns have long felt the need of something that would better their sales. Mail order houses have for years taken a share of the business that would otherwise stay at home, and the automobile has made it easily possible for the small town purchaser to visit cities at distances that were formerly too great to permit frequent trips. Now there has come a plan that aids the small town merchant to increase his business in just the field he serves the best.

In Neosho, Missouri, the merchants had for years endeavored to compete with each otherhad pulled in opposite directions and had reached the conclusion that it didn't quite pay. And then G. R. Lowe, at that time the advertising manager for a nursery company of Neosho, and now recommended to small towns by the Associated Advertising Clubs as a source of information that will help them in their business problems, presented a plan to increase business.

Fundamentally it was only an application of the Golden Rule to business. A business men's club was organized and the merchants decided to help one another. In ten years practice they have found that it pays.

A customer is no longer told by a merchant that a competitor's goods are inferior. Advertisements are honest, and are guaranteed by the business men's association, through whose censorship they pass. Competitors have become friends, and have worked for the improvement of the town, and have proved that in convincing the neighboring farmers of the honesty of the town they have increased business, not only for the town, but also for each individual merchant in it.

But

Nor has the plan initiated in Neosho remained at home. Other towns, in other states, have put it into operation, some with almost no changes and others with alterations. wherever the spirit of the Golden Rule has definitely become a part of the business life of the community, business has prospered.

Sales days, community advertising, advertising censored by the business men's associations, special fairs, meetings with the farmers of the vicinity, stock sales and farmers' auctions, sales pavilions for visiting farmers and rest rooms for their wives and families, all have entered into the operation of the Neosho plan, but all of these are but incidental. The success of the plan results from the application' of the theory that the Golden Rule is practical in business.

of the House of Representatives was held May 17, 1919. This caucus adopted a legislative programme in which it was declared to be their purpose to proceed in the consideration of a "constructive programme of tax legislation."

The message of President Wilson, dated May 20, 1919, and read in Congress on that date, contained, among other recommendations relating to taxation, the following:

I hope that the Congress will find it possible to undertake an early reconsideration of Federal taxes, in order to make our system of taxation more simple and easy of administration and the taxes themselves as little burdensome as they can be made and yet suffice to support the Government and meet all its obligations.

On September 23, 1919, Mr. Joseph W. Fordney, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, announced that the Committee on Ways and Means would soon undertake a study of the internal revenue legislation. In response to Mr. Fordney's request, the Treasury prepared and sent to him, under date of November 3, 1919, nearly one hundred carefully formulated amendments to the rev

enue act.

At the same time there was prepared for the use and assistance of the Committee on Ways and Means a "Digest of Decisions of United States Courts Construing the Internal Revenue Laws, 1909 to 1918, inclusive," which in printed form makes a pamphlet of one hundred and thirty-two pages.

And again on Monday, December 1, 1919, when the Sixty-Sixth Congress assembled in its second session, both President Wilson and Carter Glass, then Secretary of the Treasury, urged immediate action.

The necessity of immediate revision of the tax laws was again called to the attention of the Congress, and specifically to the attention of the Chairman of Ways and Means, by Secretary Houston, in his letter to Mr. Fordney, dated March 17, 1920. The letter is a long one and has been reproduced in the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1920. It contains the following:

In dealing with this subject I may go at once to what is, in many respects, its most vital aspectthe question of early action. Public opinion has not yet awakened to the gravity of the consequences which are likely to follow a failure to simplify the tax law at this legislative session. Unless the necessary amendments be passed now, they will be

delayed in all probability, I understand, until the autumn or winter of the year 1921, with the result— unless they are to disrupt the administrative procedure and confuse the necessary calculations of the taxpayer by being made retroactive-that income and profits taxes must continue to be collected on the basis of the present law until the close of the calendar year 1922 and, in the case of some taxpayers on the so-called fiscal year basis, until the early months of the calendar year 1923. I can not contemplate such delay without the gravest apprehension. An imperfect and uncertain tax affects the future even more adversely than the present.

In its platform of 1920, the Republican party said: "But sound policy equally demands the early accomplishment of that real reduction of the tax burden which may be achieved by substituting simple for complex laws and procedure; prompt and certain determination of the tax liability for delay and uncertainty; tax laws which do not, for tax laws which do, mulct the consumer or needlessly repress enterprise and thrift." It advocated the making of Treasury regulations effective from acts of approval and giving the Treasury power to make final settlements.

