occupation. Success in work is what makes one happy in his work. The boy who is a good ball-player always wants to play ball, but the boy who cannot play ball, but is expert at marbles, wants to play marbles. If our working boys and girls are not happy in their employment, it is largely the fault of the State and only partly the fault of the boys. In Wisconsin, if there is any child in employment from fourteen to sixteen years of age, he must go to the industrial or continuation school for half a day a week, where we are teaching every trade openly. Any boy or girl in the state of Wisconsin can take up any occupation he or she chooses and has the capacity for. We will not take a child predisposed to consumption and teach him a trade that would only hurry him along in that direction, but, according to his aptitudes, he can learn any trade he will, and we do not take him away from his employment when we teach him. We do not ask him to go to a high-school to learn how to run a lathe, but we put him into the best factory in the town, and while he is in that factory we give him the skill that the trade high-school could not give him half so well. The majority of poor working parents cannot keep their children in pretty clothes, away from work and income for the added years it takes to go through the trade high-schools. We will continue to keep education away from half our children as heretofore unless we give it to them as they can and will take it in the continuation schools.

The continuation schools, moreover, keep children out of the cursory, "blindalley" occupations. About 85 per cent. of children, unguided, go into "blind alley" jobs immediately upon leaving schools jobs that lead them nowhere. There are more of these jobs than people think. Besides such work as running errands, selling newspapers, and the like, there are in the shoe-manufacturing and textile industries, among others, many jobs which are given to children between fourteen and seventeen and which never pay more than children's wages. A few children go from these places into better ones in the industries, but most of them drift into the hopeless and submerged classes.

We are saving the boy and girl from the "blind alley" job through compulsory attendance at our continuation schools. Ohio is beginning to do the same, with a law requiring employers to send their juvenile employees to continuation schools as fast as they are established. Indiana has passed a law similar to the Wisconsin law, although the efforts of the professional teachers to keep everyone else off the board have resulted in only three representatives of business and labor out of a total of eleven. of a total of eleven. Pennsylvania recently passed a law giving state aid, not to exceed $5,000 in any one case, to pay half the expenses of every continuation vocational school established. New Jersey has adopted a similar system. Massachusetts is giving state aid to local vocational schools and has empowered local authorities to compel attendance on them. And in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Gary, Menominee, New York, Boston, Newark, Chicago, and Los Angeles "pre-vocational" training is being introduced in the higher grades of the elementary schools, to enable the child to make an intelligent choice of occupations. choice of occupations. Los Angeles, not being an industrial community, has neither opportunity nor need for industrial continuation schools, but is establishing an intermediate high school with excellent industrial courses for those "concreteminded" children to whom the curriculum of the ordinary high-school offers nothing but mental torture.

What we are trying to do is to develop the human capital of the United States, worth many times more than all our other resources. We are trying to stop the 50 per cent. waste of our present educational system. We are trying to remove from America the stigma that there is thirtyeight times as much illiteracy among our native white people as in northern Europe and eleven times more among the children of native whites than among the children of our immigrants. And we believe that half the troubles between capital and labor will disappear when the workers have the education to which they are entitled, when they better understand their rights and how to get them, their obligations and how to observe them.

- THE

But in Colombia, and in all Latin America, it is different. The intensity of feeling on the Panama question is a revelation to every citizen of the United States who goes south supposing that it is a fastdisappearing if not already a forgotten issue. There is some reference to "la cuestion de Panama" in every Colombian paper I have seen in the last four years. It is as live an issue in Colombia to-day as it was when news came from the Isthmus in 1903 that the garrison had been bribed to turn traitors, and that warships of the United States had prevented the landing of Colombian troops on Colombian soil to suppress the mutiny. The latest official map of Colombia (1912) shows the "Canal under construction," but no American Canal Zone and no Panama Republic. Colombian school children are taught that the "Department of Panama" is still legally a part of their country; that its seizure was in violation of a sacred treaty and that no son of Colombia should

relax his antipathy toward the United States until that wrong shall have been righted. The feeling of Colombia as a whole is one of resentment against the United States. I have heard the Panama question discussed by brilliant men in the Colom | bian Congress, which every member attends in solemn dignity, wearing his faultless frock coat and silk hat and where many of the legislators read or speak three or four languages. I have heard this international issue talked in the wayside inns of the Andean trails, and in the huts of the peons. The most unlettered of Colombia's four million inhabitants — it is a country of extremes of culture and ignorance, of wealth and poverty - know something of "la cuestion de Panama. It is the "burning issue," with which even the tariff in this country does not compare. And through all the discussion of the question, high or low, runs a vein of bitterness against the United States for the loss of the Isthmus.

It would be serious enough if this feeling ended in Colombia, to us the nearest corner of the South American continent, as well as the richest a country two thirds the size of Mexico, with tremendous undeveloped resources, whose commerce naturally should come to us rather than go to Europe. But the infection of antipathy does not end there; throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, when you seek first-handed the reason for their distrust of the United States, the most frequent

answer you receive is this: "How do you expect us to trust you after the way you have treated Colombia?"

