To the northward in Palestine, near the border of Turkey in Asia,

under the shadow of the mountains of Lebanon, from whose sides

Hiram, King of Tyre, cut cedar-trees to send to King Solomon for his

temple in Jerusalem, lives a religious and political community known

as Maronites. The name is merely a patronymic and perpetuates the

name of their founder, John Maron, who in the seventh century set

up a civil and spiritual rule. So sturdy and independent were these

mountain people that they withstood the victorious onslaughts of the

Mohammedans, and to this day never have been subject to them. When the

First Crusade had been fought and the Templar Kingdom was established

in Jerusalem, the Maronites joined themselves to Rome, which accepted

them as they were. To-day they are the only church in communion with

Rome not governed by Rome. They maintain a small convent in Jerusalem,

presided over by their superior, Monseigneur Jiryes Domat. They hold

their own synods, elect their own patriarch, and manage their own

affairs.

[Illustration: HIS EXCELLENCY MONSEIGNEUR PHILIPPE CAMASSEI, LATIN

PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM]

[Illustration: HIS BEATITUDE IZIMERLIAN, ARMENIAN PATRIARCH OF

JERUSALEM]

For many years the Church of England has maintained an establishment

in Jerusalem. Originally it was a missionary enterprise, professedly

setting out to convert all men to anglicanism. Now, however, a

new philosophy is dominant. The Rt. Rev. Popham Blythe, Bishop in

Jerusalem, cares for the English folk who may be resident or transient,

and directs missionary effort, chiefly toward Mohammedans and Jews.

After all, Moslems and Israelites are the original stock, the

descendants of Jacob and Esau. They form by far the largest factor in

the population of highly diversified Jerusalem. Nor may the various

Christian sects imagine for a moment that they have a monopoly of

dignity and learning. Measuring certainly up to any standard, however

discriminating, are the leaders of these antagonistic faiths. Chief of

the Moslems is His Honor Musa Effendi Shabik, Grand Cadi of Jerusalem;

and at the head of the constantly increasing multitude of Jews is His

Eminence Zacharias Ben-Abbas, Grand Rabbin of the City of David.

So dwell in as much peace as possible, yet mixed with many mocking

words, and much biting of thumbs, the varied sects and sorts of the

population of this ancient and unique metropolis. Each sect, of course,

believes itself a trifle nearer the original pattern of faith and

practice than its neighbor. That this belief might at times take the

form of extremely vigorous missionary endeavor, is certain, were it not

firmly, but tactfully, restrained. To supply that tact and firmness

requires a peculiar personality, in which patience plays an important

part.

[Illustration: HIS EMINENCE THIMETHOS, COPTIC BISHOP OF JERUSALEM]

[Illustration: THE RT. REV. POPHAM BLYTHE, ENGLISH BISHOP IN JERUSALEM]

Amid all this procession of titles, regalia, rank, pomp, and ceremony,

he whose position has most of care and least of comfort, is His

Excellency Djoudat Bey, Governor of Jerusalem. When returning from

beyond the Jordan, we found ourselves face to face with an outbreak

of cholera in Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem, and observed the quick

official action of this official in flinging a protecting barrier

of quarantine about the city, and providing the military and civil

espionage which was necessary to the crisis. Not a single case crossed

the barrier, or gained a footing in Jerusalem.

Despite all the confusion and jumble of faith and creeds, Jerusalem is

still a city to be desired. Much of its sanctity is merely legendary.

Many, indeed most, of its holy places are incapable of identification.

Still it is Jerusalem. Here are the ancient hilltops, where stood in

far-gone years the sacred shrines of earth’s most wondrous nation.

Here are still the hoary moss-grown stones, beside which there still

resound the wailings that are the minor strains of the Iliad of a

broken-hearted people. Here Abraham sacrificed, here David ruled, here

Solomon spoke the wisdom of the proverbs. And, holiest of all, here are

the rugged pathways trodden by the saintliest feet that ever pressed

our sorrowful earth. And above us, glowing in their splendor, arch the

soft and radiant skies that smiled on him.

City of tumult and confusion, to the heart of faith thou art still

Jerusalem, the City of Peace!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THE TRADE OF RUSSIA

(“THE TRADE OF THE WORLD” PAPERS)

BY JAMES DAVENPORT WHELPLEY

Author of “The Commercial Strength of Great Britain,” “Germany’s

Foreign Trade,” etc.

If they knewe their strength, no man were able to make match with

them: nor they that dwel neere them should have any rest of them.

But I thinke it is not God’s will: For I may compare them to a young

horse that knoweth not his strength, whome a little childe ruleth and

guideth with a bridle, for all his great strength; for if hee did,

neither childe nor man could rule him.--From “The Voyage of Richard

Chancellor, Pilote Major, the First Discoverer by Sea of the Kingdome

of Moscovia, Anno 1553.” (_Hakluyt’s “Voyages.”_)

The day of the awakening has come, and nearly four hundred years after

these Northern voyagers discovered “the Kingdome of Moscovia” the world

is witness to the greatest economic evolution in history. A nation

of 165,000,000 people, increasing in numbers at the rate of nearly

3,000,000 a year despite famines, wars, and the rigors of terrible

winters, occupying an area of 8,650,000 square miles, or two and a half

times that of the United States, and with a proportionate wealth of

natural resources, is finding itself.

The results are not problematical. The same laws of progress and

development now govern Russia as have governed other countries in

the past, and brought them to their present position of wealth and

continuing prosperity. In all times some one nation has led the rest

as the most powerful of all. It is equally true that no one nation

has held this position for more than the allotted time. In the past

the ascendancy of one people over another has been largely due to a

greater spirit of aggressiveness or warlike tendency. In the future

one nation will lead another through greater economic wealth and

sturdiness of national character. In a broad sense the world is

becoming commercialized, though in its best meaning this does not imply

that the trader is the leader and the exponent of the nation’s life;

he is merely the means to an end. Through him the world becomes more

of a kin; he opens the road to civilization with all its equalizing

and protective features, and, having served as the pioneer, is then

regulated through the influences which follow in the wake of his

adventures. Despoiling the weak is no longer the unrebuked spirit of

strong nations, and international neutralization is gradually spreading

its protecting influence over a large part of the earth’s surface. It

is from the point of national wealth and national character, therefore,

that the near future of every country must now be judged. The prophet

of to-day talks not of wars and plagues; he foresees the true value of

what lies in the ground and the strength or weakness of a people in

realizing wisely or wastefully upon their entail.

The most powerful country of the future will be Russia, and her

elements of greatness are writ fair across her thousands of miles of

territory and in the character of her sturdy, peaceful, industrious,

and phlegmatic people. The wealth of Russia lies in the ground, and

centuries of industry will not exhaust the possibilities of expansion.

From her 900,000,000 acres of forest, as compared with the 88,000,000

in the United States, will come the world’s supply of timber. There

are now 250,000,000 acres of land under the plow, whereas there is

nearly double that amount in the United States; but Russia can expand

her cultivated area twenty-fold and still leave virgin land for coming

generations. From this vast farm will come the grain demanded by

bread-hungry people in other lands. Oils, minerals, and fuel abound.

The advance in development and transportation achieved each year will

be the only measure of increasing national and individual wealth.

Within the empire itself tremendous and complicated problems face the

people.

Political, social, and economic conditions are as in no other land. It

is only since 1861 that 22,000,000 peasants ceased to be slaves under

the law, and it was some years after that before the law came into

practical effect throughout any wide area. It was not until 1864, with

the establishment of the zemstvos, or district assemblies, that any

measure of local government fell to the lot of the people. It was not

until 1890 and the years following that appreciable effort was made in

the direction of general education. To-day twenty-seven per cent. of

the people above nine years of age can read and write, this being an

average for the whole empire, which includes the seventy per cent. of

illiterates in Poland and the ninety-five per cent. of illiterates in

central Asia. In 1912 the imperial budget provided for an expenditure

of $55,000,000 for educational purposes, and the local governments

contribute nearly as much more. This is an increase of fifteen per

cent. over 1911, and is over three per cent. of the total revenue of

the Government. There are now 90,000 primary schools, employing 155,000

teachers, attended by over 4,000,000 pupils.

The change that this one feature of national life will bring

about among the people of Russia in the next few years can be

appreciated only when the conditions of twenty years ago are fully

understood--conditions which gave rise to the stigma of “Darkest

Russia.” The light is being let in, and with it are coming perforce

changes in administrative methods and in political life which

are replete with promise of a new and better era. It requires no

effort of the imagination to picture the state of a great nation

buried in ignorance and at the mercy of an educated and more or

less unscrupulous bureaucracy, but it needs a heroic readjustment

of preconceived ideas, a sweeping away of prejudices, and a wide

comprehension, to grasp the potentialities of a land and a people like

these when latent natural wealth is made accessible and education and

comparative freedom of thought and action are given to all. The process

must be gradual; limitations upon material development are always

severe, and the pace a disappointment to the enthusiastic. Mental and

political development is even slower, for it is the new generation

and not the old which goes to school, learns to think, and then acts

upon the thought. Too rapid growth is dangerous, and unproductive

of permanently good results. Some of the greatest and wisest men of

Russia, men who have the interests of the country and its people

unselfishly at heart, are among those who have been denounced in other

countries as well as in their own as “reactionaries.” The closer this

really unknown land is studied, the more tremendous and overwhelming in

their complexities appear the problems with which its rulers and the

people are faced. They can be solved only through the coöperation of

all classes.

So far this is a long way from being achieved, but progress has

been made, and when all conditions and circumstances are taken into

consideration, this progress can be regarded as comparatively rapid;

for the work of modernizing Russia dates back no further than the birth

of the German Empire or that of modern Italy; in point of fact, less

than thirty years. In the last ten years the foreign trade of Russia

has doubled, exports and imports keeping pace one with the other in

their increasing volume and value. Ten years ago this trade amounted

to about $700,000,000; in 1912 it is about $1,400,000,000, of which

fifty-six per cent. is exports and forty-four per cent. imports. This

total foreign commerce, large as it appears, is considerably less than

half that of the United States, though it is worth noting that in no

ten-year period in its history did the foreign commerce of the United

States ever increase by one hundred per cent., as did that of Russia

in the last ten years, and there is every reason to believe that the

present rate of increase will continue, barring such hindrances as

great droughts or serious political or military disturbances.

