Bryan's campaign of 1908 is said to have been the smallest of the generation: it was $33,786. Other expenses of that campaign — the model of cheapness-were: postage, $37,452; telegrams, $13,761; telephone, $2,199; expressage, $13,061; publicity bureau, $88,899; organization of states, $129,053; labor bureau, $37,401; documents, $142,537. This last-mentioned specification is always the heaviest legitimate charge of the campaign. The preparation and distribution of tons of "literature" is the hardest work of the committee. This year both Republicans and Democrats publish a campaign text book four times the size of a modern novel. Nominally sold, it is really given away to party workers, or at best "charged" to the state organizations. Various portions of these books are printed separately and distributed in vast quantities; for instance, 1,000,000 copies of the text-book "Life" of the Democratic candidate were printed this year. Within a month after its organization the Roosevelt Committee had contracted for $100,000 worth of printing alone. At the end of the first month the Democratic Committee estimated that its printing and distribution of "literature" would cost $250,000. This is apart from what is known as "publicity." For that — namely, the services of experienced newspaper men in the preparation of "copy," the gathering and distribution of news favorable to the candidate, the preparation and distribution of plate matter for country newspapers, etc., etc. each of the parties will this year spend at least $100,000. In addition to documents, pictures of the candidates and campaign buttons are freely distributed. The Bull Mooses beThe Bull Mooses began the campaign by ordering 2,500,000 buttons; 5,000,000 Wilson and Marshal buttons were ordered. This is probably a sheer waste of money. The Secretary of the Roosevelt National Committee made a special point of it that the Committee would take no advantage of the Congressional Record method of sending out documents. In other days, In other days, the country was flooded with political tracts inserted in the Record under the "leave to print" rule. It is the common belief that all this matter is printed and mailed at the expense of the Government, but this is not quite the fact. The Government pays for only a limited edition of the Record a few thousand copies. Then Members and Senators may order any number of copies, but they have to pay for the paper and printing. Postage, however, is free, and the great saving is there. All the National Committees this year take this high ground, that they will not use the Record to get documents out postage-free, though naturally they cannot prevent well-meaning but less conscientious Representatives and Senators from doing so at a considerable saving of their own postage bill. Early this summer the Taft campaign committee dickered for $250,000 worth of placard advertising — perhaps another waste. There will be no such item as $129,000 for the "organization of states" this year in any committee's report. The new law requiring the publication of campaign finances stipulates that vouchers shall acknowledge every expenditure of more than $5. The states will be helped — Maine was helped by all the Committees but in legitimate ways only. It is too much to expect that no money will be corruptly used, but it is certain that no publicly known committee or agent for the collection of money can use it otherwise than for purposes such as can be fully justified before the public. Four years ago the Democratic National Committee spent about $900,000; the Republican Committee expenditures were never revealed; two millions was an estimate commonly accepted. This year the Wilson organization started with the intention of making a low record, but later the great demand for "literature" and the prospects of contributions induced the leaders to draw up a budget of nearly $1,000,000. By the time this is printed much later figures will be made public, but it may now be safely predicted that $1,000,000 will be about the average of the three committees' expenditures. DISCOVERING THE SCHOOLHOUSE G OVERNOR WILSON and Mr. Roosevelt a little while ago discovered the schoolhouse. That is to say, they reminded the people that it is their building, that it is usually occupied six or seven hours a day for five days a week for a part of the year and is a dead waste the rest of the time. Now merely to occupy a public building to keep it from remaining empty is no very worthy ambition: you can waste your time in a schoolhouse as easily as you can waste it anywhere else. But, if you take the trouble to go to the schoolhouse and your neighbors take the same trouble, you are pretty sure not to waste it. In the first place, you will come to know one another better: that is much. You may have a political discussion: that would be instructive. You may have a movingpicture show: that, if well chosen, will be interesting. You may have a lecture on hogs or alfalfa or peach-trees or cows or how deep to plow or the best disposition of kitchen and closet waste or how to get rid of flies or the propagating