son for this proposal is suspected that the number of "Democratic" members may be made larger, members whose general interpretation of the Constitution is Jeffersonian rather than Hamiltonian, or members who are "progressive" in their temperaments. Assuming that the new justices who would be appointed are men of learning and of character, there is no good reason to quarrel with such a motive. For even on the Supreme Bench there is room and even need of such diversity of views and of temperaments as will keep the Court contemporaneous with the people whom it serves.

L

TARIFF TALES RETOLD

AST year Congressman William C. Redfield, of Brooklyn, N. Y., deRedfield, of Brooklyn, N. Y., demolished a favorite argument of the high protectionists by pointing out that "the difference in cost of production at home and abroad" was a mere catch-phrase because high wages do not necessarily mean high labor cost, for a highly paid American laborer may often does produce enough more than a cheap European laborer to make up the difference in wages and more. The newspapers gave Mr. Redfield's acute observation much attention, as it deserved; and Mr. Wilson quoted his argument with great effect in the campaign.

Forty-eight years ago Arthur Perry, professor of history and political economy in Williams College, published his "Elements of Political Economy." He showed that high wages do not necessarily mean a high labor cost, because the cost of labor is the net result of the wages compared with the efficiency of the laborer and the dearness of the money in which he is paid.

In other words, Mr. Redfield independently rediscovered an idea that was forgotten about thirty years ago. This is another example of a curious truth: that with perhaps two exceptions, every argument that was made for or against the tariff in the last campaign was made by somebody before 1837. In the clash and excitement of to-day's affairs, we sometimes forget that the tariff was an issue a hundred years ago.

For examples: just after the War of 1812, Samuel D. Ingham began bidding for the "farmer vote" for high tariffs by declaring that protection would assure a home market for the products of agriculture. In 1816, Thomas Telfair, of Georgia, introduced an argument against protection that is in good use yet, namely: "Revenue will be transferred from the consumer to the manufacturer, and will be paid by the people not to the Government but to individuals." The Congressional debate on the tariff in 1823 brought out the familiar argument that protection would destroy competition and would give great capitalists a monopoly, thus putting the wealth of the country in few hands; and the counter-argument that protection, by making manufactures stable, would attract capital, multiply factories, and thereby promote competition. In 1824, Henry Clay favored protection because it would build up home markets for the manufacturers.

In 1840, about the last original argument on the tariff was invented. The protectionists of 1812 had praised high tariffs because they would protect capital against the exorbitant demands of labor. In those days laborers in some states had no votes. In 1840 nearly everybody had votes, and Horace Greeley was bidding for them for protection because protection would defend the laborers against European competition.

No doubt we shall hear much oratory and some arguments on the tariff in Congress after this month. Studious men will find interesting exercise in re-reading their histories of economics to learn whether these many words are shedding new light on an old subject or whether they are merely new clouds obscuring the face of the old truths.

The losses will be enormous, and they will fall mainly on those who can ill bear the burden. Almost every tenth man has an interest in city lots, in rubber plantations in Central America, in pecan orchards in Georgia, in French gardens in Louisiana, or in cut-over timber lands in Mississippi.

This, of course, means speculative investments in land; and it is true. Worse yet much of this activity is as much a game of chance as the buying of lottery tickets; for the buyers have never seen the property that they have invested in. Any man who buys land or an interest in land that he has never seen is (to use language of great self-restraint) a fool. Yet these purchases put prices high and for a time keep them high and add to the cost of living and of dying. It is a rise in apparent or temporary values that is not any real increase of wealth, but only a speculative increase.

If there were a way to divert this dangerously spent money to the improvement of agricultural lands, it would make a great increase in real values and add definite wealth to the country. But the speculator and the promoter do not plow the ground and sow wheat or plant corn or cotton nor reap them nor add food and clothing to the world's supply. And these are the only uses of the land that surely make living cheaper and life happier. If you would put your life on a sure economic basis that will stand the test of time, put money into the enrichment and the improvement of land on which things of value grow. Moth doth not corrupt that nor can thieves break through and steal; nor can change nor circumstance nor panic take it away

The State Board of Public Affairs made an investigation of rural schools this, in Wisconsin, remember; and a part of its report follows:

"Two schools in one township were held in private homes. In both cases the schools were attended by one family only. In each case the school board paid to the owner of the house $12 a month rent for a room to school his own children, $5 a month for fuel for heating this room in his own house, and $5 a month

janitor fee for cleaning this same room.

In addition the family received $16 a month for boarding the teacher. In one case the

school room was in an attic but it was clean and tidy. The teacher used it as a sleeping room. But one pupil was enrolled. In the other case two pupils were enrolled. The school room was in a log house which was filthy, dark, and dingy. The room while used for school purposes was used by the family as if no school was there."

The WORLD'S WORK is informed that there are neighborhoods in New York where a similar misuse of school funds has been going on a long time.

