We Will All Value Peace More if We Form the Habit of Paying Out Real Money for It

IN a certain sense, the Russo-Japanese war ended too soon. It left the Japanese supremely satisfied with what their guns had accomplished for them: and in the Russians a conviction that a little more time and a few more guns would have achieved all that they had hoped.

So each nation set immediately to work to build more guns in preparation for another war.

The most tragic paradox of our times is that in almost every country one of the most prominent topics of parliamentary debate is the enormous expenditure upon armaments [said Mr. Asquith in 1910]. We all admit the evil. We all deplore it. Each country by itself is helpless to arrest the progress of armaments. No single country can reduce the expenditure, and trust even temporarily for its own security to the forbearance of a more powerful, more vigilant neighbor. We seem to be in a vicious circle.

To-day there is evidence that more people are more heartily sick of guns and armament than ever before in the history of the world. Before the end of another year that feeling will be almost universal. The people of every nation—and especially the Germans, who have bowed lower in their worship of guns than any other—will be thoroughly convinced that guns can never again achieve in the world a result proportionate to their terrible cost.

It must be so: the war must not end until it is so.

And when it does end, when peace comes again, the first step toward making that peace permanent is somehow to destroy the "vicious circle" of preparation for war.

We must have some agreement for the reduction of armaments—every one admits that.

But what every one does not recognize and admit is that merely throwing away our guns will not make peace secure.

It is inconceivably valuable—this thing we call peace: and, like other valuable things in the world,—faith and happiness and the love of a woman,—it needs to be constantly wooed, constantly thought about, and made the object of generous expenditures.

I should like to see a budget of millions—yes, billions—provided after the war for the cultivation of international fellowship.

We might as well speak right out plainly on this matter. And the plain truth is that every people in the world has certain peculiar attributes that grate on the nerves of any other people.

I myself am a direct descendant of the British Isles. As far back as I can trace, my people have been English or Scotch or Irish.

Yet there are few human experiences that can so effectively irritate me as a short conversation with the average Englishman.

Doubtless I grate on him as much as he on me: doubtless there are certain traits of mine that simply set a German or a Japanese on edge.

It is not enough that we should merely agree not to keep a gun pointed at each other's head. The thing for us to do is to spend some time and money every year getting to know each other better—in laying so broad and deep a foundation of mutual respect that the trivialities of character that divide us will appear as trivialities indeed.

I would see an enormous international exchange of teachers and students after the war.

I would bring a group of young newspaper men from every foreign country every year to work in our newspaper offices; and send hundreds of our newspaper men to other lands. The press, the great molder of public opinion, should have at its helm men who understand and appreciate the other fellow's point of view.

All this, of course, will cost money; and we shall be more likely to value it for that reason.

The gods, as Emerson says, sell everything to men at a fair price.

At a price of three billions a year for war preparation, they have sold us the most frightful war in history.

At what price—when the war is over—can we buy a few hundred years of peace?

Bruce Barton, Editor.

HER BOY

By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD

Illustrations by Stockton Mulford

IN SPITE of his fame, Mr. Cassius Proudfoot, like the violet by the mossy stone, has none to praise and very few to love him—behind his back.

He is the Mr. Proudfoot, formerly foremost among efficiency engineers, time-study experts, speeding up of industry propagandists, and now the Vice President, Manager and Heart and Soul, Mainspring and Pulse of the American Industrial and Financing Corporation.

"No one man has done more to attract the attention of our national industry to its great undeveloped resource," said the toast-master at the National Chamber of Commerce dinner, as he introduced this square-jawed millionaire. "I refer to the epoch-making work he has accomplished in opening our eyes to the study of men. It gives me great pleas—"

Whereupon Cassius Proudfoot, who had just passed his fiftieth birthday, stood up, and, with his massive face set like reinforced concrete, began:

"If civilization is worth its salt, it must next turn to the problems of human efficiency."

A waiter in the far corner of the room—who had a wife, seven children, and tuberculosis—whispered behind his hand to a bus-boy. He said:

"Civilization is a failure. Better to be thinkin' of 'appiness than efficiency. They'll be findin' it out—mark wot I s'y. Efficiency is a lemon. If it weren't fer the 'igh cost of livin' we wouldn't need to be a-studyin' 'ow to myke a machine out of a man."

Mr. Proudfoot went on with his speech, his sentences punching like piston-rods.

When it was over, a Western hardware manufacturer amid the hand-clapping said: "That's damsignificant!"

Cassius Proudfoot, having said the last word on the exploiting of men as the new profit factor in manufacturing, allowed his mind to descend to the thought of bed.

"The truth of the matter is that I am very much played out," he confided to the hardware man. "I've just finished the manufacturing reorganization and the cost studies of the Eastern Munitions concern. My doctor says my arteries are as soft as a baby's, but that I must have sleep. Knitteth up the unraveled sleave of care, you know. So I brought Mrs. Cassius clown to New York, and we've just settled at the new San Solfino—best service in America. Pay and get."

PROUDFOOT thought, as he went home, that the day was over. For him it had just begun.

Coming to him were adventure, thrills, throes, and experience—and the greatest of these is experience.

Experience, for instance, had led Abbie Proudfoot to know that Cassius was most calm in spirit when he was regarded seriously. Most Americans regarded him seriously. His wife, who adored him, adored him, however, in her own way—which was as a child.

"Well, mother, you're still up," he said, as he entered their luxurious suite of rooms. "Waiting for me, eh? Well, it turned out to be a really important occasion. What are you sewing on?"

"Cass, I'm knitting a silk tie for Henry."