Diplomatic negotiations so far having failed, there has been growing in this country a sentiment in favor of submitting Colombia's claims to arbitration, on the theory that unless an equally fair and more effective method of adjustment can be agreed upon, the United States cannot consistently refuse longer to take the issue to The Hague.

So long as there was a Republican Administration at Washington arbitration seemed to be Colombia's only recourse, for without repudiating the acts of his own party a Republican President could not approach the Panama question from a point of view that could be reconciled with Colombia's. With a Democratic Administration arbitration should not be necessary, for in international disputes as well as disputes between persons settlements out of court leave little of the bitterness engendered by settlement forced by a court, and arbitration would involve years of delay. Judicial determination of some of the questions of fact relating to the Panama revolution would be now wellnigh impossible, for the most essential witnesses have died many of them within the last four years. The expense of arbitration would be tremendous, and there would inevitably be scandals both in Colombia and the United States over the expenses and fees of lawyers and other agents who already have shown their hand by pretending to sell legislative and newspaper influence in behalf of Colombia. Instead of restoring friendly feeling, arbitration would prolong the bitterness.

And it is doubtful if in the end any award of damages, no matter how large, would satisfy Colombia.

The Colombian Minister to Washington, Mr. Julio Betancourt, has been pressing for arbitration because sentiment in his country has demanded some kind of action and the people there have grown impatient waiting for the United States to make the first move. But the truth is that there is no real consensus of public opinion in Colombia on the Panama question. Many of that country's leading men still

entertain the most extravagant misconceptions of the facts at issue and particularly of conditions in the United States. No two political factions are agreed as to what would be an equitable settlement. You ask them, "What does Colombia want?" and they answer: "Colombia wants its rights; it demands the treatment that a sovereign and self-respecting people should receive from other nations." But when it comes to defining those rights explicitly in respect to the seizure of Panama, they are lost in a wilderness of discord. Before there can be an effective settlement there must be a crystallization of public opinion in Colombia, and a more general knowledge among its people of the rights and wrongs of the issue between the two countries.

Multifactional politics, with attendant jealousies and public distrust of party leaders, make it imperative that the negotiations should be conducted in Bogotá and with the greatest possible publicity. No one Colombian could be entrusted with the final negotiation of the Panama settlement without being the target of suspicion and distrust of his factional opponents. The two old political parties in Colombia (Conservative, or clerical, and Liberal) have been split into six groups. A seventh, the Republican party, a coalition of progressives, obtained a balance of power only long enough to elect the present President, Dr. Carlos E. Restrepo. The popular assumption is that any man who might effect the settlement of the Panama controversy would be the people's idol and the next President; wherefore every faction jealously guards against the allotment of this opportunity to one of its opponents. But a commission composed of a leader of each of the factions could Ideal directly with the American representative. A frank and full discussion of the facts in the presence of the Colombian people-putting all the cards on the table, so to speak would soon lead to a better understanding, for it would quickly be apparent that the seizure of Panama was not an injury purposely inflicted by the people of one country upon the people of another, but that in each country there were provocations and misunderstandings.

It is a common error for us in the United States to assume that money will repair any injury, will buy any man or any measure in the Spanish-speaking countries, just as it is an equally common assumption below the Rio Grande that every Yankee is an imperialist and that our national characteristic is "Yanqui bluff."

The Roosevelt Administration assumed that Colombia's reason for rejecting the Hay-Herran Treaty for acquisition of the Canal Zone was purely a mercenary one - blackmail. It ignored the fact that the Colombian Constitution forbade alienation of any part of the national territory; it refused to wait for an amendment of that Constitution, but "took Panama," and for five years met Colombia's protests with the denial of the fact so frankly acknowledged later.

Colombia's petition for arbitration, presented by its Minister to Washington, Dr. Diego Mendoza Perez, was curtly refused. Through influences in the United States Dr. Mendoza was replaced by Enrique Cortes, a business associate and trusted agent of General Rafael Reyes, president of Colombia, who had fallen under the influence of Mr. William Nelson Cromwell, the attorney for the Panama Canal Company. General Reyes acceded to Mr. Cromwell's scheme to pacify Colombia, and to this end the "good offices" of the Roosevelt Administration were enlisted by Mr. Cromwell. The result was the negotiation of the Root-Cortes-Arosemena Treaty and its ratification by the United States Senate and by the Panamanian Government near the end of President Roosevelt's term.

This tripartite treaty provided for Colombia's recognition of the independence of Panama and the payment by Panama of $2,500,000 toward the Colombian foreign debt, the money to be advanced by the United States on account of rental for the Canal Zone. Thus the United States made no acknowledgment of responsibility for the secession of Panama and appeared only in the role of a beneficent neighbor, while Colombia was to bow to the humiliation of her dismemberment.