capacity of fleas or the tariff or the trusts or how to keep potatoes, or you may have a spelling bee or a demonstration how to can tomatoes or to carve a duck or to cure a ham or to make quince jelly or to put up figs; or you may have a chrysanthemum show or you may discuss the different methods of putting running water in the house or the diseases and parasites that we get from dogs, the uselessness of cats; or you may find out precisely how the referendum has worked in Oregon, or the Torrens land system in Australia - if you are the right man or woman in your community you can find out what will most keenly interest the neighborhood and you can bring that thing to pass to the better acquaintance of those that live about you, to the encouragement of many who think alone, and to the building-up of the mightiest of all things under the sun, viz., an organized public opinion on some subject worth while. Incidentally, of course, you'll presently go far toward making the every-day "exercises" of the school a real human performance that touches life, that rests on the earth, that has to do with present things and that will really affect the lives of the children. If you are persistent, you may even discover that there are children of all ages, that a schoolhouse is a good thing for old folks as well as young, that the period of instruction never ends. Perhaps it will occur to you some day that an earnest man or woman may learn anything anywhere and that your own neighborhood contains most interesting people, and that you are fortunate to live among them. The first law of progress is to wake up! Governor Wilson and Mr. Roosevelt are conveniently repeating what thousands of American people are constantly finding for themselves to be true. A NEW SORT OF PROCLAMATION LITTLE while ago the farmer was a "hayseed," a countryman with long chin-whiskers, who wore big boots. Processes of farming- any fool could plant corn and cotton and wheat and gather the crop; and public attention was paid to agriculture chiefly when the total crop-yields were considered as freight for railroads and steamers. That was the prevalent public mood. The present public mood is shown by the following proclamation by the Governor of Virginia: SEED CORN PROCLAMATION WHEREAS, the production of corn in sufficient quantities means plenty of cattle and hogs, and plenty of cattle means plenty of grass and hay and a considerable increase of improved lands; and WHEREAS, good crops of corn must largely depend upon the seed used: and WHEREAS, by experiments published in circular ninety-five, issued by the Seed Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture, the average germination of Virginia corn is greater than in any other State in the Union; and WHEREAS, the time is approaching for the selection of seed for the next two years, as it is always desirable to have seed for one year ahead: Governor of Virginia, do earnestly request the Now, therefore, I, William Hodges Mann, farmers of the State to thoroughly inform themselves upon this most important matter, and while the corn is in the field to select seed for the next two years, and if crops permit, for sale to their less fortunate neighbors and to people in other States. I suggest that corn selected for seed be taken from stalks eight or ten feet high, free from smut or disease, bearing two or more ears about four feet from the ground. The selected stalks should be marked and left in the field until the corn is dry, then shucked and put in a dry place protected from rats and mice. During the winter, from the corn marked in the field, the seed corn should be carefully selected; the ideal ear is nearly cylindrical in shape, tapering only slightly from butt to tip; the butt should be abrupt, the rows of corn should be straight and compact, commencing close to the shank and extending clear over the end of the cob to the tip. These suggestions are made because frequent experiments have demonstrated that good seed corn very largely increases the yield. Given under my hand and the Lesser Seal of the Commonwealth at Richmond, this third day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twelve, and in the one hundred and thirty-seventh year of the Commonwealth. WILLIAM HODGES MANN. By the Governor It is a long way from one conception of the farmer to the other; and the journey from one to the other reveals a prodigious change in public thought. How healthful the change is it were useless to say. SIDE-LIGHTS ON FOOD PRICES T HE food consumed by New York City costs, at the railroad and steamer terminals, 350 millions of dollars a year; but when it gets to the consumers' kitchens it costs 500 millions a year. The New York State Food Investigating Commission has made a study of the food supply of the biggest city, and reaches this conclusion, among others. The high cost of food in a large city is beyond doubt due in very large part to the chaotic and uneconomical system of handling which it undergoes. The New York Commission, after careful investigation, charged this increase of 45 per cent. in the cost of New York's food