The real growth and development of Russia are within. Her increasing

foreign trade is only a sign of what is taking place in a gigantic

and largely unexploited empire. Education is spreading slowly but

effectively among the people; millions of acres of virgin land

yield annually to the plow; railroads are steadily pushing into new

territory; population is being transferred from the densely settled

areas to the open spaces of Siberia at the rate of a quarter of a

million every year. The land and the forests are being held by Russia

for Russians, and settlement is a requisite of purchase. Manufacturing

plants are increasing apace, and factories of all descriptions, ranging

from the mills of Moscow, one of which, a cotton mill, employs nearly

20,000 people, to the smaller establishments of the eastern-frontier

cities, are all sharing in the benefits of the increasing purchasing

power of the Russian unit.

The needs of the Russian people are not greater than their country can

supply in time, but they are far beyond what is now being produced to

supply them, or will be for many years to come. Hence they are faring

abroad for markets for their raw materials, for raw materials to supply

deficiencies of home production, and for the vast supplies of machinery

and other manufactured goods needed to meet the demands of interior

expansion and modernization now in progress and as yet only in its

beginning.

It is concerning this country and this people, and at such a time,

that the Congress of the United States has seen fit to denounce a

long-existent treaty of trade and friendship and create a situation

the outcome of which can only be to the serious detriment of the

American people in their political prestige abroad and to their loss

industrially, commercially, and financially. This action on the part

of the United States Government came as a complete surprise and no

little of a shock to the people of Russia, from the highest official

in the Government to the most modest Russian vendor or purchaser

of American wares. To the not inconsiderable group of adventurous

Americans who have entered Russia in the last few years and built

up great and profitable businesses in importing American goods or

representing American financial institutions it brought bewilderment

and consternation. The Russian Government, confident that it retains

the right to adjust its domestic laws and economies as may be deemed

best for the Russian people, or right or wrong, according to their

own judgment or wishes, looks for a reason for what is deemed in

St. Petersburg as unwarranted interference from without. It is

recalled that within a recent year fewer than a score of naturalized

Americans were refused permission to visit Russia, and these for

serious political or economic reasons, while hundreds of Russians were

refused admission to the United States on rulings from the immigration

authorities, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Russian

subjects whom no steamship company would accept as passengers for

America, knowing that, by reason of discrimination against the Asiatic

races, they would be denied. The Russian Government’s official attitude

toward this action on the part of the United States Government is one

of contemptuous resentment; contemptuous because it is believed that

American politicians yielded to anti-Russian influences for purely

selfish reasons; resentment because they find from their point of view

no just cause for thus destroying in offhand manner the extremely

friendly and profitable relations between two great nations--relations

which have become a unique and historical example of long-continuing,

unbroken, and even undisturbed friendship. The diplomatic position in

St. Petersburg is simple. The Russian Government maintains in effect

that the United States has chosen to denounce the treaty, hence it

rests with the United States to ask for a new convention. In the

meantime the United States has been dismissed from the official mind

except that so far as governmental influence is concerned it is now

actively anti-American. No American bids to furnish steel for the

great Russian navy to be built will be considered--because they are

American. The present treaty expires December 31, 1912. After that

date, unless some new arrangement is made, all American imports will

be subjected to a heavy surtax or increase of customs dues. American

life insurance companies are carrying policies in Russia amounting to

nearly $100,000,000. To do this business they are compelled to maintain

a cash reserve in Russian banks amounting in the case of a single New

York company to about $20,000,000. After the thirty-first of December,

through the antagonism which would result from the absence of a treaty,

American financial institutions might be subjected to such restrictions

as would make business in Russia impossible. In 1911 the Russian

farmers bought $27,000,000 worth of imported agricultural machinery,

mostly American.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood

RUSSIAN PEASANT WOMEN WORKING IN A SALT MINE]

The prospect of a tariff discrimination against such an industry as

this is viewed with anything but equanimity by those who have spent

laborious years bringing it to its present stage of development.

American figures of exports to Russia are of small value as showing

the real state of trade between the two countries. According to the

figures compiled at Washington, the direct exports to Russia in 1909

amounted to about $30,000,000. In 1911 they were $52,000,000, a growth

of eighty per cent. The truth is that more than twice this value is the

real measure of American sales to Russia. Over one half of the trade

is indirect, American goods being shipped to England, Germany, France,

Denmark, Holland, and other countries, and credited as sales thereto,

whereas they are immediately reshipped to Russia, and in fact were

bought originally on the trade-account of that country. Estimates as to

the real amount of American sales to Russia vary from $90,000,000 to

$190,000,000, and the latter figure is probably nearer the mark.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood

BUNDLING WHEAT FOR EXPORT AT ODESSA, THE GREAT SEAPORT OF SOUTHERN

RUSSIA]

There is reason to believe that American sales of one item alone--raw

cotton--exceed the total amount of $50,000,000 credited to the

Russian import account from the United States. The annual consumption

of raw cotton in Russia is approximately $125,000,000. Fifty million

of this is grown in central Asia: one fifth comes from Egypt, India,

and other places, leaving at least $50,000,000 to be bought from the

United States, as there is no other place from which it can come.

The American export statistics show that less than $7,000,000 of raw

cotton is sold to Russia direct. There is therefore over $40,000,000

worth the purchase of which is credited to other countries, but which

in fact goes to Russia and is paid for by the Russian cotton-spinners.

Purchases of raw material such as cotton by one country from another

are purchases of necessity, and no matter what the diplomatic relations

of those countries may be short of actual war, this business continues.

If the relations be unfriendly, however, efforts are made to supply

deficiencies elsewhere or to stimulate home production to its highest

possible point.

Dependence upon American cotton is a sore point throughout Europe,

and millions are being spent by various governments and combinations

of milling interests to create a cotton surplus elsewhere. Englishmen

and Germans are developing African cotton-fields, the Dutch are at work

elsewhere, and now Russia is spending enormous sums upon extensive

irrigation schemes in the near East to enlarge the not inconsiderable

cotton-producing area of the empire. In the case of manufactured goods,

however, a nation has the markets of the world to choose from, and the

American manufacturer meets the Englishman, the German, the Frenchman,

the Belgian, and others in the fiercest kind of competition when he

offers for sale the products of iron and steel, the textile mills,

machinery, large and small, and, in fact, anything which, given the raw

material, human ingenuity fashions to the hand of man.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood

THE BRIDGE OVER THE OKA RIVER, SHOWING THE FAIR AT NIJNI-NOVGOROD IN

THE DISTANCE]

It is in this field that diplomacy joins hands with commerce and

industry, for modern diplomacy is based upon equal trading rights and

trade extension. The foreign minister or secretary of state of to-day

is judged by his people upon the success or failure of his policy as

it affects the export trade of his country at the moment, or in its

guarantees for the future. There is still much high-flown talk about

national honor, the dignity of nations, and the cause of humanity,

but careful analysis fails to discover in any recent international

dispute or agreement a single instance where the maintenance of trade,

its extension, or trade jealousy or rivalry, is not the fundamental

question at issue. This is not to the discredit of diplomacy, nor does

it put it on a lower plane than in the days when territorial aggression

or offensive and defensive alliance was the purpose of pourparlers.

In fact, while it may lose some of its romance in the telling, the

extension of commercial spheres for the most advanced nations is an

extension of enlightenment, justice, and modernization which makes for

the permanent betterment of those coming under their sway. A most

effective and dangerous appeal to ignorance and prejudice was made not

long ago by a certain cartoon which found its way into many American

newspapers. It represented the hand of Uncle Sam grasping and waving

an American flag across which was written the legend “Passport.” An

impression which will not stand analysis exists in the United States

that a passport issued by the State Department is the same thing as the

flag of the nation in that it demands equal recognition and respect

abroad. This construction is an absurdity, for a passport is no more or

less than a certificate of citizenship. It contains no clause giving

the support of the issuing country to the holder should he do other

than observe the laws and regulations of any foreign countries in which

he may be traveling or residing. The same question which has caused

the present strained situation between the United States and Russia

was broached in the Parliament of Great Britain, for Russian laws and

police regulations apply to English citizens traveling in Russia, as

they do to the citizens of every other country, including the United

States. The English Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward

Grey, very promptly informed the House of Commons that a treaty

of commerce did not give the British Government a right to demand

exemption for British subjects which are contrary to the general laws

of a foreign country, and there the matter ended. Where it will end in

the case of the United States no one can say, but the outlook is not

promising, as Russia cannot by reason of interior conditions yield the

principal point at issue. There is no controversy, for it takes two to

make a quarrel, and so far the United States has been the aggressor.

Russia has accepted the situation, and her people have turned their

attention to other fields for coöperation in the material development

of the Russian Empire. In the language of the street, it is up to the

United States to find a place to “get off,” and at present there is no

sign of a comfortable landing-stage.

The American Government assumes the right, and with entirely good

reason, to regulate the use of the Panama Canal under an ordinary

interpretation of a favored nation clause; but by the action taken in

the matter of the use of American passports in Russia, it denies to

the latter country the right to regulate its actual domestic affairs

or enforce the laws standing upon the statute-books of the country.

Russia has long accepted cheerfully and without question American

discrimination against millions of her subjects, and in a matter as

vital to the Russian political and social system as the regulation of

travel and population naturally assumes some if not equal right to act

as her rulers deemed best for the safety of the individual and the

peace and welfare of the community as a whole.

The seriousness of the situation brought about by this action of

Congress cannot be overestimated either diplomatically or from an

industrial, commercial, or financial point of view. It is realized

by every American, official and other, living in Russia, or familiar

with conditions in that country, that the United States is in the

wrong; no one, not even those most closely concerned with the matter

diplomatically, can suggest a way out, and yet there is hope that

Russia will agree to a continuation of the treaty status, at least

so far as commerce is concerned, for a sufficient time to allow some

new adjustment to be reached, if such an outcome is possible. The

apparently insurmountable difficulty in the way of a new treaty is the

determined fact that Russia cannot give way on the one point which

influenced the Congress of the United States to denounce the convention.

Fortunately for the United States, that country has at the moment in

St. Petersburg as ambassador the Hon. Curtis Guild, formerly Governor

of Massachusetts, a man whose knowledge of Russia and whose personal

friendships among the Russian people render his services invaluable.