"It's a waste," asserted Proudfoot. "The idea of a woman of your intellectual development applying your energies to labor! Well—pooh!—I can go out and buy a hand-knit silk tie for—"

"There wouldn't be any love in it."

Mrs. Proudfoot put down her work on the Louis XIV table.

"You must go to bed, Cass," said she. "And you must ring for your glass of hot milk. The doctor said it was good for something—what was it good for?"

"Makes me sleep. And now sleep is more important to me than ever," said Cassius, yawning and taking off his dress coat. He picked up the telephone receiver and ordered his hot milk, and this began a chain of significant events.

THE truth was that the maids, the hops, the waiters, the captains, and even the resident manager of the San Solfino believed Cassius Proudfoot, Esquire, was worth several more million dollars than he was worth; and it is common knowledge that a millionaire is one thing and a multimillionaire is another. There was a great scrambling in the room-service pantry when the telephone call came for Proudfoot's hot milk. There was determination that it should be very hot and very milk.

"Which one of you is to take this hot drink?" asked the assistant night steward, glancing from one to the other of the two room-service boys.

"Let number 23 take it," said the red-haired youth, whose number was 80 and whose name was Stover.

He might as well have dropped a bomb as to have dropped this remark. Mr. Dopkins, the assistant night steward, glared at him.

"There's gratichude for yer!" he exclaimed. "There you go—you who is always complaining because opportunity never knocks on your entrance."

The youth of the hair with a pinkish tinge blinked the lids over his handsome glass-clear, blue-green marbles of eyes.

"Mr. Dopkins, it's my luck," he explained. "I ain't nothing on superstition, but my luck ain't never done nothing but throw me. You ain't forgot that when this Proudfoot was here last month, and wanted to borrow one of the boys in a hurry to take down to his country place, you gave me a chance then. What happened? We didn't get no further than the

Bronx in his limousine before my nose, what never bled before in my life, begins to bleed. Bleed, did I say? It spouted! They had to let me down at my young lady friend's apartments, and her mother had to stop it with cobwebs. Where was the big tip I was going to make? I remember not. If I take this here milk, probably I'll fall dead outside his door."

"Take it or lose your job," roared the angry Bill Dopkins.

Leslie Stower took the milk.

It was Mrs. Proudfoot who from her bedroom heard the tapping on the reception-room door.

"Cass!" she called. "There's your milk. If you go to the door, put on your slippers."

Cassius went to the door in his bare feet. He opened the door a crack, and saw before him the red-haired youth, whose blue-green eyes were fixed in a frightened, apprehensive stare upon the steaming silver pitcher and the beautifully clean and gleaming glass which occupied an insecure place upon the Dresden china tray.

NOT once in many moons did Proudfoot exhibit any interest in humble personality. Therefore there can be no way to account for the unfortunate interest which he now took suddenly in Leslie Stower.

"I've seen you before?"

The gaze of Leslie Stower's marble round eyes, fixed faithfully upon the hazardous pot of steaming milk, were torn away from duty by the sheer force of personality. He straightened his short, stocky figure, and looked up into Proudfoot's stern gray eyes.

Thereupon the silver pot slid down the Dresden china tray, opened its own lid as it toppled over the edge, and, falling, delivered first a stunning blow upon the great toe of the magnate, and then emptied its piping hot contents upon his bare foot.

A cry of woe and anguish parted the lips of Cassius the First. He raised his foot and, standing on one leg, nursed the injured member with both his hands. In his cream-colored pajamas with a fine green stripe, he was not a dignified figure.

He slammed the door in young Stower's awed countenance.

Within the apartment and from her bedroom came Abbie Proudfoot's suppressed laughter. This laugh did not appeal to Proudfoot's better nature. He rushed to the telephone, and on his way gave his analysis of the San Solfino Hotel, its builder, its owner, its system, its organization, its judgment in selecting employees, and other matters.

"Is this the manager?" he asked into the mouth-piece, after he had commanded the telephone girl to give him the source of authority. "Well, this is Mr. Cassius Proudfoot. A boy—an incompetent, halfwitted, delinquent, clumsy, illiterate, untrained, raw boy—number 80—has just been at my door. Now, I'm not going into any details. This is Mr. Proudfoot talking—do you understand? I want that boy fired. It's not personal; it's the principle of the thing. I want him fired—now—within ten minutes. If I ever see him again I'll leave the hotel!"

This was the ultimatum of success. Mr. Proudfoot switched off the lights, entered his bedroom, and, crawling under the cool linen sheets, humped his heavy body about to adjust it to the comfort of sleep. But as commonplace, as vulgar, as negligible a thing as conscience crept into the luxurious bed and put its bony little arms around Proudfoot's thick neck.

When Cassius shut his eyes, inviting slumber, he saw staring at him the reproachful eyes of Leslie Stower.

"I should not have gone so far," he admitted, and twisted over from his left to his right side. "I suppose they've bounced him. Well, he's too young to have a wife. He looked pathetic, but he's a tough young crittur. He may have a mother at home. Probably not. Yet he may—"

He opened his lids, stared at the velvety dark, and listened to the night noises of the city. Presently out of the gloom appeared the eyes of Leslie Stower, gazing at him with the expression of a friendly dog which has received a kick.

Cassius found his pillow uncomfortable, and beat it with his fist.

"What's the matter, Cass dear?" his wife called to him.

"I drank too much coffee," he replied—and knew it was a black, black lie.

THREE minutes later he threw off the bed-clothes, scuffed about in the dark until he had found his slippers, then strode into the parlor and turned on the lights.