In December, 1920, Secretary Houston submitted his report to the Congress, in which he recommended early action and outlined again the desirable course of action in taxation. Secretary Mellon has several times since urged action and has made substantially the same recommendations as his predecessors. It has taken three years after both parties publicly committed themselves to tax revision for a tax revision to pass Congress. The Republican party controlled Congress all that time. Whether Republican control is to blame or whether Congress regardless of party has become incompetent, the result is deplorable. On this most important matter-one of the primary tasks of a government-Congress has signally failed to keep up with the country's needs. The contemplation of this record by the taxpayers ought to stimulate public interest in the reform of the organization of our national government so that it can meet national necessities. It is evident that the measures the administration stands for, except the undesirable tariff, could have been passed as early as 1919 or 1920 and would have been approved by Mr. Wilson. More than seven months of complete Republican control have elapsed and there is still no decisive action. What is the matter with Congress?

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One Million Volts

HE recent laboratory demonstration that electricity can be transmitted at a pressure of one million volts has an immediately practical meaning to the people west of the Mississippi River. It means that electrical current can be transmitted commer

cially over power lines one thousand miles long. This establishes the feasibility of the Colorado River project, where it is proposed to generate several million hydroelectric horsepower above the Grand Canyon, and carry this power to cities as remote as Denver, Boise, San Francisco, and El Paso. Waters that now tumble uselessly through canyons in an unpopulated desert will serve the necessities of man in a hundred towns and on thousands of ranches scattered over a third of the United States.

In the laboratory experiments the amperage, or quantity of electricity, transmitted was small. Only the voltage, or pressure at which the current was forced over the wires, was high. But experience with commercial transmission in California has proved that the current lost by dispersion into the air at high pressures does not increase proportionately with the increase of the pressure. The percentage of lost current at 60,000 volts over the loss at 10,000 volts is ⚫ greater than the loss that occurs between 60,000 and 110,000 volts. Hence transmission Hence transmission at one million volts is not prohibitively costly.

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A Story from Albemarle County

ROM the heart of old Virginia comes a story which should be inspiring to business men in younger communities. Like the historic county of Albemarle, in which the scene is laid, the tale is full of picturesque contrasts. It involves the descendants of Hessian prisoners, captured during the Revolution and moving pictures; the ancient prejudices of a most conservative people and their amazing response to a modern appeal; the ideals of Thomas Jefferson-and the business policy of a small city bank.

Albemarle is a country of bright red soil, green wooded mountains, and purple distances, lying on the shoulders of the Blue Ridge. In the county lie not only "Monticello," the mountain-top home of Thomas Jefferson, but "Ash Lawn," country seat of James Monroe, and "Pine Knot," where Theodore Roosevelt went to hunt wild turkeys, while just over its

border is "Montpelier," the old estate of James Madison. Settled for more than two centuries, Albemarle has never, until very recently, had even the beginning of hard roads. Famous for its fruit-the Albemarle pippin has been for seventy years the "court apple" of Englandthe county has never raised enough food for its own people. Home of Jefferson, apostle of popular education, it has had more than its share of adult white illiterates. Seat of a great medical school and hospital, it has never until the last year had a county medical officer. But now!

In 1920 the Peoples National Bank of Charlottesville, the county seat, decided that the growth of its business was wrapped up in the development of the rural resources of Albemarle. It established a Department of Rural Development, with H. R. Boswell, a successful and intelligent farmer, at its head. His plan was to put organizing energy back of the regular county officials, keeping the bank in the background. Within a year the bank added 2,700 accounts to its list, nine tenths of them those of farmers. Some of the gold deposited had been buried under mountain hearthstones for twenty years.

Through Mr. Boswell the bank organized and partly financed a triple coöperative campaign on the part of the County Farm Agent, the County Superintendent of Schools, and the County Health Officer. The appointment of the last official was secured through an appropriation by the local Red Cross. Better farming methods, better schools, better health conditions, and better roads were the objects.

The bank secured a moving picture machine, good films, and an operator. It sent out invitations in the name of the three officials to public meetings in schools and churches in all parts of the county. The first year thirty five meetings were held and three quarters of all the rural population of the county attended them.

When the work started there was one accredited rural high school; now there are ten. An agricultural high school is being built in each of the five districts. The farmers voluntarily raised for school purposes 20 per cent. more money than the total amount of the county school tax. They paid bonuses to get better teachers and built permanent cottage homes for the rural teachers. Every country school in the county has been furnished with an excellent phonograph and records.

The bank held corn and apple shows in its