His position under present circumstances is not enviable, and if

at the expiration of the present treaty an open breach between the

two governments is even temporarily avoided, and the United States

continues to maintain an embassy in St. Petersburg, it will be due

to the patience, understanding, and untiring efforts of Mr. Guild to

bridge over a situation which in the interests of both countries he

deems most deplorable.

Recently a well-known English writer made the statement that Russia

afforded the most prolific field in the world for the novelist and the

sensation-monger, and that the English-reading public had been so fed

up with those forms of Russian literature that a writer who ventured

to treat of the country in a normal manner, to attempt to tell of its

wealth, its industry, and the real life of the people, would either

find a scanty audience or be accused of interested motives; and there

is much truth in this observation.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood

THE GREAT SUNDAY MARKET IN MOSCOW]

Russia is a country of tremendous contrasts and contradictions. The

new jostles the old. A government and a people emerging from feudal

conditions, absolutism, and superstition present a phase of national

life somewhat bewildering to the seeker after truth. Ancient rights

and privileges exist in close juxtaposition to new liberties and

initiative, the former not always in harmony with the latter. It is a

land which reaches south to north from the semi-tropics far into the

undefined boundaries of the eternally frozen North; and west to east

includes populous cities born of yesterday and others dating their

beginnings centuries ago; mountain-ranges giving of their long-hidden

precious metals under the persuasion of American machinery driven

by American engineers, and great stretches of hundreds of miles of

plain and shallow valley such as caused the American pioneers to

doubt the fact that the earth was round. On this land lives a people

as varied in their physique and in their tongue as are the physical

characteristics of their habitat. The big, slow-moving Russian peasant,

with his ox-like strength and simplicity of character; the Tatar, the

Mongol, and the Chinaman each have their place in the foreground as

the traveler covers the ten-day journey across the country by rail

from west to east. Far to the south the prayer to Allah is cried from

the turrets of the Russian mosque with a fervor equal to that of the

dweller in the land of the Turks, and over five per cent. of the

Russian people are of the Jewish faith.

To harmonize this population, successfully to maintain a centralized

government of all these races, so different in character, needs, and

actions, is a stupendous task. To see that every part of this great

land gets its fair share of all that the Imperial Government has to

give; to guard these far-reaching boundaries against continually

threatened invasion; to watch with jealous eye the constantly shifting

political boundary-lines of contiguous lands, that the people of no

part of Russia, west, south, or east may find themselves barred from

free access to foreign markets by land or by sea--all this is not the

work of an amateur or weakling administration. The Prime Minister of

Russia, administrative director of the governmental energies of this

great empire, affecting as they do the welfare of nearly two hundred

million people, has a responsibility lying upon him and a power in

the world for good or evil such as no ruler of to-day or so-called

world-conqueror of yesterday even dreamed of falling within his grasp.

A wise expediency, a conservative progression, mark such a government,

if it is to live. To compromise between the old and the new, the

perfect theory and the actual possibility, is the task of rulers so

placed, and the world must judge by permanent results in decades rather

than in years, such judgment even then tempered by a real knowledge of

the conditions to be met.

In this light it is evident that Russia is making progress toward that

high destiny which is written across the face of things as they are

within her imperial boundaries to-day. The great natural resources of

the country are being conserved as well as developed. Method marks

the cutting of timber, even with the countless miles of forest yet to

draw upon, and forestration is even now a feature of treeless areas.

Restrictions upon the acquisition of land are all in the interests of

actual settlers. The Russianizing of the whole empire is proceeding

with marked rapidity. The surplus population of the West is being moved

into the sparsely inhabited East at an amazing rate. Several years ago

it was decided to move a million people every year from west to east.

In 1907, the first year of this governmental assisted exodus, 800,000

Russians, men, women, and children, entered Siberia with the intention

of making it their permanent home. This was found to be more than could

be handled and assisted effectually. In 1908 over 400,000 were sent

eastward, but the following year and since that date an average of

250,000 have been annually successfully transplanted to the open lands

of Siberia, and the movement will continue indefinitely at about that

rate.

Every family is allowed about $100 in cash, and for every male in the

family is given about forty acres of land. Supplies are sold at long

credits, the local banks assist financially in some cases, and it is

interesting to note that the American harvesting-machine manufacturers

have done a great deal toward opening up the grain areas by selling

machinery on long time, taking their pay when the farmer has realized

upon his crop. The losses which have accrued to American companies

through giving these credits to the farmers have been less than one

per cent. annually, a good record for any country and any people.

These American companies have also shown the Russian people that it

is not only possible, but more profitable in the end, to do away with

any system of commissions, bribery, or “squeeze,” as it is known to

the Chinese, in the sale of goods. This was an innovation in Asia,

but from the beginning this rule has been adhered to in sales of

American machinery, and is now recognized as an admirable peculiarity

of American methods. Such losses as have come to American firms doing

business in eastern Russia have occurred through the failure or

dishonesty of middlemen, or local agents. The Russian peasant or farmer

is honest, and will pay if he can. The local agent, or middleman,

ostensibly at least of better social business and intellectual status

than the farmer, has not proved as scrupulous.

It is in the development and building up of new communities that the

so-called zemstvos are proving their usefulness. These organizations

may be compared to the boards of county commissioners which exist

in the United States, but the powers of the Russian organizations

are almost unlimited. They have complete local authority, subject

only to the governors of the provinces. They have from fifteen to

sixty-two members, representation being based upon population, and

are elected by the people. The voters are those who pay taxes on at

least $7500 worth of property. In addition to exercising the usual

functions of local government, such as taxation, road-building, school

supervision, etc., they conduct agricultural credit banks, provide fire

and crop insurance, maintain a medical department, give agricultural

instruction, and conduct stores much on a coöperative plan.

Some indication of their activities is shown in the one item of

agricultural machinery, for about thirty-two per cent. of all the sales

made in Siberia in 1908 were made through these government agencies,

and the agricultural loan made through the zemstvos banks amount to

many millions annually. As far east as Vladivostok the emigrant trains

arrive daily, crowded with settlers, laborers, and soldiers. Farther

to the west this emigrant movement becomes at times an actual blockade

of traffic, and the most notable feature of it all is the amazing

number of children ranging from babes in arms to half-grown boys and

girls. They are a big, strong people, these Russian peasants, and their

children give equal promise of sturdy physique. The men are given

work in town and country, and the tremendous task of double-tracking

the Trans-Siberian and of building the many feeder-lines now under

construction, give employment to many thousands.

It is Russia for the Russians now in the East, and all foreign Chinamen

have been given notice to go home. They are being ousted from Russian

towns, and no longer outnumber the Russians in the construction work in

progress everywhere. Thousands of Russian soldiers line the railroad

from Europe to the Sea of Japan, and in northern Manchuria, ostensibly

a Chinese possession, fifty thousand Russian troops guard the right of

way and the small towns or groups of houses which cluster about every

railway station. These soldiers are in reality only the pioneers of the

home-builders who are en route.

From the inception of the enterprise the locomotives of the Siberian

railroads have burned wood, but the wood-burner is now doomed. The

great strata of coal which underlies the extreme eastern part of

Siberia is soon to be extensively worked, and with the expiration of

the present fuel contracts on the railroads coal will be substituted.

Westward from Vladivostok for hundreds of miles there is as yet

virtually no human settlement, though the country is as promising, as

fertile, and as inviting to the plow as were the millions of acres of

the Dakotas prior to their settlement.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright, by Underwood & Underwood

RUSSIAN PEASANTS IN THE HAY-FIELDS]

The word “Siberia” has always called to the mind great stretches of

bleak or snow-covered landscape, intense cold, and human suffering

and privation. It has figured in truth, in art, and in fiction as

the scene of heart-breaking cruelties to chained gangs of prisoners,

criminals, and exiles. Packs of ravening wolves sought out the lonely

traveler, and to be sent to Siberia was to leave the world behind.

There is still enough reality in these tales to serve as a foundation

of truth in the telling, but this is not the Siberia of the Russian

emigrant, farmer, and trader. It is the five thousand miles which lie

east and west between latitudes 40° and 60° north toward which his

ambitions lead. A new United States lies within these boundaries. The

fertile plain, the broad valley, the virgin forest, and the massive

mountain-range of this region all lie within the temperate zone. Cold

in winter, warm in summer, the seasons regular and normal the year

round, this is the Siberia traversed by the Russian Trans-Continental

Railroad, and which is destined as time goes on to play a part,

constantly increasing in importance and seriousness, in the economics

of the world. The productive power of this region is limited only by

the degree of development attained, and its absorptive power will be

of equally heroic measure. Cities and towns of no inconsiderable size

are rapidly appearing at the most central points of the new settlement,

and in many ways their life and appearance is reminiscent of the boom

days of Western America. Novonikolaesevsk in ten years has achieved

a population of over 50,000. Omsk, Petropavlovsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk,

Nikolaievsk, Vladivostok, and others are as modern, as bustling, as

prosperous, and are growing as rapidly as if they were situated west of

the Missouri.

Nearly all of these prosperous towns are built on the banks of

magnificent rivers, the names of which in some cases are familiar only

to students of geography. These great and numerous streams constitute

a system of natural waterways invaluable in the development of the

country. In summer they are navigable for steamers of considerable

size, and in winter they are highways of travel for vehicles. Their

sources lie in the hearts of the great forests to the north, and their

quick-flowing currents bear upon them rafts of timber of great size.

The inland trade of Siberia has grown in ten years from $30,000,000 to

$75,000,000, and in one province alone, that of Akmolinsk, there are

held 105 yearly fairs, at which over $50,000,000 worth of merchandise

changes hands.

Government revenues increase only gradually, and with great and varied

areas to be served in national utilities make progress seemingly slow.

In the matter of posts and telegraphs an unusual state exists, for

on the operations of this branch of the Government in 1911 a profit

of $17,000,000, or fifty-one per cent., was recorded. In 1912 the

profit was reduced to thirty-one per cent., showing that the service

was extended and improved. It would be better that the entire profit

were wiped out through extensions of facilities, for now there is

only one post-office for every ten thousand people, and in the Moscow

province, with a population of over 4,000,000, there are only eleven

sub-post-offices. As shown by an annual decrease in the surplus, it

is probable that the Russian post-office budget will in time balance

itself or show a deficit, as is the rule in other countries. Labor

legislation is coming in Russia much along the same lines that now

prevail in Germany.