"Find the man to whom the room-service boys report, and send him up to me right away," he said to the telephone operator. "Don't delay. This is Mr. Proudfoot."

"Cass dear," came Abbie Proudfoot's voice.

"Huh?"

"What—"

"Nothing. Go to sleep."

He shut the door of her bedroom.

When Mr. Dopkins arrived, Mr. Proudfoot said in a stern and reproachful tone:

"Well, what have you to say, huh?"

"To say, sir ?"

Mr. Proudfoot looked at the assistant room-service steward.

"Well, this is what I wanted to say to you," said the man in pajamas. "I sent word through the manager that I wanted that boy who nearly burnt my foot off

---

fired. I've changed my mind. Let him stay."

Dopkins' voice seemed to come from the interior of a receiving vault.

"It is too late, sir, begging your pardon," said he. "I have already given Leslie Stower his discharge."

"Stop him before he leaves the hotel!"

"He's gone already, sir."

"I suppose he can find another position?"

"I don't know, sir. To tell you the truth,—speaking my mind, as it were,—I was not pleased—for myself, that is—to fire that boy. To tell the truth, it seemed a shame, sir. I know he wasn't the best boy we ever had, but he weren't the worst, either. He was in hard luck—"

"Hard luck nothing!" ejaculated Proudfoot. "You never hear a successful business man talking about hard luck."

"Be that as it may, sir, I am far from pleased—for myself, that is," said Doppins, with a sepulchral gloom. "The boy is a red-haired boy, and some might say he was a homely boy. He wasn't a beauty by no means, sir. But he wanted to succeed. And he had been very faithful to a young woman—a girl, I might say—Lily MacMahon—a slip of a girl. She works as a cashier until eleven every night. With a steady place he was going to marry her."

"I tell you what you do," growled Proudfoot—"you send a messenger to Stower's residence, and charge the expense to me."

"I can't do that, sir. I haven't the young man's address, sir. It was a boarding-house. I omitted to get it. None of the men know it. I asked particular, because I didn't like the look on the face of the boy when he left. He was a very intense boy, sir. He was very low, sir. When he left he was very low and—if I might say so—very bitter. All I know about finding him is through his young lady friend. She lives on Egglestone Avenue in the Bronx, but I don't know the number. Perhaps you would know, sir. You dropped him there a few weeks ago, when he had the nose-bleed."

"Hah—I knew I had seen him," said Proudfoot. "No, I didn't notice the number. All I noticed was the house. I remember it because of the economic waste in ugly architectural decoration."

"You could find it again?" asked Dopkins, with a sickly smile of hope.

"Certainly; but what good does that do us?"

"No good. No good, sir. When the boy left he was very low. I sha'n't never forget seeing him go out into the alley-way to-night. To tell you the truth, sir, I've been ha'nted by his last words."

Proudfoot leaned forward anxiously.

"What did he say? What do you mean by his last words?"

"He said he was discouraged at last—he said he was going to blow his brains out."

"What!" gasped the big man.

"Yes, sir; he said as how if he didn't do so he was going to throw hisself into the river."

The eyes of Mr. Proudfoot bulged.

"He mustn't do that!" he commanded.

"Well, sir, there's a chance he may not," said the steward.

Mr. Dopkins ran his gaze up one of the green stripes of Mr. Proudfoot's pajamas.

"There s nothin' to be done," he said in the manner of a grave-digger. "What comes, comes. What has to be, has to be."

Mr. Proudfoot meditated. Then he sprang up and thrust his hands apart to show that he would like to sweep Mr. Dopkins out of the room.

"You are right," he said. "No use cryin over spilt milk."

"I'll send a fresh pot of it, sir."

"Confound it, that wasn't what I meant."

Mr. Dopkins made his escape; and Proudfoot shivered, summoned his calm, his philosophy, his character, and his general bigness, and went under the bed covers again.

"Lily MacMahon," he said to himself. "Some little snip of a girl, I suppose, subject to pink eye."

He remembered Abbie Proudfoot when she was seventeen. He had gone to school with her, and she had been subject to pink eye. He wished that he had not thought of pink eye.

The rain, fresh from the harbor, suggestive of the fall equinox, was beating on the window. This was a bad night for good cheer. It was depressing. The hoot, toot, bellow, and moan of the ferries and tugs were depressing—sounds both far away and lonesome. A river-front! A dark figure moving disconsolate along the warehouse wall. A splash! A gurgle! A spreading circle on the black water!

Mr. Proudfoot arose from his bed. He had spoken as the American success speaks—as a king. His word had gone, and his word went, and what's his name—Leslie Stower, jobless, discouraged, alone, and "low," as Dopkins had said—was now wandering the adamantine walled streets of the rain-beaten and stony-faced city.

PROUDFOOT was no longer able to think of Leslie Stower as production unit; he could only think of him as a boy with reproachful eyes.

"I drank too much coffee," said Cassius, standing in front of the window, from which he could see the almost pulsing glow of the city trembling in the rain.

Somewhere a clock struck eleven.

"This girl of his will be starting home now," he said. "The devil with hot milk! I didn't need it. I'd been asleep long ago

without it. I believe I'll wake up Abbie."

But, instead of waking up Abbie, he called the garage where he kept his own car when it was in town.

"A limousine and a good wide-awake bright driver," he commanded.

"It is my duty to do what I can," said he to himself later, as he walked up and down in his bath-robe. "I wish I knew what to do—something efficient."

