two vital questions to the "wage-contract," it has held quite aloof.

Both sides have ignored us. The employer has told us over and over again that he is perfectly capable of taking care of his own business. And labor: well Mr. Gompers admitted to me that "without public opinion, the way of the labor reformer is hard." Secretary St. John of the I. W. W. said plainly, when I asked

him what would become of the public in the “death struggle of capital," "The public will have to take care of itself."

Isn't it time the public were taking care, not only of itself, but of the combatants? How can it take part in this war of wars, help straighten out this muddle of muddles, with benefit to all? This we will try to disclose, in the course of the discussion through succeeding chapters.

W

HEN all the ninety and more millions of people in this country have plenty of work to do it is a sign of prosperity that it is hard to discount.

About thirty millions of the ninety, and the most important thirty millions, this fall have been just as busy as they could be harvesting bumper crops. There are now no signs of lower prices for farm products, and that means that the efforts of the 30,000,000 Americans on the soil will be well repaid and that they will have money to prove to the manufacturers again that they constitute the best market on earth.

Elsewhere in this magazine are the figures of these wonderful crops and the opinions of such widely-known agricultural experts as Mr. Henry Wallace and Mr. Eugene H. Grubb.

The presidents of the railroads which have to haul the produce bear testimony to the fact that these good times on the farms will keep the railroads busy. The business of transportation employs about 1,700,000 men, and they are all busy, and they and the other five or six million dependent upon them will have money to spend. President McCrea, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, is quoted in a jubilant interview in the New York Sun:

So far as the outlook for cars for the whole country is concerned it would be impossible to predict. But for the Pittsburg region I will promise the supply of cars will be ample to move the great tonnage created here.

This problem of car shortage depends upon several factors. First there is the question of the ability of the farmers to store their grain. When they are not compelled by financial stress to realize upon it quickly there is not the rush that suddenly brings an acute situation in car distribution.

Farmers have not had such bumper crops in years. If there are storage facilities in their own bins or in their local elevators for the bounteous crops - and I think there are this year - another factor in car shortage is removed. However, regardless of any car shortage, our national prosperity is on the boom, and in my opinion will continue for a long period.

President Brown, of the New York Central, reiterates the same sentiment, emphasizing, however, the fact that the crops are so large that the railroads will have a hard time to handle them.

The United States is going to see, during the next year, the heaviest business in all lines in its history. Crops of all kinds from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast will be perhaps the most abundant of any year in the history of the country.

The traffic in sight is going to tax the ability of the transportation lines to the utmost.

Of the old South, President Finley of the Southern gives a favorable report.

The Harriman Lines are a fair criterion of the Western railroads. When the chairman of them, Judge Lovett, returned to his office recently after a month's trip through the West, he said:

"I have never known crop conditions in that section to be better. I don't know how they could be any better. Business for that reason is unusually fine and the outlook excellent. Labor is very scarce and much of our work has been retarded on that account, particularly new construction."

In the railroad world there are jobs for everybody. The six or seven million who depend upon it will have money to spend.

The next great industry is lumber. Two thirds of a million men work in its manufacture. As Captain J. B. White, of Kansas City, tells elsewhere in this number, the saw mills and lumber yards from one coast to the other are active. The lumberjacks and mill workers will have money, too.

There is plenty of work for the 300,000 miners in the country. The steel mills are behind their orders. Two months ago the unfilled orders of the United States Steel Corporation were larger than at any time in the last five years. And so on from one industry to another. Everywhere that a man wants work there is work for him to do; that is the bottom on which prosperity rests.

GOOD IN SPITE OF POLITICS

BY J. B. WHITE

(PRESIDENT OF THE WHITE LUMBER COMPANY)

P

EOPLE in every generation sing of and wish for the "Good Times Coming," but seldom but seldom stop and count their blessings to find that they have already come. The price of pig iron used to be the guide for some, and the price of pork used to be the barometer for others. When these commodities were high, then there was a market for other commodities, and there was an advance all along the line to a higher level of all values. There was frequently no apparent analogy between the price of pig iron and the price of the farmers' pigs. Yet the sentiment of "pigs is pigs" was in effect the shibboleth shouted throughout the land, and the new period of prosperity was ushered in.

Some gentleman in Cincinnati published several editions of a booklet claiming to show a logical reason why the market prices of pig iron and pork should

be taken as a national basis for the market prices of everything else. Yet there were some that laid their troubles to Wall Street and in periods of depression shouted for currency reform, which they immediately forgot and laid aside for some other hobby when their fortunes were again in the ascendency. Others laid the cause of depression to politics and would say that they wished we had our presidential elections only once in six or eight years.