The status of the Russian laborer is not very different from that

of his brother in other European countries. His wages are somewhat

lower in many occupations, but in the large industrial centers of

European Russia conditions are much the same as elsewhere. Of all the

labor-strikes recorded of 1911, twenty-five per cent. were determined

favorably to the strikers, and forty per cent. were compromised as

between employer and employed. Nearly $500,000,000 is now on deposit in

the Russian savings-banks, and if the population of outlying territory,

where there are no banks, be deducted, the showing per capita is on

all fours with that of many other countries where consideration for

the interests of the wage-workers is much older in its application to

national affairs. As it is, there are nearly eight million depositors,

or more than in any other country excepting the United States, England,

or Germany. In 1911 the foreign trade of Russia across the Black

Sea and Finnish borders, together with the trade across the eastern

boundaries by land and sea, amounted to over $1,400,000,000. During

the five years 1901 to 1905 the total foreign trade amounted to about

$350,000,000 annually. In the five years 1906-10 the annual average was

$980,000,000, and in 1911 it was, as stated, over $1,400,000,000. The

following figures illustrate the growth of the foreign commerce account

in the last ten years expressed in millions of dollars:

RUSSIAN FOREIGN TRADE

YEAR IMPORTS EXPORTS TOTAL EXCESS OF EXPORTS

1902 275 425 700 150

1904 300 500 800 200

1906 322 514 836 192

1908 390 484 874 94

1910 490 713 1203 223

1911 600 800 1400 200

The exports for 1911 are thirty-two per cent. larger than the average

of the five preceding years, and the imports show a gain of thirty-four

per cent. The revenue from the customs for 1911, which amounted to

$173,000,000, shows a gain of twenty per cent. over the average for

the preceding five years. The customs dues of Russia amount to about

twenty-nine per cent. of the value of the imports. Nearly half of the

export trade of Russia is of grain, the entire export being roughly

divided into food-stuffs, sixty-five per cent.; raw material and partly

manufactured goods, thirty per cent.; animals, two and one half per

cent.; and manufactured goods, two and one half per cent. The export

wheat of Russia, amounting to nearly four and a half millions of tons,

goes principally to Holland, England, Italy, France, Germany, and

Belgium, in the order named. The barley goes to Germany, the oats to

Holland and England, the corn to England, and the bran to Germany. The

principal manufactures exported are rubber goods, textiles, crockery,

glass, and metal goods. The exports of manufactured goods have not

increased to a great extent in the last ten years, and probably will

not for some time to come, as Russia is developing so rapidly within

that the home market absorbs more of everything than can be produced

with present facilities. The import trade of Russia for the last six

years, expressed in millions of dollars, was as follows:

FOOD RAW MATERIAL LIVE MANUFACTURED

YEAR PRODUCTS AND PARTLY STOCK GOODS TOTAL

MANUFACT.

1906 55 174 .500 93 322

1907 61 194 .550 106 361

1908 65 212 .762 114 392

1909 60 212 .800 132 405

1910 63 266 1.580 161 492

1911 69 266 1.780 190 527

As compared with the average of the preceding five years, the figures

of 1911 show an increase in the imports of food products of fourteen

per cent.; in raw material and partly manufactured goods of twenty-six

per cent.; in live stock of one hundred and twelve per cent.; and in

manufactured goods of fifty-six and a half per cent. The increase in

food-stuff importations was due to the increased consumption of fish,

this increase amounting to over $26,000,000. Other increases noted

consisted largely of fertilizers, building materials, machinery,

and the thousand and one manufactured articles long in use in other

countries.

The five-year average of manufactured goods imported into Russia

annually tells the story of the growing importance of this trade to the

manufacturers of the world. From 1897-1901 it was $92,751,000. From

1902-06 (the period of the war with Japan) it was $84,048,000. From

1907-11 it was $140,440,000. The larger part of the export trade of

Russia goes to Germany, England, Holland, Austria-Hungary, France, and

Italy in the order named, Germany being by far the largest buyer of

Russian goods. According to the figures of direct trade, Russia buys

nearly all of her supplies from Germany, England, the United States,

France, and Austria-Hungary in the order named; but if the indirect

trade be taken into consideration, the United States comes second. Even

then Germany, with her Russian sales amounting as they did in 1911 to

$250,000,000, is by far the most important trader. The position of

Germany in Russia in trade, finance, and diplomacy is very strong. To

Germany goes more of Russian produce than to any other three countries,

and from Germany are purchased at least half of all the imports of

the Russian people. Much of this is indirect business, it is true,

the Germans acting as brokers for other nations; but a considerable

profit on the transaction remains in Germany, and the mere fact of

the enormously strong trade relation constitutes a powerful factor in

holding the two peoples in close friendship and in giving to all German

enterprise in Russia a predominating prestige.

The beginnings of this Russo-German trade date back many years, for

geographic and racial reasons, but it has been encouraged at all

points by the Germans themselves, or it would not have maintained

its phenomenal lead over that of other countries. The effect of this

trade is apparent everywhere. German is the most useful language in

Russia to those who do not speak Russian. A stroll along any one of

the principal business streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg will reveal

the names of scores of German firms with large Russian connections,

or, in fact, the names of many German firms whose sole business is in

Russia. The Germans come, stay, and conquer in foreign trade matters

here as elsewhere, because they do not deal through foreign agencies

or commission houses, but through their own people on the ground, to

sell direct to the consumer. Another point in foreign trading which

forces itself upon the attention everywhere is the banking facilities

furnished to German traders by German banks or branches of German banks

established in foreign cities. The bank and the trader arrive at the

same time, and coöperate most successfully in their joint campaign for

business. German railroads at home give low through rates on goods to

any part of the world; German ships are waiting at the docks to carry

the goods; German firms are at the other end of the journey to receive

the goods and distribute them; and German banks advance the money to

facilitate purchase, shipment, and sale until such time as the money is

available from the consumer. Long credits are the rule in Russia, as

in many other countries, and financial coöperation is a requisite of

successful trading in a majority of cases.

English banks do little or no industrial or commercial business. Years

ago there were private banks in England that worked in harmony with

the English foreign traders, and it was partly due to the liberality

and activity of these banks that the foreign commerce of England

gained such headway as it did in far-away places. For one cause or

another, these private or trading banks have disappeared in England,

and in the financial districts money is now a commodity, as it is in

the United States, handled without imagination and with no sympathy or

understanding of the needs of foreign business. An English or American

bank of to-day is nothing more or less than a glorified pawnbroker,

who will cheerfully lend ninety-five per cent. on a gold dollar as

security, but will lock his moneybags when a man with orders for

goods to be sold on long time in foreign countries comes asking for

intelligent coöperation in the production and vending thereof. Able

financial experts devote pages of good white paper and pounds of ink

in England and America to criticism of the German industrial banking

system, but whatever may be its faults at home, it is beyond cavil

almost entirely responsible for the tremendous gains made in German and

foreign commerce in recent years.

Nowhere is this illustrated more forcibly than in Russia, and here

as elsewhere the class of goods sold by the Germans contains larger

elements of labor and profit than the foreign trade of most nations.

To export raw materials, food-stuffs, steel rails, and other staples

at infinitesimal margins of profit when the home markets are slack may

bring export figures up into the hundreds of millions, but it does not

leave in the country of origin the paid wage-roll or the manufacturing

or middleman profit recorded of intricate machinery, novelties,

chemicals, and other high-priced products of hand, loom, or other

ingenious machines inspired by mechanical and inventive genius.

The United States buys from Russia about seven million dollars’ worth

of goods, eighty per cent. of which are included in alcoholic product,

glycerin, furs, hides, and skins. Among other important items of

Russian export to America are flax, fusil-oil, and wool. In 1911,

Russia sent nothing to the island possessions of the United States.

There is no branch of manufacturing in which Russia competes seriously

with America. Three years ago the Russian steel mills on the Black

Sea underbid the American steel mills in the efforts of the latter to

secure a large order from the Argentine Government, but since that time

the Russian producers have joined the international steel conference,

and serious underbidding is no longer feared from that direction. The

United States sells to Russia about fifty million dollars’ worth of

raw cotton, eleven million dollars in agricultural machinery, five

million dollars in leather, three million dollars in general machinery,

a million and a half dollars in flour, a million in raw rubber, and

the balance of her sales comprise a variety of manufactured products.

In this latter classification it is encouraging to note half a million

dollars in type-writers, and the same amount in automobiles. Indirect

trade in these items adds largely to these figures, but is difficult of

exact determination.

A number of great American industries have organized Russian companies

and built factories in Moscow and elsewhere. Notable among these is

the sewing-machine industry, which employs 4000 people in its Moscow

factory, and is said to have 20,000 selling agents in the Russian

Empire. The American harvesting-machinery interests manufacture in

Russia such implements as fall under import duties in the Russian

tariff, and import duty free those which are under the existing

treaty of commerce. Should no new treaty be negotiated between Russia

and the United States, it is evident that new extensions of the

Russian-American factories must result, and importations from the

United States must decline.

The result of this serious threat of discrimination against American

goods is already felt throughout Russia. Experiments are now being made

with German, Belgian, and other competitive machinery in the effort to

substitute them for American products, and while the American machines

have at present a tremendous lead in public favor, this is no guaranty

that other countries will not ultimately derive advantage from the

situation. It is true that American inventions may still dominate the

Russian market, but the machines themselves will be manufactured in

Belgium, Germany, France, or elsewhere to avoid any discrimination

that might be imposed upon an American manufactured product. This is

not such a difficult result to achieve as might be supposed, for the

foundations are already laid, and one great American industry which

has recently fallen under the displeasure of the American Government

will within a short time be able to supply its entire foreign trade

from plants erected in other countries than the United States, and thus

restrict the output of American mills to the supplying of the home

market.

Nearly one half of the export trade of Russia leaves the port of Riga

on the north, but the goods originate in Moscow and other inland

cities. St. Petersburg, Libau, and other north-coast points share

in the great shipping industry of the Baltic. To the south, Odessa,

Batum, and other ports on the Black Sea are the outlets for southern

Russia, and serve the near Eastern trade. In the far East, Vladivostok

is destined to become an important commercial stronghold, and the

entrepôt by sea of Oriental products, serving at the same time as the

shipping-point for grain and other food products to Japanese, Chinese,

and South Sea communities.