HE thought he was doing something efficient when he drew on paper a diagram of Egglestone Avenue and showed it to the driver sent by the garage. This driver was a man with extremely bright eyes and extremely bad teeth emphasized by one gold incisor.

"This is a vacant lot," said Proudfoot, pointing to the plan. "I think there is a church here, but it may be a school-house. Then you go along Egglestone Avenue in this direction, and there is a big white brick apartment-house, and then a lot of low houses."

"I know the place," the chauffeur responded, recognizing that a milestone in his life had been reached. "Yes, sir, Mr. Proudfoot. What will I ask the young lady besides his address?"

"Nothing! Wait a minute. You say you know the locality. Well, here beyond the low buildings is another vacant lot with a high board fence with advertising signs. The first house—a three-family house—"

"Correct, sir—the first house. I see it now."

Proudfoot's face lit up with pleasure.

"You know the place?"

"I know it," replied the other, seeing gold pieces.

"Then go to it. Telephone me from the Bronx.

"The Bronx, sir! Did you say the Bronx?"

"Certainly. Why?"

"I thought this here Egglestone Avenue was in Brooklyn."

Proudfoot threw back his head and opened his mouth as if he were about to howl like a lone wolf. Instead of howling, he remained motionless.

"Wait for me," he said at last, in a thin and satirical voice. "I'm going to get dressed. We're living in the dark ages when, if a man wants anything done, he has to do it himself. This is a nice kettle of fish. Wait here. I'll go with you."

After he had dressed himself he regretted for a moment his impulse to go seeking a needle in a hay-stack; but just then an automobile tire exploded somewhere on the asphalt below, and he jumped as if the sound were that fatal crack to be made when the disconsolate Stower would pull the trigger with his youthful forefinger.

"Wait till I scribble a note for Mrs. Proudfoot," he gasped. "Now, then—come on! Hurry!"

THE vestibule of the three-family house in which lived the fair Lily gave forth an aroma like the extract of cabbages and rubber overshoes and wet umbrellas; but the heart of Proudfoot had been comforted because a light still burned in the second story, showing that the home of the widow MacMahon had not been closed for the night. He rang the bell under the tin letter-box, a second light sprang up in the hall, and down the stairs, visible through a cheap muslin curtain over the door-glass, came a shadow and the sound often misdescribed as tripping feet.

Cassius threw his cigar toward the limousine from which he had descended, heard its glow hiss on the wet sidewalk, and then, turning, found himself face to face with Lily MacMahon.

Lily was no beauty, and she still wore the paper cuffs that protected her sleeves as she made change at the cashier's desk of a drug store. And yet, Lily's personality had a perfume. One could not sense it by smell, but rather in one's mind. Her eyes looked straight into the eyes of Cassius.

He was sorry for her; he liked her, wondering why. He said:

"You know a young man—Leslie Stower."

She appeared alarmed.

"Has he been run over?" she exclaimed.

Proudfoot sighed.

"I hoped he had been here," said he. "So you haven't heard from him, eh? Where does he live?"

"You are looking for him?" she asked. "What are you—a—a—detective?"

"No-o."

"You got bad news?"

"No-o. Tell me where he lives."

Lily put her fingers timidly upon his sleeve, and explained to him that Leslie Stower had moved his room two days before. She did not know his address: he had written it on a piece of paper to give her, and when they parted he had forgotten to put it in her hand.

"But I've been so worried about him, anyway," she concluded, holding her trembling hands palm downward over her lungs. "Leslie has been so discouraged."

Proudfoot shivered.

"Well, I suppose you ought to know the truth," he said.

She waited.

"Well—I—er—you see, I am—the fact is—"

She leaned against the wall, her upper lip trembling, her hands plucking at her blue serge skirt, her freckled face pale, and her large blue eyes growing larger and larger. As between having her look at him like that or being brought before the judgment, Cassius would have preferred the latter.

---

"Why, Leslie—Leslie is—everything to me!" exclaimed Lily, losing control. "He's my boy. He didn't say—he didn't say he'd do anything rash, did he?"

Proudfoot hung his head.

"Well, that's all," he stammered. "There's nothing more to do."

"Nothing more to do! Nothing more to do!" she ejaculated, with little shrieks. "See here, Mister—you're responsible. You got to take me and find Leslie. The idea! Do you think you and I are going to let that poor boy— You got a machine there. I'm going to get my hat and coat."

Some unopened flower in Proudfoot's heart now suddenly burst into full bloom. The axis of his world was no longer the great Cassius: everything seemed to swing about these negligible two—Lily MacMahon and Leslie Stower.

Riding in the gently rocking limousine, he leaned forward and looked sidelong at the girl.

"This ain't a trap?" asked Lily suddenly. "I'm suspicious of limousines."

Cassius smiled.

"Don't you worry, Lily MacMahon." he replied. "We're going straight to the all-night lunch place where you say—what was his name?"

"Terrence Jones. He works there nights. He's Leslie's best friend. They once owned a second-hand bicycle together."

"Well, don't you worry. When I start in to do anything I'll go to the limit. I'll spend anything that's necessary. Don't you worry. We'll find young Stower."

He endeavored to make his voice sound assuring and kind. He wanted to reach the understanding and the sympathy of this little freckled girl with the honest blue eyes. A bashfulness crept over him.

WHEN Lily took him into the Always Open Restaurant on Fourteenth Street, in which there mingled a pleasant warmth, the aroma of coffee, the sheen of glasses, the lines of apples and cup custards, and said, "Mr. Jones—meet Mr. Proudfoot," and Terry Jones wiped his hand on his white apron and extended it over the sand-papered counter, Cassius blushed.