Now these are not typical of the schools in either of these states; but they are typical of the misuse of public money without proper supervision and local responsibility everywhere. The key to the proper supervision of rural schools is, of course, the county superintendent. If there be no proper supervision of this sort, these pious frauds are most likely to happen. Everybody knows, for example, how many of the colleges to which the National Government made a grant to teach agriculture, for many years used this fund to pay for ordinary academic instruction in several instances to pay professors of Greek! There was not proper supervision of the fund. There is seldom proper supervision of a fund that comes from a distance. As a rule, the farther public money goes to be spent, the more likely it is to be misspent.

II

Of course there are other and more serious objections to the National Government's making appropriations to schools. One is, where is the money to come from? The Government now costs about a billion a year - $10 for every man, woman,

and child. To have any effect on our wide area, an educational scheme would cost many millions a year.

There are other objections also. But perhaps these are enough to show that there is room for at least an honest difference of opinion, without warranting the accusation of an indifference to education. In general, it may be said that no people or community is ever educated by a superimposed activity. Persons from a distance may show them how. But they themselves must do the work and must pay the bill.

"GOOD BUSINESS" AND FAR

A

SIGHTED

BANK in Grenada, Miss., offers to lend to any farmer who will buy land to cultivate within seven miles of the Grenada court house as much as three fourths of its value and to lend on a residence built on such land as much as half its cost, for five years at 4 per cent., with the privilege of renewal for five years at 5 per cent. The same bankers make the same offer at other towns in that state.

A farmer, therefore, who goes there will need of his own cash only one fourth of what his land will cost and one half what his house will cost.

Assuming that the land is fertile and that there is no hidden real estate "boom" in this offer, it is both fair and generous, and it is not "philanthropy." A good farmer can earn this interest and make enough to pay the debt in less than ten years; and the banker can afford to lend money at this rate if he be, as he evidently is, a wiser man than to wish to get rich quick. For he will build up a profitable patronage for his bank for a long time to come as he builds up the country round about him. It is "good business."

THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY

R

AYMOND POINCARÉ becomes

the ninth President of France since the establishment of the Republic in 1871, after the fall of Paris before German arms. The length of term created by the Constitution is seven years, and during the forty-two years of the Republic's existence, its Presidents have actually served on an average six years. each. First came Thiers, who was forced to resign; then MacMahon, who also had to resign; then Grévy, who resigned during his second term; Sadi-Carnot, who was shot by an Italian anarchist; CasimirPérier, who resigned mysteriously after a few months; Faure, who died mysteriously in office; Loubet, and finally Fallieres.

It was intended that the President of France should govern, and Theirs did in fact reign until a reaction against his dictatorial conception of his office led to a coalition in the National Assembly that drove him from his seat. Marshal MacMahon was a curious combination of strength and incompetency, and his resignation also was exacted. With MacMahon's fall the principle was established that the National Assembly (which chooses the President), and not the President himself, should be the seat of authority. Thenceforward, at least until the present day, the history of the French presidency has been a catalogue of inoffensive men without strong opinions, or at least without the ambition to assert them.

Raymond Poincaré is a type of man to which the office has not been entrusted since the days of Marshal MacMahon. He was far more powerful as Premier than he will be as President - unless he alters the tradition of the presidency. He will indeed appoint Premiers, but he will be expected to appoint the obvious choice of the National Assembly. He will nominally choose Cabinets, but actually he will be the servant of his Cabinet. part in the governing of France will be to give official stamp to the acts of his ministers. Certainly, he may refuse to obey his ministers, and they will resign. but only to give way to another set who in turn will exact the President's acqui

His

escence in their acts.

Thus, MacMahon

had eight Cabinets and had to resign because he could not form another. Grévy, with the éclat of election to a second term upon him, gave up the struggle because, having tried twelve sets of ministers, he could not gather another set.

The later Presidents have been wiser and weaker; they have accepted their limitations. Fallieres was the merest figure-head; bucolic, close-fisted, unaspiring, he drew his $120,000 a year for seven years, saved most of it, performed a few formal functions, and let the Government run its course without suggestion of interference from its titular head. Poincaré can hardly relapse into a Fallieres or even into a Loubet. But if he attempt to make the Elysée Palace a seat of power, if he attempt to recover the great authority which the Constitution confers upon the President but which has been usurped by the Cabinet, he will have to calculate against the fact that in France the President is the creation and the servant of the French Assembly, and not of the French people. His only hope would seem to lie in finding a way in which to make a direct appeal to the nation, to the people. By reputation, France's new President is of the stuff to attempt such a thing.

ness man

The library appeals to the city's busias business men, not as readers of literature, but as practical users of every printed thing that can help them to make better things more cheaply and to find new markets. And it is helping them to hold trade in Newark.

"Where can I buy a golf club?" John Smith, busy merchant, asks the library over the telephone; or perhaps it is a load of coal, or a pair of gloves. And at the other end of the wire the young lady at the Business Branch, which is in the heart of the business section of the city, tells him. where to get them in Newark.