The great causes of trade increase or decrease in Russia are the

fullness or poverty of the harvest and the peace or disturbance of

political conditions in Europe and the near East. War in Persia,

Turkey, or elsewhere in that part of the world has a directly

unfavorable effect upon the total of Russian commerce. This is

strikingly illustrated in the loss which has come to Russian trade by

the closing of the Dardanelles for even a short time. Bad crops mean

famine in large areas, and considering the vastness of the territory

involved, it is not surprising that hardly a year passes that some part

is not demanding relief for a stricken people. This feature of national

life is so well recognized as a probable annual occurrence that the

Government deals with the same almost as a regular business, and the

whole plan of relief has been systematized to the best advantage of

all concerned. Business organization is not yet very strong in Russia,

but is improving. Chambers of commerce are being formed, and in course

of time the shipper of goods to Russia or the seeker after commercial

information will find the same conditions there as elsewhere so far as

the machinery of trade is concerned.

There is now a strong movement in England for political as well as

commercial reasons to take advantage of the present development of

Russia. In 1911 there were organized in Russia forty foreign companies

for the purpose of doing Russian business. Out of this number, thirty

were English, four were French, two Belgian, two German, and not one

American. Out of the $40,000,000 capital of these forty companies

nearly $35,000,000 were English money. In that same year there were 222

Russian concerns organized to do business in Russia, and one of them

was an American harvesting company, with a large manufacturing plant

in Moscow. As a nation, England is showing more interest in Russian

industrial affairs than any other country except Germany. This interest

comes a little late in the day for full advantage to be reaped, but

the interest now shown in England is far more general and practical

than has shown itself in the United States, with the exception of that

manifested by a few powerful American manufacturing concerns that are

able financially to perform all the functions of buyer, manufacturer,

seller, and banker from their own resources and within their own

company organizations.

It is difficult to bring the mind to a full comprehension of the

vastness of the Russian Empire and its interests. It is not a scattered

domain of far-flung possessions, held at the cost of sleepless

vigilancy, and constant treaty-making, but a great, compact possession;

and yet while Russian diplomacy is demanding the neutralization of the

far-Eastern border state of Mongolia, a quarter of a million men, or

more than the entire standing army of Great Britain, are lying under

arms five thousand miles distant from Mongolia, but still in Russia,

to protect that country’s interests in case the long-deferred but

long-expected explosion takes place in the near East.

One nation’s honor or dignity cannot be compromised for the sake of

continuing favorable commercial relations with another; but it is

a serious matter for one government, at the dictation of whatever

interest it may be, or whatever may be the result to be gained

at home, to destroy the long-existing friendship and profitable

commercial exchanges of two peoples without a full understanding of

the consequences of such action. The United States cannot impose its

views upon Russia, for the good and sufficient reason that such views

do not coincide with the necessities of Russian interior government.

The United States has no power to punish her old friend for not

agreeing with her; in fact, quite the reverse, hence an _impasse_.

Those upon whom the burden of this action falls diplomatically and

financially are now trying to find a basis for honorable compromise.

That they will fail, is feared; that they will succeed, is the earnest

hope of every understanding friend of the two nations.

[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]

NEW ANXIETIES ABOUT VOTING

SHALL IT BE COMPULSORY?

Macaulay, who did not believe in universal suffrage, had a fine

sneer at the folly of supposing that the great policies of a modern

nation could be determined by the ballot-box. But this will do to put

alongside his famous prediction that “spoliation” of the rich by the

poor would begin in the United States in the twentieth century. That

century is here and spoliation has not begun, while the ballot-box

has gone on, in England as well as in America, from one conquest to

another; until now, in either country, it is regarded, if not as the

final arbiter of national destinies, at least as the power which sets

up one party or administration and puts another down. Yet during the

very years when voting by the mass of the citizens has been marching

on to political supremacy, there has been coming in a new set of

doubts, or anxieties, concerning the whole process. This concern may

be only one way of recognizing the sovereignty of the ballot. If it

is sovereign, care must be taken that it functions safely. Granted

that its decisions are conclusive, the more reason for seeing to it

that they are freely and clearly pronounced. If we are to listen for

the voice of the people in their votes, nothing must be permitted to

obstruct or confuse that utterance.

It was doubtless this feeling that lay behind the movement to reform

and simplify the ballot and to guard elections against corruption. That

is a long and familiar story. One device after another, one safeguard

following another, has been urged and adopted, and each has in its turn

done something to purify our electoral methods. It would be impossible

for the nation to lurch back now to the loose and hugger-mugger system

under which both State and national elections were held fifty or sixty

years ago. The “repeater” has been largely eliminated; the way of the

venal voter has been made hard; official ballots have replaced the

tricky things that party-workers used to “hand out”; corrupt-practice

acts and registration laws have weeded out a great deal of the bribery

and fraud that were formerly common. Yet despite all these and the

other advances, a distinctly new uneasiness about the whole process

of voting has recently been making itself manifest. Many thoughtful

citizens have been troubled by doubts not whether elections are honest,

but whether they can be made fully representative of the popular will;

not whether the citizen can freely cast a pure ballot, but whether he

cares enough about it to cast any ballot at all.

What disturbs many in this connection is the evidence seeming to

show that the number of voters is not increasing as fast as the

population. Figures both of registered voters and of actual ballots

cast are scrutinized, with the result of appearing to prove a growing

disinclination to make full exercise of the right of suffrage. From

one Presidential campaign to another during the last dozen years, the

total poll has not risen as it should. Some statistics of the vote

in Wisconsin were recently published which seemed startling in their

implications. That State, though having a marked growth in population,

has been casting a vote fewer by many thousands than were polled ten

years ago. Partial explanations suggest themselves. Wisconsin elections

have been one-sided and foregone conclusions; so that the inducement to

make efforts to bring out a full vote has often been lacking. Moreover,

the very reforms in the State’s election laws may have had the effect

of cutting off what was before a purchasable or fraudulent vote. This

was the kind of vote which in the old days Tammany used to ask for

money in order to “get out.” One rich man replied to a solicitor of

funds that he would not give five thousand dollars to get that vote

“out,” but would gladly subscribe ten thousand to keep it “in.” It is

possible that the keeping “in” of corrupt votes, by means of reform

legislation vigorously enforced, has had something to do with the

apparent check in the normal increase of the voters.

After every fair allowance has been made, however, the fact is

notorious that many citizens entitled to vote do not go to the polls.

The registration figures often fall far below what they should be, and

the ballots finally cast and counted reveal a surprisingly large number

of indifferents or stay-at-homes. Hence the demand, which seems to be

a rising demand, that the citizen be compelled by law to do his duty

as an elector, if he will not do it unforced. Compulsory voting has

been advocated of late by the Attorney-General of the United States.

No one would class Mr. Wickersham among the impetuous faddists. He has

studied European practice and precedents in the matter of inflicting

penalties upon citizens who fail to exercise the franchise, and favors

the adoption of some modified form of such legislation in this country.

The argument for it will certainly be greatly reinforced if we are

widely to enter upon the experiment of law-making by initiative and

referendum. The people are sovereign, but if only a portion of them

speak, how are we to know the real voice of authority? There have been

elections, some of them passing on statutes referred to the electorate,

some on important constitutional changes, in which the votes of only a

majority of a minority were effective. If that should become common,

the case for compulsory voting would obviously be stronger. Objections

to it at present lie mainly against details. It is urged, for example,

that no compulsion should be laid upon the voter to choose between two

candidates neither of whom could he conscientiously support. But in

that event he could cast a blank or a “scratched” ballot. He is within

his right in refusing to express a preference between two equally

offensive nominees; but it may be held that he has no right to remain

away from the polls. Mr. Chesterton has argued that all who fail to

vote should be “counted in the negative,” but that is to put a premium

upon sloth. An active negative by ballot is much more significant than

mere abstention. We know too well what “apathy” means in elections;

but we should be much better off if, instead of their apathy at home,

we had all our citizens expressing their honest zeal or their burning

indignation at the polls.

The whole subject is not yet ripe for positive remedies embodied

in law, but the deep interest taken in it is both suggestive and

encouraging. It helps one to believe that the democratic experiment

will continue to keep level with its problems as they successively

present themselves. Whatever the exact method of reform that may be

adopted, it must not omit to tie up intelligence with duty. Voting,

whether it should be made compulsory or not, cannot safely be severed

from education. The two must always go together, as they did in

Emerson’s vision of the ideal commonwealth, where, before

Each honest man shall have his vote,

Each child shall have his school.

THE CHILDREN’S UNCENSORED READING

WITH A PRACTICAL SUGGESTION

The old saying that “Books make the best presents” must be in the minds

of many in the pre-Christmas season, and many a parent is puzzling

over the problem of selection. The classics of their childhood they

know--some of these the classics of three generations; in fact, ever

since children began to be considered as worth writing for. But here

is the year’s new “bumper” crop of books, in fine array of type and

picture and gay cover--what is to be done with them? Who is to sift

and choose between the good and the bad? And all that are not good

must be considered bad, for nothing is so bad as a poor book. May

the publishers’ imprint be implicitly relied upon? May the authors’

reputation, name, or vogue be blindly accepted? May the reviewers’

judgment be made the standard? Obviously it is impossible, if only

for economic reasons, to buy and sample, not to say read, a tithe

of the books presented for choice. Either parents must renounce the

responsibility, restrict the range to a few volumes, or get some

efficient aid from others.

We venture a suggestion. This issue of ~The Century~ will appear just

a month before Christmas. In nearly every town of 2500 inhabitants

there is a literary club or a woman’s club which through a committee

of its members might set on foot an advisory censorship of children’s

reading, which another year would become more effective. To be helpful,

it should start with a standard of what are the desiderata in books

for the young. Negatively, one must aim to exclude immoral, priggish,

namby-pamby, artificial, cynical, and unsympathetic writing. To these

must be added the seventh deadly sin of dullness.

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en,

and unless a book is interesting, it would better never have been

conceived. On the positive side the aim should be wholesomeness,

vitality, inspiration, humanness, and, most of all, an appeal to the

imagination. A child needs not so much books of knowledge of the “how”

type, which satisfy craving for facts, as those that set forth the

wonders of the world so suggestively as to stimulate his search for

the “why.” Those of two generations ago who were steeped in copy-book

morality know what an effort it was to displace it with the natural

religion of human sympathy. And it is because, in the reading and

training of boys, there is danger of neglecting the robust--what we

may call the wholesomely perilous--that it is important that every

such committee as we have suggested should have the counsel of men.