He made himself very businesslike, however. He said:

"Coming to the point quickly, Mr. Jones—has—"

"Mr. Stower," prompted Lily.

"Yes, Mr. Stower," repeated Cassius. "Has Mr. Stower been here? She—that is, we were worried about him."

The expression on his face was that of an animal begging, sitting up on its hind legs. Proudfoot wanted good news.

"Leslie was here," Terrence said, wiping his chin on his sleeve. "That's as good as I can tell you. He wouldn't talk. He acted like a case of grip—see? I thought you had shook him, Lily. He looked something fierce. He only left here an hour ago. He was going down to see that reporter on the night staff—the guy he met on the Fall River boat. He was going to ask him for a job."

"What else? What did he say when he left?" asked Cassius anxiously.

Jones evidently regarded Mr. Proudfoot with complete general and particular suspicion. He said:

"Well, Leslie passed a remark as he left. He told me like this: 'Terry, I'm going to make a try, but maybe it will be a hundred years before you ever see me again.'"

Cassius gasped, moved his finger around inside his collar as if he needed more air, and looked at Lily. Her face was drawn; tears welled up in her eyes.

"Now don't let's cry," begged Mr. Pioudfoot, his diminutive and wheedling and awe-stricken words contrasting with his size and his square, determined jaw. "There's a good girl—don't let's cry. That won't help any. We're going down to the newspaper offices. Yes, we are. We're going to put in some advertisements and ask Leslie to communicate with us at once. Yes, we are. Don't cry! It makes me nervous. Your stomach's empty. Sit up here on this stool and have a—"

He looked up at the framed menu done in black and gilt.

"Have a hamburger steak, that's a good girl. Don't cry and don't faint. Have a hamburger steak."

"Mm—mm—mm," answered Lily, sobbing an assent.

"Give me a cup of coffee!" said Cassius. "There, that's a good girl. Don't cry on the steak—eat it."

Lily ate, but the flow of her tears did not cease. Her companion gulped his coffee, conscious that the glowering disapproval of young Mr. Jones was fastened upon him. Indeed, when the two started for the door, Terrence called out:

"Say, Lily. Just a minute."

Cassius heard Jones' hoarse whisper:

"Now, I don't know what's the trouble—see—but I certainly don't like the looks of the guy who's your escort. Maybe you know what you're doin', but to me he looks like a professional gambler. Fine feathers don't make fine birds, y'understand. I'll bet this guy never called at your home."

Cassius wanted to laugh. He thought of the lonely, discouraged boy, of blasted young lives, and he wanted to cry. He wished he were young enough to cry.

As he was thinking this absurd thought he felt the soft, warm hand of Lily creep into his own; he pressed her fingers.

THROUGH the wholesale district toward City Hall Park they rode on and on.

"I just want to tell you," said Lily at last. "Something inside says to me the worst has happened. And I just want to tell you, if it has you mustn't ever blame yourself, Mister. I know you're a good man. It wasn't really your fault. I want to say that now."

Cassius gulped. The girl was thinking of him—of Cassius Proudfoot! She could forget herself. She had thought of him. He wondered who else besides Abbie thought of him—like that—lovingly?

"Come what may—" he said to himself inside his closed lips.

They rode on.

At the newspaper office one of the copy boys remembered a young man with

red hair who had called three quarters of an hour before—at about two o'clock, he would say.

Cassius snatched out the gold watch presented to him by the office force in his old engineering firm years ago.

"That can't be right," he gasped. "It's quarter of three."

He was unused to the magic speed of the night hours.

"That's right," said the copy boy, shivering in a green-walled corridor where the draught was laden with the odor of printers' ink and the sound and pulsing of the presses. "That's right. He was here about two to see Mr. Apperson about a job. I think I heard one of 'em say something about going up to Ottie Benjamin's. You'd probably find one or probably both of 'em there."

"Did he get a job?" asked Cassius.

"Naw," replied the boy, rubbing his smutty palms together. "I bet he didn't get no job. He was a gloom—that guy. I thought he'd come in to read the death notices."

Mr. Proudfoot sighed. Hopes and heart had fallen within him, but he managed to pat Lily gently on the back.

"We'll ask the chauffeur where Ottie Benjamin's is," he said. "Come! Courage! On to Benjamin's!"

NO use talking—Ottie Benjamin's is not a nice place. By some mysterious power, doubtless drawn from politics rather than from religion or education, it maintains an all-night license when all other places are closed, and the smoke is thick and the conversation thin. Persons who should be in bed go there, and reporters come uptown after the morning editions are on the presses for a bite to eat.

As Cassius stood in the doorway where a dozen ratty and weasel-faced chauffeurs were lolling about, the place struck terror to his heart.

A big man has to be careful. Mr. Proudfoot had always been careful, and he felt that being seen in Ottie Benjamin's at something less than four o'clock in the morning was being truly careless. Cassius usually liked to imagine that persons recognized him and nudged each other as he passed. Now he would have given a thousand dollars for a false beard.

No one appeared to recognize the great man, however. No one paid him any attention, except one young woman who giggled at him and said, "Hello, grandpa!" Cassius looked in one of the many mirrors to see if he were growing old. He considered that he looked rather youthful.

Then suddenly he saw that Lily, who had seated herself at the table in front of him, was trembling.

"I ain't used to a place like this," said she apologetically.

"Gad! I was a cad to bring you here," he replied under his breath.

He forgot himself again; his singleness of thought was for little Lily MacMahon.