The farmer calmly walks over his farm in this 1912 year of good crops and good prices, and is not himself worrying over the high cost of living or the cost of high living. He knows that his beef, pork, and mutton cannot be lower in price for several years not even through reciprocity. For Canada is now as hard up for this class of food stuffs as we are. It will take six or eight years to get a sufficient increase in the number of food animals so as to affect materially the price of meat, so long as the demand of the table continues for veal, lamb, and the young of

other species. So he no longer fears political parties, and he knows a demagogue at sight. Time was, when he would take off his hat to his Congressional servants in both the Democratic and the Republican parties for the protection he enjoys from a tariff of 6 cents a pound on butter, 6 cents on cheese, 5 cents a dozen on eggs, $4 a ton on hay, $1.50 a ton on straw, 25 cents a bushel on wheat, 35 cents a bushel on barley, 15 cents a bushel on potatoes, etc., and an almost prohibitive duty on live stock and meats. But in this presidential election, he is happy, and looks complacently on an interested participant as a voter, but not a bitter belligerent in the political struggles of the day. He is prosperous this year; he realizes it; and he is busy making improvements, and buying lumber and other building materials, thus bringing prosperity to other industries.

The lumberman depends upon the farmer; he is prosperous when the farmer is prosperous. To-day the demand has caused advances in building material until lumber is back at the price obtaining just before the panic of 1907. Yet the farmer can buy more lumber with the produce of his farm with the price of a mule, or of a steer or a pig — than at any time within the last thirty years. If lumber should remain at present prices, there is a greater reason for it than for most other commodities; for it takes two or three generations to grow a crop of trees; and at the most the lumberman can harvest only one crop in a lifetime.

On the farm we should practise conservation of the soil and its products. In the forest, in the mills, and everywhere we should reduce waste to the minimum, and conserve all our vital and material resources, everything pertaining and conducive to health and to the moral and physical efficiency of human life.

We should all love our work that there be industry without exhaustion, economy without meanness, frugality without parsimony - wisely discerning that which is good, that there be a sufficiency for all. As the Scripture says, "there is he that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is he that withholdeth more than is meet, yet it tendeth to poverty."

The writer has individually some strong political opinions, but has not expressed them in the above letter. The custom of greatly exaggerating the importance of Presidential elections, as to their influence in bringing or destroying good times regardless of crops and the other conditions, suggested to me the treating of the subject in this manner, and I treat the Nation's farmer in the singular number and his views in the abstract, not taking into serious account partisan politics; because the farmer, like the laborer, the manufacturer, and the business man, belongs to all parties, and each is a separate industrial force, depending largely upon each other in social and material progress.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF PROSPERITY
BY WILLIAM C. THORNE
(VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF
MONTGOMERY WARD & CO.)

In my opinion, we are on the threshold of prosperity and good times, due, in addition to natural conditions, to the fact that the people as a whole have discovered that nothing has been the matter at any time in the past few years. They are waking up to the fact that all the clouds on the horizon were imaginary and that underlying conditions justified prosperous times and existed continually and steadily-but the fact of their existence was obscured by a feeling of unrest and disquiet which had no real cause.

The political pot has boiled over. Every one has been worrying about it and in previous years there has been a period of unrest and indecision until the campaign was settled one way or another. We are very glad to note that the times are such and conditions are so stable that the political situation is of less importance from a business standpoint than has been the case in previous presidential years. I am convinced that almost everyone is of the opinion that the country will go on and the wheels will keep on turning and prosperity and good times will prevail, no matter who is elected.

The crops, of course, are tremendous. This situation means the circulation of large sums of money through channels

that are normal and healthy — a condition essential to continued prosperity.

So far as our business is concerned, the indications based upon reports which we have had from all sections of the United States are that things are looking up. It seems to be a unanimous verdict, which is unusual in the year of a presidential election, and it tells very plainly that all hands should wear a cheerful smile and attend to our daily affairs as earnestly and hopefully as we know how, with prospects pointing indisputably to a period of good times ahead.

THE BIGGEST BUSINESS YEAR

BY E. C. SIMMONS

(CHAIRMAN OF SIMMONS HARDWARE COMPANY)

The best way to advise your readers about business is to recite conditions with us, as we have seven houses, which are located in different sections of the country so as to cover the entire United States. Our army of traveling men visit every state in the Union and they make us weekly reports, in a systematic way which has for many years been arranged for them, so as to give us the information we want. From every section come the cheering words of bountiful crops, hopeful feeling among the merchants, and a great demand for goods, to an extent that is taxing the resources of every one of our houses to execute the orders promptly and satisfactorily.

The goods we deal in are not those of fashion or style, but of utility. They are needed on the farm, by the mechanic, and in the household. The number of orders we have received during the last thirty days is unprecedented. The kind of goods called for indicate the building of many houses and barns-in fact, the demand for barn hardware, such as barn door rollers, rail, etc., far outstrips anything ever known before, and many of the farmers appear to be giving their first attention to the building of new barns. to take care of the enormous crops.