When its list shall have been made, the committee should be subjected

to cross-examination, in order that the principles of selection should

become fixed not only in the minds of its members, but in those of

the entire club. Whatever the result might be upon children, it would

be salutary upon parents, arousing them to the importance, and to the

qualities, of mental pure food. It is not to be expected that the

committee’s recommendations would be impeccable or that they would

always be followed. Indeed, the same experiment might be tried with

more advantage in a circle of a dozen families of friends related by a

similarity of tastes and standards.

Even more in need of supervision is the periodical pabulum. There are

two or three American magazines for children the tone and traditions

of which are so firmly established and so well known as to place them

beyond the need of censorship. Their editors are alive to the exclusion

of the objectionable, but are chiefly occupied with the search for

valuable and delightful articles. The editorship of a child’s magazine,

by reason of its many limitations, is one of the most difficult tasks

in the educational world. The bearing of every article, poem, and

picture has to be considered in its formative influence upon character.

The editor has to think for the child, the parent, and the teacher,

and at the same time he must never lose sight of the noble function of

delight, which it is his privilege to exercise. We know of one such, to

whom, through his rare sympathy with children, these responsibilities

have become insight. Joyous himself, he knows how to communicate joy to

a world of children.

When it comes to the juvenile page of the newspaper, the need of

censorship is acute. Some of the daily journals, which are properly

proud of their own ethical standards and of the influence of their

editorial columns, have no moral compunction in leaving to a syndicate

the preparation of the children’s page or the colored supplements.

Otherwise careful and conscientious parents will turn over to their

children, without examination, sheets of vulgar, grotesque, badly

drawn, and badly colored pictures on unworthy themes, the chief

influence of which is to glorify sheer mischief and bad manners. Many

protests have been made against these by public associations and

in some quarters there has been improvement, but the censorship of

thoughtful and mature minds would still find much to condemn.

In what is selected for the children let us make a plea for the

best poetry. A world is all before us where to choose, and if the

interpretation of masterpieces of verse be not pedagogic, but

sympathetic, the resources of pleasure thus available are rich and

enduring. The parsing and analysis of Pope’s “Essay on Man” may so

spoil one’s taste for that writer as to obscure the sublimity of his

“Universal Prayer.” America more than any other country cultivates, and

needs to cultivate, the love of poetry. Here we are confronted with

materialism as a daily spectacle.

Things are in the saddle,

And ride mankind.

We need every stimulus to the imagination, every spur to spirituality,

every rhythm of harmony. We need not only music itself but the music

that is in poetry. The arts are, so to speak, fighting for their

lives, and a brave fight it is. We need them to uplift and crown and

glorify democracy, and we shall produce greater poetry as there is a

deeper love and appreciation of the great poetry that exists. It is,

therefore, no small service to the future of America to instil in our

young people a respect and love for poetry. We find these suggestive

lines in the autobiography of Charles Darwin:

If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some

poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps

the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active

through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and

may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the

moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

A CHRISTMAS THOUGHT ON WAR AND ARBITRATION

THE year 1912, by its manifestations of internal violence, its external

wars, and by its hardly less disquieting rumors of wars, has afforded

from time to time the pretext for much cynical satire at the expense of

the advocates of peace and arbitration. A strange sort of beginning of

the millennium this, it is said, which has witnessed Italy’s year-long

war with Turkey; the old Balkan wounds reopened, with the religious

issue involved; China aflame with bloody revolt against her Manchu

dynasty; Mexico in the throes of a rebellion little less than civil

war; turbulent Cuba barely escaping American intervention, actually

exercised in Nicaragua; Morocco the bone of contention of two snarling

powers; and withal Great Britain and Germany like open powder-magazines

exposed to the peril of a careless smoker--a year, moreover, that has

seen strikes of unusual acerbity in England and in Massachusetts, and

the unearthing of such vast conspiracies against life and property

as the one executed by the McNamaras and their associates and the

other avowed by the Industrial Workers of the World. The threat of

the latter to raze the Salem jail is matched by the intention of

McNamara, recently revealed, to blow up the Panama Canal. As a climax

of horror comes the attempt of a disordered mind to assassinate Colonel

Roosevelt. Surely, at first glance one might think that the wild beast

in man has lately come to the surface to a surprising and disheartening

extent.

It would be futile to claim that this sinister impression is

entirely offset by the fact that some of these events have aspects

of self-restraint and progress; that China, through her overturn, is

making the way toward freedom and self-government; that Cuba has again

shown that she is learning the same lessons; that the responsible

conservative forces of England, France, and Germany have refused to

follow the hotheads who talk lightly of war. There remain in human

nature, modern or barbarian, primal impulses of hatred, violence, and

lawlessness.

It is one of the most important functions of education, government,

and religion to subdue these impulses, and this can be done, in part,

by turning their force into new channels. Through Tesla’s discovery

and invention the natural turbulence of the mountain stream, even that

of Niagara itself, is electrically utilized to do the work of the

world at a great distance. It is the aim of the inventive resources of

philanthropy to do something similar with the wild and waste forces

of humanity itself. Wise benevolence is increasingly occupied with

imposing not only upon others, but upon ourselves, restraints without

which we should revert to the brute. Sometimes this is done by solemn

formalities like the Constitution of the United States; sometimes the

compact is the tacit one of civilization involved in the establishment

and observance of law. This it is now sought to extend to nations,

by the agreement to enlarge the limits of judicial arbitration which

already exist in every modern country, and thus through men and peoples

of advanced ideas of justice to affect those more backward. Because

of this great opportunity to uplift the world, those in authority

are under obligation--a sort of _noblesse oblige_--to hold their own

country to its highest standards of conduct, internal or international.

Whatever the croakers may say, there is no relapse from the sentiment

in favor of arbitration and peace. There have been righteous

rebellions, and probably there will be others, but there are many wars

based on territorial aggression or trivial or fancied wrongs which may

be prevented by an appeal to an international court. Compulsory this

appeal must be, by our consent in the cool air of wisdom: but along

with humanity at large we shall be the gainer. Arbitration is a shorter

cut to justice than war has ever been.

At this time of the recurrence of the festival of the Prince of Peace,

it is becoming to the Christian world to renew its faith in the power

of love to cast out hatred, of good-will to accomplish the uplifting of

humanity through sympathy and opportunity. Such a vast work demands the

ultimate release of the forces now held in readiness for international

wars. Prevent by arbitration the causes of such wars, and you divert

colossal waste forces--including the constant anxieties of the

people--to the real and crying need of the times.

GIVING AWAY THE NATION’S PROPERTY

THE NEEDLESS INVASION OF THE YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

ON the twenty-fifth of November there is to be a hearing before the

Secretary of the Interior to receive and consider the report of a

board of army engineers to determine whether or not there is any

other adequate source of water-supply for San Francisco than the

beautiful Hetch-Hetchy Valley, which the city desires to submerge for

a reservoir. This valley, as our readers know, is a part of the great

Yosemite National Park, and lies eighteen miles north of the Yosemite

Valley, just over the divide, so to speak. The representatives of the

city have already acknowledged before the Public Lands Committee of the

Senate that they could find an adequate supply of pure water “anywhere

along the Sierra,” to the north of the valley--“if,” as they said, “we

would pay for it!” The mainspring of the assault upon the people’s

National Park--and, if it shall succeed, it will be but the first of

many similar assaults on other parks--is the desire to get something

for nothing. The public interest in resisting the attempt is to save

from destruction one of the most wonderful of the Sierra gorges, which

a good wagon road would make an integral part of the Yosemite trip. It

remains to be seen whether any amount of speciousness, any elaborate

and misleading volume of argument will be able to obscure the main

issue--the wanton invasion of the people’s greatest park.

We believe that the Roosevelt administration had no more legal or

moral right to divert a part of this National Park from the purposes

for which it was created, as was done by the Garfield grant, than it

would have had to give away the nation’s coal-fields in Alaska. The

Sierra Club, contending with the unlimited financial resources of San

Francisco, has yet presented a “brief” which riddles the arguments of

the city’s case.

That fable teaches that the time to save the rest of our great scenery

is before it is largely visited, for then it will become to the

advantage of some “interest” to divert it from the use of posterity.

EDITORIAL NOTE: CONTRIBUTIONS DESIRED

The Editor of ~The Century~ invites the offer of contributions to the

departments of “Open Letters” and “Lighter Vein.”

In “Open Letters” the aim should be a light and lively treatment

of social, political, domestic, artistic, or other topics in an

easy, natural, epistolary style, having the give-and-take of

correspondence, and witty or humorous treatment, mellow, without

didacticism; articles should have a novel and piquant motive; and,

in order to save them from dilettantism, they should have useful and

substantial suggestions. A convenient length is fifteen hundred words.

For the “Lighter Vein” Department contributions are invited of

brief narratives from real life, of a humorous character, and of

such entertaining interest as will entitle them to rank as good

“after-dinner stories.” What is desired is not so much a short

anecdote as a narrative of about a thousand words, having a certain

natural plot. It is desired to avoid stock stories which, told in

past generations, are located in the present. While in general the

stories should be humorous, once in a while that quality might be

varied by something unusually dramatic, quaint, or curious. The

Editor must be assured that the articles have not before been in

print.

All contributions found available will be paid for at the magazine’s

customary rates.

[Illustration: OPEN LETTERS]

ON MAGIC CASEMENTS

... “Magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery-lands forlorn.”

--~Keats~, “_Ode to a Nightingale_.”

_From a Seeker after the Ideal House, Recommending the Latest Thing in

Windows_

[Illustration]

_Margaret Dear_:

Enjoy our new home? Indeed I do, as much as you enjoy “Parva sed Apta.”

Yet I confess to a little restlessness at times, such as Browning’s

_Juan_ in “Fifine” felt over his “honest civic house.” I want to cut

away, and to wander foot-loose and free. And if it weren’t for the

magic casement--don’t you want to hear about the magic casement?

The architect’s assistant proposed it, a young fellow with irregular

eyebrows and a nice smile. You would like him. We had been talking

windows, and he asked me all of a sudden:

“Since you like the type, sha’n’t I put a magic casement in your study?