The Western manufacturer of hardware who had been at the banquet of the National Chamber of Commerce so many years—or was it hours?—ago, and who was now roaring with a gay party, saw Proudfoot, and he waved at Cassius.

"Ah hah!" he chortled triumphantly. "Hello, Proudfoot! Hello, old shoestring! A cold bottle and a broiled live, eh?"

"Beast!" growled Cassius. "I'll start a hardware factory in Illinois that'll d rive him out of the State."

Proudfoot was sorely tried now. The head waiter said that Mr. Apperson had not been there, but he had seen a red-haired youth come in. The red-haired youth had talked to Waiter Number 42, who had now gone out to serve at a supper being given by an English actor

Continued on page 20

THE MELTING POT

In Which the New Books and Magazines are Boiled Down to Give You Fifteen Minutes of Health, Efficiency, Travel, Biography, and Adventure

ARE JAPANESE WOMEN BETTER TRAINED THAN OURS?

AMERICAN women are physically inferior in almost every particular to American men. The majority of them have undeveloped muscles, a bad carriage, an impaired digestion, and are without skill in outdoor games, is the severe comment of Anna M. Galbraith, M. D., author of Personal Hygiene and Physical Training for Women (W. B. Saunders Company).

A Japanese woman, on the other hand, is usually the peer of a man of her own race who is of the same age and height, says the writer. As a young girl she begins the practice of jiu-jitsu, the Japanese system of training the body. She enters the arena on equal terms with boys, and gives just as much time to perfecting her strength and skill. Grown men and women practise together, and the women show the same strength as the men.

"The back of the average Anglo-Saxon woman is generally the weakest part of her body, while that of the normal Japanese woman satisfies the surgeon's ideal, as well as the artist's. The average Japanese woman of to-day shows a figure as perfectly molded, and of as true proportions, as the women of ancient Greece were able to display.

"Consumption is a rare disease in Japan. Even winter coughs are of rare occurrence.

"The Japanese look upon full, deep breathing as the most vital function in life. Food is not so important, although it is necessary."

Professor Phillips of Amherst gives women one ray of hope.

"Young women are certainly one inch taller and five pounds heavier than they were ten years ago," he declares.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MEXICAN PEONS

"A LAZY, drunken, worthless lot of brutes!"

That is the way that foreigners in Mexico are accustomed to speak of the Mexican native—the peon. An article in the Mexican Review proceeds to tell the truth about these misrepresented people.

For centuries the peon has been a slave. In his entire life he has not seen as much money that he could call his own as an American laborer receives in a week. Always in debt, he has accepted the rough, scanty food doled out to him, lived and died almost as the dumb animals with which he worked.

But how can people be so sure that the peons are by nature slothful, lazy, unambitious?

A force of peons employed in bridge construction, being dissatisfied with their regular daily wage, asked the manager to give them "task work" instead of paying them by the day. The paymaster was instructed to keep a record of the amount of work accomplished. A list was posted declaring that so many buckets of gravel, etc., would be regarded as a day's work, no matter how long it took the peons to accomplish the task.

There were startling results. Many men finished work at eleven o'clock, having done twenty-five per cent more work than at the old rate. The rest finished at three. After having gained a day's pay in five hours, the majority asked to continue the work and get in another half day. This was gladly accorded them.

It was interesting to watch them. The slow-moving, sullen-faced men took on new vigor and life. Good-natured taunts and badinage were exchanged, and the laggards were stimulated to renewed exertion.

In Yucatan, for the first time since the Spanish conquest, these people have been given a chance, and it shows what qualities are in them. By government regulation the hours of labor and the wages are so fixed that at three o'clock a man is through work, and receives the wage of $3.75. Many of the men go home, take a bath (the regular daily custom), don snow-white cotton garments, and then—well, what would the men of a like class in the United States do? There is at least one thing they would not do, and that is, go to school. Yet that is exactly what hundreds of these Yucatan peons are doing; and not infrequently their wives go with them.

WHEN BEETHOVEN MET GOETHE

SHUT up inside himself by his deafness, Beethoven developed a doughty self-reliance that sometimes verged on rudeness. To kings and princes especially he would give no deference. He was as good as they—in fact, a good deal better; for his position rested on the solid foundation of genius and hard work, while theirs was the child of chance.

Roman Rolland, in his Life of Beethoven (Henry Holt), quotes the great musician's account of his meeting with Goethe:

"Kings and princes can easily make professors and privy counselors," he said, "but they can not make great men or minds that rise above the base turmoil of this world. And when two men are together, such as Goethe and myself, these fine gentlemen must be made conscious of the difference between ourselves and them. Yesterday, as we were returning home on foot, we met the whole of the Imperial family. We saw them approaching from a distance. Goethe let go my arm to take his stand by the roadside with the crowd. It was in vain that I talked to him. Say what I would, I could not get him to move a single step. I drew my hat down upon my head, buttoned my overcoat, and forced my way through the throng. Princes and courtiers stood aside. Duke Rudolph raised his hat to me, the Empress bowing first. The great of the earth know me and recognize me. I amused myself in watching the procession pass by Goethe. He remained on the roadside, bowing low, hat in hand. I took him to task for it pretty severely and did not spare him at all."

Goethe, on the other hand, was of different stuff. He was a councilor of the Grand Duke of Weimar, and Beethoven's lecture to him rankled in his courtly soul for years.

"Beethoven is possessed of a wild, uncouth disposition," he said, remembering this episode. "We must excuse and pity him, for he is deaf."