The fate of the Root-Cortes-Arosemena Treaty shows very plainly that merely

money will not satisfy the Colombians The publication of the terms of the proposed settlement met a storm of protest President Reyes cabled to Minister Cortes to suggest to the United States that make a naval demonstration off the Colombian coast to help him force ratification of the treaty, but his cable message leaked into the public prints in time to upset ai his plans. Colombia rose in vehement denunciation. General Reyes's life was not safe. On a pretext of official business he made his way from the capital to the coast, slunk aboard a banana freighter bound for Europe, and has not since set his foot on Colombian soil.

Minister Cortes's political existence was snuffed out in the same blast of popular indignation. From Washington he went to Europe and two years later, when it might be supposed that his hated treaty had been forgotten (no president has ever since dared to submit it to the Colombian Congress for ratification) General Cortes landed unheralded at Puerto Colombia, the seaport of Barranquilla. He got no farther than the city. "Cortes the traitor" was met by a mob. They forced this one-time distinguished citizen to leave his carriage and walk through the dusty streets back to the ship from which he had debarked.

Similar ostracism and exile await any Colombian who shall propose a settlement incompatible with that people's sense of their national honor, which we in the United States apparently are prone to underestimate.

The Taft Administration at first attempted to adhere to the policy of its predecessor, but when Colonel Roosevelt made his frank public acknowledgment that he "took Panama,” Mr. Taft decided to ignore Colombia's representations no longer. Loyal to his party and unwilling to compromise it even after Colonel Roosevelt's admission, Mr. Taft sought still to beg the real question of international good faith and national honor, and yet to pay the price, by offering to buy from Colombia a concession for the interoceanic canal route via the Atrato River, and the coaling stations on Colombia's islands in the Caribbean. The price was to be $10,000,000.

Colombia was to recognize the independence of Panama and call the old score with the United States settled with an arbitration of her proprietary interest in the Panama Railroad.

Colombia quickly recognized that this was a subterfuge; that the United States did not need the Atrato Canal route and that it was really offering $10,000,000 as the price for the loss of Panama. Again a mere money payment failed to satisfy. The proposal impressed one of my Colombian friends this way:

It is as though my neighbor took without my consent some highly prized heirloom which could not be replaced; then when I confront him with his act, he does not say that he made a mistake or say that he is sorry he did wrong, but denies the act and at the same time further affronts me by offering to buy my old hat for a price which might approximate the intrinsic but never the sentimental value of my heirloom. Now if my neighbor hopes ever to restore good relations with me, a frank acknowledgment and apology are indispensable. Buying my hat at an exorbitant price in order

to minimize his own offense and attempt to impress me with his beneficence will never make us friends again.

In this spirit Colombia rejected the tentative offer of $10,000,000 and awaited the advent of a Democratic Administration in Washington in the confident expectation that Secretary Bryan would promptly take up the Panama question and propose a method of settlement that would not affront the Colombian nation.

Mr. Bryan's delay in taking up the negotiations has been a disappointment to Colombia. It has been difficult for Colombians to understand at their distance from the scene why the Japanese and Mexican problems, the tariff, and currency could be more pressing than the one international question that has been uppermost in their minds for ten years. Colombia's suggestion at this time that the controversy be submitted to arbitration can be traced to the interest of American lawyers, press agents, and "technical advisers" who have pressed their services upon the Colombian Government. A few examples of the impositions which have been perpetrated upon Colombia's representatives in Wash

ington will suffice to indicate the importance of preventing further scandal. We owe this to ourselves as much as we owe it to Colombia.

When General Rafael Reyes, before acceding to the presidency, came to the United States at the head of the Colombian Commission seeking a hearing on the Panama question, he entered in his account of expenses in Washingon $20,100 (gold) paid to "W. Morgate" for services as lobbyist and press agent. The other members of the Commission told me in Bogotá that they never saw "Morgate" and that General Reyes kept his identity a secret. All efforts to identify him have been unsuccessful.

Six years after this incident a Wall Street lawyer attempted to negotiate another sale of alleged influence to the Colombian Minister in Washington. This attorney apparently posed as the power behind the throne of the Democratic party, for the Minister, who was then Dr. Francisco de P. Borda, a very old but wellmeaning gentleman, was elated with the contract which he entered into subject to his Government's approval. To a Colombian friend of mine Dr. Borda described his agreement with the Wall Street lawyer in this way:

"Colombia shall have justice at last, for I have made a contract with the Democratic party."

The Minister then assured my friend. that this lawyer controlled the party leaders in Washington; that he sat in his office in Wall Street and issued orders to them, that he drafted the resolution for a Congressional investigation of the Panama question and sent it to Washington to be introduced. Of course he was simply another Edward Lauterbach in a different field. Fortunately the absurdity of his pretensions was communicated to Bogotá and his contract with the Colombian Minister was not approved. Since then this lawyer has suggested that Colombia was making a mistake in not retaining him, as he could carry its case to The Hague and obtain a judgment for at least $40,000,000.

Although such sordid motives have been in play behind the scenes, the sug