We sometimes find it a very acceptable little addition in suburban

building.”

I gasped, and seized on a familiar phrase. “Will it add materially to

the cost?” I inquired.

“No, not materially,” he answered. “And it would harmonize capitally

with the study.”

For many a day after we moved I forgot all about the conversation and

the casement. You know what it is to get settled. The dining-room

flue wouldn’t draw, and our invaluable but expansive Maggie grumbled

because she had to turn sidewise to get up the narrow back stairs, and

to arrange family and furniture absorbed my energies. But a day came

finally when I shut myself in the study for a bout of work. A set of

examination blue-books had come in from my college classes, and my mood

was grim. I learned that the “Shepheard’s Calendar” consisted of twelve

pastoral decalogues, and that Ariel’s song was intended to “guide

Hamlet to his shipwrecked father,” or, as another student suggested,

“to lead Minerva on.” Most of the papers were equally stupid and less

funny. My muscles were aching, for the furniture had been heavy. As for

my heart, here I was starting life afresh and receiving felicitations

in a pretty new house, but life seemed over. Well, dear, never mind

that; but you will understand. You know what narrow house guarded by

two tall cypresses is always before my eyes.

Suddenly I noticed the casement. I never had tried the patent spring.

It opened at a touch. I had expected to look out on Mr. Baker’s

hen-yard; but I didn’t. There was instead a wide stretch of tumbling

seas--splendid, perilous seas, gray and fierce, with glints of silver

at the horizon, and great waves racing inland and breaking in sheets of

foam below! As I leaned out and drew deep breaths of salty, foamy air,

I saw a dim sweep of coast through the spray.

The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution

were plain enough; but were those “human shores” or the forlorn coasts

of faery-land?

“Please, Miss, the butcher,” called Maggie’s voice behind me, and I

shut the window and ran down-stairs as though I had never heard of

tired muscles or heart. When I got back to blue-books, it was amazing

how brilliantly the students were writing.

When I next opened the casement the sea was moony-calm, and a

nightingale was singing outside in balm-laden air. Mr. Baker’s

hen-yard, viewed from the next window, never varied, but let me tell

you that out of a magic casement one does not see the same sight twice.

I did not let myself open it often. When I was leaning from it I forgot

the passage of time, and you can’t imagine how “jobs” crowded last

winter. But if, while I worked, I left a crack ajar, and this grew to

be rather a habit, the air that came in kept me fresh and fit, so that

I have never carried my work so easily.

One day--inside, I remember, it was bleak winter twilight--there

was an island rising from the sea. The tremulous waters were tinged

with the first promise of dawn. A planet on the horizon glowed red.

Though the heavens elsewhere were clear, the summit of the mountain

isle was veiled in drifting mists, like tears; yet behind the mists

the sun seemed to be shining on level reaches of springlike verdure,

which caught the longing of the heart, yet stilled all longing with an

exceeding peace. As the dawn brightened, I could discern two figures

on the low sands at the base of the hill, and presently, speeding

across the waters faster than flight of bird, appeared a spark, glowing

as though the planet had left the sky. Faint shining grew at sides

and center, till I could see the vesture and the two wings, serving

as sails, of an angel whose face was as the morning star. If you had

only been there! Of the blessed folk who filled the ship, some looked

affrighted, some exceeding glad; and though I could not clearly hear

the chant they sang, one voice sweet above the rest, I knew it to be

a song of deliverance. Do you remember our Dante readings under the

pines? All that day there was absolution in the air.

But there was none on that other day when sky and sea blazed blue fire,

thunder-caps lay pearled in the west, and a high-pooped ship dropped

anchor beneath my window. Sea-weary serving-folk in medieval garb,

went ashore by ones and twos, while a knight in green array and a most

fair lady lay talking on the deck. Now and again he touched a harp,

with skill, I thought, seeking languidly to please her; but she looked

on him in distaste. Then a page brought them liquid from a crystal

flask of curious fashioning, and the two drank thirstily, for it was

hot. Then they gazed startled on each other with changed eyes. The

thunder-caps rolled up, and I heard them speak in troubled, riddling

words of “aimer” and “la mer,” and I shut the window lest I prove

indiscreet. Besides, the air was stifling.

It was not always sea that greeted me. You can imagine the pleasure of

opening in harsh March weather on the cool depths of a summer forest,

where the angel face of a sleeping girl in white nun’s habit made a

sunshine in the shade! My worries rolled away as I watched joyous

wood-folk--fauns, satyrs, and fair hamadryads--caper and dance through

the forest, and saw them, awestruck at her sweet holiness, bend their

knees before her, grinning gently, and crown her with garlands. In that

same wood, when the moon was risen, I saw star-crossed lovers misled

by faery pranks, and the queen of faery herself beguiled. But the next

evening my window gave on a blasted, treeless heath, where weird women

lay in wait for two doomed soldiers.

One of the best things I got from the window was a glimpse of

Utopia. Several of us had spent the day trying to organize relief

in a mill town where a three-cornered strike was going on, and the

regular unions, the employers, and the I. W. W. were involved in a

hideous wrangle-tangle. It was worse than any of our old settlement

experiences. I came back sick at heart and touched the casement spring,

afraid that I couldn’t see out for the smart in my eyes. But there lay

Utopia before me. Yes, dear, Utopia.

Did it? I dared not be sure. Past the rear gardens of the pleasant

houses a clear river ran sweetly, just as Sir Thomas More had said, and

through the wide street passed comely, alert citizens, full of grave,

friendly cheer. But might there not be slums and strikers round the

corner? The power of faith was blurred in me that night.

Just then a man who carried a kit of carpenters’ tools, whistling as

he walked, looked up and waved his cap. It was young Stanton of our

economics department. He was always tinkering at his house, but it

looked odd to see him carry a kit on the public way.

“Good morning. Isn’t Utopia the greatest ever?” he cried. “My lectures

are over; I’m off to help with those new houses around the bend.”

“Is this real Utopia?” I asked eagerly.

He nodded.

“I perceive, however, that the inhabitants have not changed their

nature,” he laughed. “You have your old skeptical mind.”

“If it’s Utopia,” I retorted, “why in the name of common sense are you

still lecturing on economics?”

“The wonder is how I lectured on it in the old days,” he replied. “I

was like a professor of harmony, with nothing to expound but discords.

Now we have a symphonic whole to study and even fuller harmonies to

evolve. The department is the largest in the college.”

“Have pity on my skeptical mind,” I pleaded. “Give me a sign that

Utopia is here.”

He motioned to the passing people.

“Why, look!” he said.

And I was satisfied: for never could there have been that serenity

of eye had one factory been left exploiting the labor of children,

one sweat-shop, or one malcontent. Yet even while I watched, a woman,

dressed in black, passed, sobbing bitterly. Tears? In Utopia?

“We are still on the earth, you know,” said Stanton, gently; “we are

not exempt from tears.”

* * * * *

~Not~ long after I met the architect’s assistant. I had been worrying

somewhat. I was troubled about the price of the magic casement, even

though he had said that it would not add materially to the cost of the

house. He caught the same train as I to town by a flying jump at the

last minute. He was scurrying by, but I pulled his coat and made him

sit down.

“I hope the house is satisfactory?” he asked.

“Very, on the whole,” I replied. “The door-panels warp, but no house is

perfect. I want to ask you about the price of the magic casement. It

was not included in the specifications, and I am anxious to settle for

it.”

He wriggled, looking annoyed.

“If you like it, you ought not to haggle about the price,” he said.

“I shall not haggle,” I replied with spirit; “but if the window is

as expensive as I fear, perhaps you wouldn’t mind being paid on the

instalment plan.”

“If I had not supposed you perfectly solvent, I should never have put

that casement in,” he returned.

“You had strict instructions to avoid all luxuries,” I said with

indignation, for I was frightened. “You knew that I was living on a

salary and that I had to mortgage in order to build. However, I am

not complaining. I am willing to pay heavily for the casement, for it

certainly is a shipshape affair.”

“That’s better talk,” said the assistant. “Now, as a matter of fact,

you’ve paid already. The contract for magic casements is to the effect

that the article is paid for by use. It runs, ‘For so much value

received in vision, equivalent price in use, thus and so.’ I knew you

could pay cash for that window.”

To pay by using! Now, Margaret, did you ever hear of anything like

that! “How uncommon,” I protested. “How absurd!”

“Nobody would suppose that you had a look into Utopia lately,” he

sighed.

“We’re not in Utopia,” I argued.

“Are you so sure?” he asked; and looking at him, I found I wasn’t.

“People are dull,” he complained ruefully. “Of course they are in

Utopia the minute they believe themselves there.” As he talked, I was

noticing that ruffled hair of his and those queer, triangular, merry

eyebrows.

“Does your firm approve your way of doing business?” I asked.

“They have nothing to do with magic casements. Those are a little

specialty of my own which I put in now and then for a suitable client

like yourself.”

“Who are you, anyway?” I cried; and with a flourish he handed me a card

engraved in the latest style. Mr. Robert Goodfellow was the name it

bore. The wind from the train window blew the hair from his ears.

“Robin!” I shouted.

“At your service,” he laughed. “You see, I adapt myself to the times.

There’s no use playing helter-skelter pranks on systematic Americans.

They get their cream by a separator, so they never put out bowls of

milk for me; the chores are done by machinery; and if I prowl about the

kitchen by night, I get nervous prostration for fear some one will turn

on the electricity. So I went in for scientific efficiency, and studied

for the professions. I have lots of fun. But you people who live in

steam heat are so afraid of drafts that hardly anybody will let me put

in a magic casement. I was really grateful to you for giving me the

chance. Hello! Here we are at Back Bay! Good-by!”

There’s my story. Now, may I not send Robin to give you a magic

casement in “Parva sed Apta”? I am sure he would not mind the journey.

But I suspect you may have one already; Robin and you were always on

good terms.

Lovingly yours,

_Vida D. Scudder_.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: IN LIGHTER VEIN]

AN AFTER-DINNER STORY

BY BADDELEY BOARDMAN

A REMINISCENCE OF MARION CRAWFORD

Many visitors to Rome will remember the German book-store on the Piazza

di Spagna, kept by Herr S----, of whom a story is told which throws a

backward light upon the apparently troublesome activities, as a boy, of

a distinguished American novelist. Herr S----, who had been established

in Rome as a bookseller almost a lifetime, once met in his store

another elderly gentleman, who said:

“Isn’t it fine, Mr. S----, about Frank Crawford?”