For she has consulted the "Made-inNewark Index." This idea had been in Mr. Dana's mind for some years. Newark is essentially a manufacturing city. In June, 1911, letters were sent out by the library to 2,100 manufacturing concerns in the city, asking for either their catalogues or a description of their products. In a few weeks practically every manufacturer was indexed alphabetically under every kind of goods that he manufactured. Then the Board of Trade took up the idea and gave it financial backing, and soon the list will be distributed broadcast.

Mr. Dana is dissipating the once prevalent idea that a library is a mere repository for books "for men who read novels and nice old ladies who read Shakespeare." He is proving that a library can be maintained for more than the bookreading public. He invites its patrons to ask practical questions of every day life; and they are accepting his invitation from the publicist who asked for a list of books and magazine articles on coöperation to the lady who wanted "some information on the cultivation of mushrooms." The library answers more than 1,000 questions every day. The deciphering of a cablegram is often a tedious task. The Business Branch does it quickly and cheerfully. Mr. Dana says:

Lots of people think the library is a place where they can get the latest novel or book of travel. But they don't think of asking how to make hair tonics, or to plant poppies, or to choose the best story books for their children, or to find the position of planets in 1914, or the value of the grosbeak to farmers, or the best hotel to stop at in Detroit and its rates. Yet the library can answer all these questions.

The City Plan Commission, appointed in June, 1911, and of which Mr. Dana is a member, engaged experts to recommend changes in streets, the routing and extension of trolley lines, and other plans to improve Newark. To awaken the interest of the people the Commission has installed a City Plan Exhibition in the library building, and here are shown maps, charts, photographs, etc., gathered by the experts. The library publishes a monthly house organ, The Newarker, edited and largely

written by Mr. Dana himself - a dignified and readable publication which not only explains the library's resources but which discusses, also, current municipal topics of interest to the people.

Mr. Dana is making the Newark Library render a new kind of service, and he is setting an inspiring example which public librarians in other cities might emulate with profit to their people.

SINGING COUNTRY FOLK INTO THEIR OWN

This rings true:

I am the minister of a country church and I am enthusiastic regarding the enriching of country life. I herewith submit to you a paragraph. I know Ontario rural life well. I am a farmer's son. I am a graduate of Queen's University. I have taught a rural school.

And this is the paragraph:

Country people used to sing a great deal more and a great many of them used to sing better than they do now. At a husking-bee or a logging-bee it was no unusual thing for the evening to be spent in singing songs or in dancing. The dancing is still with us, though it is a great deal more formal than it was in the old days. The singing seems to have quite vanished, and more's the pity. In the earlier days nearly every township, during the fall and winter months, had its singing school. Only pleasant memories remain of the old-fashioned singing school. Singing was the one form in which art was studied then and, in many cases, it proved to be the gateway to better things. It did a great deal to redeem the necessarily narrow life from sordidness.

There are now scores of young people who would be benefited by attending just such gatherings. They have talent, but the conservatory is out of the question. There are others who can sing well but who do not feel justified in spending the time or the money to enter the ranks of the professionals. It is refreshing to learn that there is in some places a revival of

this old-time means of culture. It will make the rural church a better place to go to and more men will sing at their labor, and that means not only more work and better work, but more happiness and contentment.

This is as true in the United States as in Canada. The interesting question obtrudes itself: How did it happen that the

country singing school went out of fashion? Has country life these thirty or forty years not merely stood still? Has it declined?

More important, however, is the fact that singing, like many other good social customs, seems coming back into fashion.

SAVING The wasteS IN
CHARITY

HE Waterloo, la., Association of Charities and Corrections directs all the private charities of the city by a single body of citizens, and makes the County Overseer of the Poor its sole disbursing agent. The system has been in operation five years, and it shows advantages in operating economy and directness in obtaining effects of much merit.

One half of the board of fourteen directors of the Association are elected every year at a meeting of delegates representing the hundred and more churches, civic organizations, and fraternal orders of the city. The Overseer of the Poor is an ex-officio member of the board and superintendent of the Association. He receives a salary of twenty dollars a month from October to April inclusive, and ten dollars a month during the rest of the year. He responds to all calls for assistance, charging, by the authority of his office, to the county the expenses that justly belong to it, and checking upon the treasury of the Association for needful help that is not chargeable to the county. This arrangement places at the right moment the only agent who can immediately decide whether he is dealing with a county case or not, and who under all contingencies can furnish prompt relief. The superintendent gives the nurses of the Association enough. money to provide food, fuel, and shelter for not more than twenty-four hours for persons in urgent need. The nurses are required periodically to visit the residence of every county charge to investigate the sanitary conditions and to enforce rules of proper living. For this work, and other necessary services, the county contributes a fair remuneration to the funds of the Association. The superintendent may give store credit to persons temporarily out of money and unwilling, or not en