HOW MEN BEHAVE UNDER SHELL-SHOCK

SHELL-SHOCK is the popular way of saying war-strain; and a man suffering from shell-shock can be decribed in common parlance as a man who has "lost his senses." Some men it makes blind, some dumb, when nothing is physically the matter with the eyes or the vocal cords. It is a form of hysteria.

"The most distressing symptoms occur in those patients whose past history shows that, far from possessing even the normal quota of timidity, they have been noted for their 'dare-deviltry'," according to Shell-Shock (Longmans, Green & Company), written by G. Elliot Smith and T. H. Pear. "The seasoned regular officer as much as the young, green soldier displays precisely the same symptoms. Such men have been in the army for years. Their strength of mind and body has been demonstrated over and over again; yet at last they have broken down."

A non-commissioned officer went through eleven months of the war. He was wounded twice, gassed twice, buried under a house. Each time he returned to the front. He was granted five days' ordinary leave and started off, apparently in good health. After reaching England, while waiting for a train, he suddenly collapsed, became unconscious, and several months afterward was the subject of severe neurasthenia.

A seaman was brought into a naval hospital who could speak only in a whisper. While in the ammunition chamber of the big guns he suddenly lost his voice. After fourteen days he recovered it.

A short time after he returned to the hospital with complete loss of speech, immediately after a naval battle in the North Sea. He was discharged with complete recovery of his speech. On returning to duty, as soon as he stepped on board, his voice was lost again for the third time; and it never came back.

WHERE HAS THE JOY OF WAR GONE?

MEN have always taken much joy in fighting, especially in other wars, where there was probably real exhilaration in cavalry charges and hand-to-hand combats. But the machine-gun and heavy artillery have done away with any such satisfaction.

"Where, then, is the enthusiasm in which war was wont to thrive?" writes Lady Warwick in the Bookman. "It has gone, I think, to two classes—to those who make the munitions, and those who labor to mend some of the evils that war enforces. More than half the noncambatant world looks after the making of wounds. The residue seeks to heal them.

"Few people have any idea how the passion for munitions has bitten into the national life. In England there are twelve vast munition areas where, day by day, the output increases, as men, women, boys, and girls acquire a greater facility. Even the school-boy writes home to say that the head-master has installed a lathe and that the 'fellows' are giving so many hours a day to the national service.

"At the end of 1916 the wealth of the world stood reduced by twelve thousand million pounds. Surely, in the years to come when this madness is past, people will ask themselves: Is a government that demands such penalties for the price of its ambition to be allowed to persist?"

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SHALL BOHEMIA BE FREE?

AMONG the many races and nations that go to make up Austria, two great peoples stand out—the Hungarians and the Bohemians—about equal in population. The Hungarians have been given absolute self-government; the ministers of war and foreign affairs are jointly responsible to the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments. The Bohemians, on the other hand, have no voice in the government. There is no Bohemian army—there are only regiments in the Austria-Hungarian army. In this war the Bohemians have been placed under German commanders, and driven forth to fight in a cause they detest; and in every Bohemian regiment there are incorporated forty per cent of Germans and Austrians and Hungarians to watch and control them.

Why is Bohemia cut off from any part in the Empire and held in subjugation by the Hungarians?

The story is told that, when the compact was made between Austria and Hungary, an Austrian statesman said to his Hungarian colleague: "If you look after your barbarians, we'll look after ours." These were the Czechs and the Slovacs, the Czechs being assigned to Austria, and the Slovacs to Hungary.

But the Bohemians were not barbaians. They had a great university at Prague. In no nation is the number of illiterates so small; it is less among the Bohemians themselves than among the Germans who live in Bohemia. Dvorak, the musician, and Comenius, one of the first and greatest educators, were Bohemians; and so was John Huss, the first man to give the world the idea of religious freedom.

The future of Bohemia is one of the most interesting questions of the war. What will the peace conference do for this spirited, intelligent, and gifted people?

THE BEST TRAVELERS IN THE WORLD

THE complete disappearance of birds in the fall and winter used to be considered a Mystery. At one time it was thought that some birds flew to the moon, says Frank M. Chapman in The Travels of Birds (D. Appleton & Company). "Others, particularly the Swallows and Swifts, were believed to fly into the mud and pass the winter hibernating like frogs; while the European Cuckoo was said, in the fall, to turn into a Hawk."

It was only gradually that scientists discovered that birds have definite routes of migration, as clearly marked as a telegraph line; that, generation after generation, a bird will follow the same route his ancestors did, even though it takes him half a continent out of his way; and that, in spite of the great distances birds travel, and the dangers they encounter by the way—such

as storms, telegraph wires tall buildings, and lighthouses—they nearly always arrive on time.

"Year after year the Bobolink, the Baltimore Oriole, the midget Humming-bird, many Warblers, and other birds arrive from journeys thousands of miles in length on exactly or nearly the same day."

Some birds, says the writer, live off the country as they go. "But the Plover and other birds that travel overseas can not stop for meals. Like bears in winter, they must live on themselves—that is, on their fat. When they start, their body is covered with a thick layer of fat; but when they arrive at their journey's end it has disappeared."

Some birds travel only by day; others only by night, and a smaller number travel by both day and night. The day flyers are those who can fly fast enough to escape from bird-killing hawks.

"In March, in the mountains of Vera Cruz, Mexico, I once saw a flock of several thousand white Pelicans migrating northward," the author recounts. "These great birds measure eight feet from tip to tip of their outstretched wings. Their flight was not in a direct line, but in a series of interwining loops. The sun shone on their snowy plumage, and against the background of blue mountains they were as dazzling white as snowflakes in a squall. So, sweeping gracefully around each other, they were quickly lost to view."