to waste and not to excessive profits. It proposes reformed methods of food distribution, which it believes would save the city at least 60 millions a year. Every city is a problem by itself, and the New York Commission's recommendations might be of small value to other places. But there can be no doubt that the local distribution of food, almost everywhere stupidly indirect and wasteful, is a factor of expensive living that well deserves looking into everywhere. Of general interest, however, are many of the Commission's observations respecting the habits, preferences, and idiosyncrasies of the people in relation to the cost of their food. Everybody knows, of course, that the people who buy by telephone pay the highest price and get the least for their money, but this investigation has brought out the fact that the telephone has generally increased prices because it has multiplied deliveries. The housekeeper who used to make out one daily list nowadays seizes the 'phone and sends thing she wants. She always wants imin an order every time she thinks of anymediate delivery. The delivery system now adds from 5 per cent. (in the case of the big store) to 15 per cent. (in the case of the corner grocery) to the cost of the article. The sensible proposal is made that enterprising grocers and butchers give a coupon, redeemable in goods, for every purchase taken away personally. The New York Commission believes that the extraordinary price now charged for steaks and chops is traceable to the increase of small apartments, without cellars or pantry room, and to the gasstove. City people living thus soon forget that there are such things as roasts and stew-meat. They forget, too, that food can be bought in bulk instead of in cans. Of canned goods the Commission has a good deal to say. Last year the canned goods trade of New York City was almost 150 millions of dollars. Canned goods are expensive. They sometimes run 10 or 12 ounces to the pound. Package goods average 40 per cent. more in cost than the same goods in bulk. The trading-stamp adds 3 per cent. It is, of course, an unmitigated nuisance and an expensive folly, but many people in this world like to think they are getting something for nothing. More foresight in buying goods in bulk and in buying personally instead of by telephone will save money for the householder. A coöperative marketing association with the neighbors would save more. Fewer deliveries and fewer commercial frills like trading stamps will save money for the retail dealers. Behind all this, in New York and in most other cities, comprehensive facilities for efficient food distribution are wofully needed. THE NEW HEALTH CONSCIENCE D R. MCLAUGHLIN of the Federal Health Service is authority for the estimate that at least 25,000 persons in the United States die every year from typhoid a greater sacrifice of life than the bubonic plague or cholera causes in the Orient, and a far greater economic loss. And it is a national humiliation that this loss in the United States should be so very much greater than in European countries. Thirty-three cities of northern Europe with a population of 31,500,000 had an average death-rate from typhoid over a recent period of 6 in every 100, 000; and 25 American cities with a population of 20,000,000 have had a recent annual death-rate of 25 in every 100,000. The economic loss caused by typhoid cases that are not fatal the weeks of illness and the cost of care and nursing — are estimated at 100 millions of dollars a year. All this because of a disease that can be prevented mainly by sanitary control of the water supply; and, this failing, now by inoculation. The local health-officer in many communities is a country doctor without power - till an epidemic breaks out without vigilance, and without the habit of doing things. The general ignorance of danger is a disgrace to what we call "education." From the country home, where the pig-pen has been carefully built so that it will drain into the well, to the cities on our great lakes, the lack of knowledge, of care, of regulation, of authority, are relics of the primitive period of thought when disease was regarded as a direct visitation of God for our sins. We have been giving much time and thought these months to a great political campaign to decide who shall be President a matter well worth while, of course; but it is of much less importance who shall be President than what safeguards shall be thrown around the public health. The giving of compulsory vitality to every health-officer in the land and the choice of the best man in every community for that office and the enactment and enforcement of good health-laws would mean a greater gain to the happiness and to the economic welfare of the people than the election of any man whatsoever to the Presidency. Fair questions for every man to ask himself are such as these: What are the sanitary conditions of my water-supply? What is the law under which I live that ensures the public health? Who are the men with power to enforce these laws? Are they doing their duty? II There is now enough knowledge of sanitation