The greatest pressure upon us for goods comes from the Northwest to our Sioux City and Minneapolis houses, which supply chiefly the trade of Minnesota and the

two Dakotas. And also the Philadelphia house, which has had great tribute from the Atlantic Coast, from the City of Philadelphia to Florida, inclusive. An interesting feature of the business is that more new stocks are being purchased than ever before. This clearly indicates the starting of many new enterprises, return of confidence to the people, and a healthy condition of finance. For five years, business has halted and has been under a considerable depression from various causes, well known to every intelligent man. These causes now appear to be removed to a great extent or sidetracked.

Usually at this period, before a presidential election, people have their minds diverted into political channels, but not so at present. Under the head of "what the people are talking about," our salesmen report to us that they are taking little or no interest in politics. They refuse the seductions of the "silvertongued" political orator or demagogue or the muckraker. The conversation or talk is chiefly upon the great crops and the prosperity that must follow. It is my opinion that this almost unprecedented demand for goods will continue for a year or more, and almost certainly through the year 1913.

Already we are experiencing great difficulty in obtaining merchandise enough to supply the demand. Many of the factories are away behind with their orders and are asking us to anticipate our wants as far as possible, and, although it is quite early yet to feel the effect of these good crops, it is noticeable that the freight service is not as good as it was four months ago. The railroads are all overtaxed and they are doing their level best to prevent congestion and delay.

I believe that if the Interstate Commerce Commission would permit the railroads who need it to make a slight advance in their freight rates, it would round out and finish everything that is lacking to bring this country back to a state of prosperity far surpassing anything before known. And why shouldn't they? It seems to be only fair when the Government, by its new laws, has increased the operating cost, that they should permit the roads

to increase their revenue sufficiently to meet this increased cost; and, after all, the money that we pay to the railroads is simply a method of distributing widely and wisely the money for employment and good wages among the working people.

FULL CROPS AND FULL PRICES

BY HENRY WALLACE
(EDITOR OF "WALLACE'S FARMER")

Good times, so far as the farmer is concerned, have been coming for fifteen years, or ever since the exhaustion of the supply of good Government lands watered by the rain from heaven came in sight. Since then lands have been advancing in price somewhere between 7 and 8 per cent. per annum in the corn belt and the price of farm products in about the same proportion. World consumption has now overtaken world production; and for this reason we have passed the time when a bumper crop brought in fewer actual dollars than the one half or one third crop. We are therefore reasonably assured of the continuation of good prices for an indefinite season.

The crops of small grain already harvested are somewhat in excess of the average, due to the drouth of last year, which left the soil after the abundant fall rain in superior physical condition, followed by a blanket of snow west of the Mississippi, and that by about the normal rainfall in the grain producing sections, and favorable weather during the critical period of blooming. Barring an untimely frost in the corn belt, the corn crop will be among the largest ever grown.

The farmers the largest single element of our population - enjoy this year both full crops and full prices; and as their wants, like the wants of all other classes, increase with their ability to supply them (barring calamity which mortal vision can not foresee), an amount of business may be confidently expected that will tax, to their utmost capacity, our systems of transportation, and also the ability of the banks to extend the needed credit.

Fortunately the uncertainty pending the result of the presidential election will

to be

check wild speculation-more feared in times of general prosperity than earthquake, drouth, or pestilence. The amount of serious thought necessary to cast an intelligent ballot will sober the general public, and we are likely to pass through this quadrennial agony with less than the usual disturbance of business.

In short, the farmers, speaking generally, have the stuff the world must have, and for which, through steady employment, it is able to pay a fair price. With farmers prosperous and spending, as they always do, in proportion to their prosperity, we may confidently expect good times for the next year.

NO LET-UP IN PROSPERITY
BY JOHN G. SHEDD
(PRESIDENT OF MARSHALL FIELD & CO)

Return of prosperity?

To say that there has been a return of prosperity would hardly be correct as applied to the wholesale and retail drygoods business for, strictly speaking, there can be no return of a condition that has not been absent. Speaking for our business in so far as it pertains to the manufacture and distribution of drygoods, both wholesale and retail, we have found no good reasons to complain of conditions for several years.

So long as the factories which we own and the manufacturing plants whose entire output is absorbed by us are kept working steadily for twelve months in the year, in we cannot say there has been any lack of has been any lack of business. The pressure on our North Carolina blanket and gingham mills as well as at our Zion City lace and lace curtain factories has been very great and has necessitated the running of some of our plants in double shifts, or eighteen hours per day. This condition of steady employment for thousands of workers in the factories and manufacturing plants supplying our company applies alike to our wholesale and retail distributing business.

While I have said that there has been no "return of prosperity," it is a fact that the indications of the present point