“Fine about Frank Crawford? Vot you mean?”

“Why, about his book--a great success. Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you

read it?”

“Read his pook? No. Frank Crawford ride a pook? Imbossible!”

“Oh, yes; no doubt of it. Giuseppe,”--calling a salesman,--“let me have

a copy of ‘Mr. Isaacs,’ please.”

When the volume was brought to the incredulous bookseller, he held it

at arm’s-length, looking at it curiously as he turned it from side to

side and from end to end; then he cautiously examined the title-page,

with its “--th edition,” which he greeted with a guttural “Huh!” Next

he turned to the last page, and read the concluding sentence with

another grunt of astonishment. Then he dipped into the volume in two or

three places, and finally, satisfied that he was not being deceived,

handed back the book to Giuseppe without looking at him, and said:

“Vell, vell! dot brooves dot you must neffer trown a poy.”

THOUGHTS, DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

BY DEEMS TAYLOR

’Tis Christmas eve. The very air

Seems charged to-night, seems subtly thrilled

By glad previsions of a rare,

Strange happiness, yet unfulfilled.

I sense this thing, and still my heart

Is numb, lethargic, dead. I hold

Myself from all the world apart.

The Christmas spirit leaves me cold.

Below me, in the frosty street,

I hear the city’s muffled song

Of carnival--the tramp of feet,

The voices of the passing throng.

I watch them as they hurry by

In kind confusion, faces bright

With Christmas comradeship; but I--

I am not one of them to-night.

Each hastens, in that host below,

To choose the gifts that shall delight

Another on the morrow. No,

I am not one of them to-night.

The laughing crowd, the siren call

Of blazing shops that beckon; nay,

Untouched, unmoved, I hear it all:

I did _my_ shopping yesterday!

EMMY JANE’S CHRISTMAS

BY JULIA B. TENNEY

Mawnin’, Miss Johnson. Is yer out doin’ yer Chris’mas shoppin’? You

sure is de forehandestest pusson I eber did see. Here ’t is five whole

days ’fore Chris’mas, an’ you ’most frough gettin’ ready.

What’s we goin’ ter do? Why, jes as usu’l, an’ dat’s good ’nough fer

we. You see, we spends Chris’mas day sorter foragin’ roun’ ’mongst

de white folks, an’ c’llectin’ things tergether, an’ ketchin’ ’em

Chris’mas gif’; den de nex’ day we all has _our_ Chris’mas.

What? We ain’t got it on de right date? What’s dat got to do wid de

’joyment ob it, I’d like to know? An’, anyhow, no one doan’ know fer

sure what is de right date nohow, ’ca’se dere ain’t no one erlivin’ now

what was erlive when Chris’mas started in on us, an’ if dere was, I

wouldn’ b’lieve him nohow, ’ca’se he’d be too ole ter trus’ his mem’ry.

So one day’s as good as anudder, an’ maybe better. Dis here way suits

_me_, an’ it saves er lot ob trouble an’ hard wuk, not ter speak ob de

money.

Dis is de way we wuks it, an’ ’scusin’ de walkin’ roun’ an’ totin de

load home, it ain’t no trouble ’t all.

We ’vides de city up into pahts. I takes de av’nues, ’Lindy teks de

lengthways streets, li’le Polly Ann an’ John Andrew de cross streets,

an’ Jeemes William--my ole man--de gen’lemen’s clubs. We all has our

own way ob doin’ it, but we all gits de things.

Jeemes William he jes stan’s near de do’ ob de club-houses wid his

hat in his han’, an’ as de gen’men goes in, he says ter all ob de

sassy-lookin’ ones, “Chris’mas gif’, Gen’al,” an’ p’ints ter de

army-button what he foun’ in de White Lot, an’ what he puts in his

buttonhole on dese ’casions. Den as de South’rn gen’men goes in, he

hol’s dat li’le ’Federate flag ober de button an’ says, “Chris’mas

gif’, Massa.” An’ I’ve knowed him ter come home wid as much as twelve

dollars in his pocket jes f’om his good manners; dey is so skase

nowerdays, wid all dis passle ob young niggers growin’ up roun’ here,

dat de white folks is willin’ ter pay high fer ’em when dey do come

’cross ’em.

’Lindy she puts on dat black alpacky frock of hern an’ er white collar

an’ a starched white ap’on, an’ she takes de rich-lookin’ houses an’

rings de bells, an’ asks kin she hope out wid de extra wuk jes fur er

tas’e oh de Chris’mas-time, an’ dat fetches some one ’fore she’s made

more ’n five or six tries, an’ den she jes lays herse’f out ter please

de white folks, an’ ebery endurin’ one ob dem gibs her sumpen ’nudder

what dey doan’ want an’ what somebody else done gib _dem_, an as ’Lindy

mos’ in gen’al picks out de big famblies, dere ain’t no mean showin’

f’om her.

Polly Ann an’ John Andrew dey sings “I’s er-rovin’ li’le darky all de

way f’om Alabam’” an’ some yudder sech chunes un’er de winders, an’

folks t’rows dem pennies an’ nickels, an’ lots ob ’em gibs ’em cakes

an’ or’nges an’ candy an’ de like er dat.

Me? How do I git my share? Now yer’ll laugh! Jeemes William say’,

“No one wouldn’t thunk er sech er thing ’cep’in’ you, Emmy Jane,”

but I ain’t nuss nine li’le white chillun, ’sides thirteen ob my own

piccaninnies, countin’ de halves an’ de dade ones, an’ not learn

nothin’ ter hope me ’long in dis world.

I jes puts on er clean purple caliker frock an’ er stiff white

ap’on wid er white handkuchief roun’ my neck, an’ I ties er colored

handkuchief ober my h’ad ter make our kind er white folks ’member

de days when we all uster be jes like one fambly, an’ laugh an’ cry

togeder, an’ dat’s how come it dat I done foun’ out so many ob de

quality.

What I do ’sides dress up like ole times? Well, all de endurin’ year I

saves up all de putty fedders f’om de tu’keys an’ chickens an’ geese

an’ sech, an’ I gets me er ball ob red cord fer five cents, an’ I ties

de fedders up in li’le bunches an’ puts ’em in er basket.

Chris’mas I teks dat basket on my arm, an I s’lec’s de houses where dey

is babies, an’ dere is plenty ob ’em on de av’nues, too, ’spite ob Mr.

Roosterfelt er-sayin’ rich chillun is fallin’ off in comin’ ter our big

cities. He oughter hab my job one year an’ see fer hisse’f.

Well, I rings de bell an’ asks kin I gib de baby er Chris’mas gif’,

an’ ’most ebery fambly say “Yes,” an’ brings de baby out, an’ acts

pleased-like. Den I hol’s out my arms to de li’le chile an’ says, “Come

ter Mammy, Honey!” an’ most in gen’al dey jumps right to me, an’ dat

settles de mas an’ pas.

Den I s’lec’s er bunch ob fedders an’ gibs dem to de baby. All chillun,

white or black, loves ter play wid fedders. Reckon it’s ’ca’se dey

ain’t so long lef’ dem off in de wing-country what dey come f’om, an’ I

tell you dat basket is er heap sight heavier on de home trip dan on de

goin’ out.

Next day we all brings out our pickin’s an’ we builds er fire in de

bes’ room, an’ _den’s_ our Chris’mas.

Doan’ we _give_ no presen’s? Co’se we does. We s’lec’s all de things

what we doan’ want, same as de white folks does, an’ we makes er pile

ob ’em, den we makes a lis’ ob de names ob de people what we wants ter

gib to,--’Lindy she does dat paht, ’ca’se she’s had schoolin’ an’ kin

write grand,--den we blin’fol’s li’le John Andrew, an’ ’Lindy she calls

out er name, an’ John Andrew grabs er gif’. Dat’s how come you ter git

er pair of gallusses, an’ Daddy Bundy er long gingham ap’on las’ year.

I hopes de givin’ dis year will turn ter tu’key an’ cramberry, jes fer

de sake ob ole times down home. I sure does get lonesome fer de ole

place roun’ ’bout Chris’mas.

DADDY DO-FUNNY’S WISDOM JINGLES

BY RUTH McENERY STUART

INCUBATOR CHICKENS

Dem inkybator chickens dat’s hatched by de clock

Wid a lamp for love, is lonesome stock;

Dey feeds in droves but dey envies de others

Dat scratches for grubs wid any ol’ mothers.

An’ dey ain’t by deyselves, po’ orphans, in dat--

No, dey ain’t by deyselves in dat!

THE CAULIFLOWER

When de cabbage got ambitiom, in a uppish hour,

He lost ’is head an’ bu’st into flower

Wid ’is brains outside, an’ addled, at dat--

Den he sot ’isself up for a ’ristocrat.

An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat, in dat--

An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat!

LIMERICKS

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

[Illustration]

THE FILCANTHROPIC COW

Said a cow, “It has long been my dream,

A sort of utopian scheme,

To leave, when I die,

Enough milk to supply

A home for poor kittens--with cream.”

[Illustration]

TACT

Quoth a cat to me once: “Pray relieve

My suspense. What does eight from nine leave?”

Poor puss looked so cold

And so thin and so old,

I replied, “_Quite a few, I believe_.”

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK

_Libby’s_

HAWAIIAN (SLICED) ~Pineapple~

[Illustration]

This delicious tropical fruit is grown, sliced and packed by Libby,

M^cNeill & Libby on their Hawaiian Plantations, the home of the world’s

best pineapple.

Libby’s is the kind of Pineapple that has the sun-ripened natural

flavor, and is good for everybody.

The sanitary can is full of tender, generous slices with a syrup of

pure granulated sugar and luscious pineapple juice.

Serve just as it is for a dessert--as a salad, or fruit course.

_Always buy Libby’s_

Libby, M^cNeill

& Libby

Chicago

[Illustration: “_Libby’s_ is always the best”]

[Illustration]

BAKER’S BREAKFAST COCOA

THE FOOD BEVERAGE OF FINE QUALITY

[Illustration]

Absolutely pure, delicious, healthful; made from high-grade cocoa

beans, scientifically blended and by a perfect mechanical process (no

chemicals).

Estab. 1780 =WALTER BAKER & CO., Ltd.= Dorchester, Mass.