and of the prevention of disease, if it were applied, to take many of the risks out of life and to add very appreciably to the average of its duration; and there is no more useful work than getting this knowledge put to use. knowledge put to use. Such big meetings as the International Congress of Hygiene at Washington and the Conservation Congress at Indianapolis, each with its. exhibits, help; the magazines and newspapers help; everything helps that brings these facts home to the people. But the old-time conventionalities still hold us. captive. For example: if you see a man hurt by an accident, you will instantly run to his rescue and you will call a doctor without a moment's delay. But you will look at an insanitary outhouse on a road that you may travel every day and you will never feel at liberty to tell the owner the danger he runs, nor will you think of calling a sanitary officer's attention to it. Most of our codes of conduct are based on the old-time theory of disease as a dispensation of God - till something sudden happens, such as an accident or an epidemic. The medical profession is very rapidly changing its attitude to the public. The number of public lectures, exhibits, articles, and meetings to put the great facts of preventive medicine into practice that you will recall during the last few years far exceeds the number that you can remember in all your previous life-time. But perhaps the greatest single agency of instruction and publicity is the school. The compulsory attention to pupils' health that has become the law in many communities is waking up the people. Preventive medicine is making its way, too, into the curriculum of the schools. More and more this must go on till the teacher become a practical sanitary expert and the activities of every school begin with health and end with it, too. For you cannot make a better course of study than by working out such a scheme of instruction and of living. F A PRACTICAL CYCLONE DETECTOR ATHER JOSÉ ALGUÉ, director of the Philippine Weather Bureau, has perfected a device by which the approach of cyclonic storms can be detected while they are still five hundred miles and several days away. Of course such a device is of enormous value, especially to the shipping interests, but also to all cities and agricultural regions which, like the Philippines and the West Indies, are subject to violent wind storms. Barocyclonometer is the name of the instrument that Father Algué has invented. In it he has combined the familiar uses of the barometer and the weather vane. But he has gone farther: he has found and applied the knowledge that the air and the wind have special habits peculiar to different places. In the Philippines, for example, a certain normal air pressure may be expected at one season and a very different normal air pressure at another season; and these normal pressures are quite different from those in Japan. The normal direction of the wind also varies. Hence, a certain fall of the barometer in the Philippines at one season means something quite different from the same fall at another season and it means still something else in Japan. Father Algué's barometer is simply specialized to indicate correctly the meaning of changing air pressures in the Philippines only and for the current season. When this barometer, so adjusted, indicates the approach of a storm, the wind disk of the barocyclonometer is consulted. This disk also is specialized, by an exhaustive analysis of an enormous amount of data, so as to indicate the normal direction of the wind for a certain region and what the variations of this wind are at every point in the circle of a cyclonic storm. These variations are so exactly known that the chart of them indicates at once exactly the point of the compass at which the centre of the cyclone lies and approximately its distance from the observer. Periodical observations will therefore reveal the direction in which the cyclone is moving, thus enabling mariners to steer out of their path and cities to protect themselves against them. At the request of the United States Government, Father Algué has recently been studying weather conditions in the West Indies so that he may specialize his instruments for use in that region. If results as successful as those already achieved in the Philippines can be obtained in the Atlantic, property worth millions will be saved from destruction. ON LAND AND SEA AND IN THE AIR M R. THOMAS A. EDISON has perfected a home electrical generating plant which he hopes will make the detached householder independent of public service corporations by putting all modern electrical conveniences within reach of even the most isolated houses. There are two parts to this plant; an extremely simple gasolene engine, which runs without attention just long enough to charge a capacious set of storage batteries, when it automatically stops; and a device which maintains the current pressure on the distributing wires at a constant and safe voltage. In a model house in Llewellyn Park, near his laboratory, Mr. Edison uses one of these plants to light, heat, and |