KEEP YOUR LUMBER CLEAN

LUMBER becomes diseased, and decays. Much lumber is lost by decay; and, while this is not wholly preventable, it can be reduced to a low point by sanitation. A lumbering expert, after inspecting for many years in the East and South, noted carefully the conditions that are unfavorable to the healthy condition of lumber. The principal ones are:

Many of the yards are located in damp places.

Crops of weeds are permitted to grow about the premises, bringing dampness and poor ventilation.

Quantities of decaying wood are scattered about the ground, supplying culture beds for germs of decay.

The foundations of the lumber stack are of unsound wood, thereby communicating decay to the healthy wood.

Frequently lumber is left too long unpiled; decay gains access to it, and afterward is hard to check.

Foundations are not high enough above the ground, and circulation of air beneath the pile is hindered.

Sometimes a yard is provided with a thick layer of sawdust, with the mistaken notion that by this means a dry yard is provided for the lumber. Such a yard is sure to become a swarming-ground for decay germs. The most progressive lumbermen provide concrete foundations, which are absolutely decay-proof.

IF DOMESTIC SERVICE COULD BE MADE BEARABLE

ON the part of girls there is a growing tendency to enter shops, offices, and factories rather than to stay at home or enter domestic service. But, after twenty years have been spent in any of these occupations, it will be found that the woman who chose domestic service, if she has been thrifty, is probably as well off financially, and better off in health, than her sisters who went into factories and offices.

Office and factory work is terribly hard on girls, according to Sir Thomas Oliver in Occupations (Cambridge University Press). If domestic service could be made bearable for girls, the health and happiness of the world would leap forward:

Under present conditions servant girls have a dull time. Their evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sundays are not their own, to spend as they please. For girls with an independent spirit, to be a servant is intolerable. Several changes must be made in the scheme of domestic service. The girls should have better wages, greater opportunities for rest and leisure, and decent rooms to live in. When that time comes, more girls will take up cooking—a very profitable career, for cooks are always in demand. They command high wages, and if they marry they have learned a trade that will always make them a living.

Office work is attractive to many girls because it is clean, and, if carried on in light, well ventilated offices, it is healthful. But one great objection to it is the fact that it involves too much sitting and too little exercise.

Anemia and sclerosis are maladies most common in the early years of womanhood, and these are caused by nothing else than long-continued sitting when at work,—or its opposite, too much standing,—deprivation of fresh air, and too short intervals for taking food. The fact that until recently, in all countries, women when pregnant were allowed to keep on working in the factory and elsewhere almost to the end of the term, is no doubt to blame for most of their subsequent ill health, which shows up so terrifyingly in the statistic tables.

ALL THE FOOD ISN'T WASTED IN THE KITCHEN

A CARLOAD of oranges was shipped from Rialto, California, April 10, 1917, destination unknown. It was iced en route, and sent to Fort Worth, Texas, on the theory that the market was strong in that city. A suitable sale could not be made, so the car was re-iced, and then shipped to Cleveland, where an attempt to market it was unsuccessful.

After another change of ice, it was diverted to New York City. It arrived in Jersey City May 14, and was delivered at the Erie pier in New York May 16, thirty-six days after it had been started from California. It would have taken only twelve days in a direct trip.

Result: The New York City Health Department condemned 85 out of 429 boxes of oranges as unfit for human food. The inspector's notation was, "Loss due to too long on road." This, says Country Gentleman, is how profligate America is with its food supply.

The New York City Department of Health will condemn about twenty-four million pounds of food-stuffs arriving in the city during 1917, if the record of the first four months is kept up. Here are the reasons:

Goods very often too long in transit.

Poor packages and rough handling. For example, on May 17 a whole shipment of raisins, packed in frail boxes and unloaded carelessly, was condemned. Similar losses occur in egg shipments because second-hand cases are used and eggs are packed unscientifically.

A great supply of potatoes have come to New York recently from the South; but they came in the poorest quality of barrels. In one week 1200 barrels arrived wet, dirty, broken; and the railroad authorities say that about a thousand dollars' worth of potatoes are wasted every day at its piers in Jersey City.

Goods are packed in wet weather. Farmers should know that wet, perishable foods will not keep if they are packed wet.

But there are other enormous sources of waste besides transportation.

The loss s occurring in the wholesale trade are comparatively small, because wholesale dealers are the most expert handlers of food-stuffs in the whole market system. But in the retail trade the waste becomes important again. Perishable products deterioate very quickly after they get into the hands of the retailer, and large quantities spoil before they get to the consumer. Nearly 10 per cent of all perishable products marketed are either a total loss in retail stores, or deteriorate so that they have to be sold at a sacrifice. The main reason for this is the lack of proper facilities in retail stores. Delicate commodities that have been handled in ice all the way reach the retail store only to be exposed to ordinary temperatures and the sun for hours at a time. Vegetables that are laid out fresh in the morning become wilted and spotted by night.

It should be realized in this connection that the wholesale produce dealer is necessary to the retailer. If the retailer tried to buy direct from the farmer, he could not regulate his supply half so well. Retailers even use poor judgment in ordering from wholesalers. They are apt to order too much instead of too little, not realizing how serious their loss will be from spoilage.

SLOW WORK FOR SOLDIERS

THE BIGGEST INCOMES IN THE WORLD

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

ABOUT the most exciting indoor sport anywhere in the civilized world is to guess how rich one's neighbor is. "How is that fellow able to buy a twin-six?" you ask with great indignation. Or: "These people are close enough to save a million dollars. They squeeze a penny till it screams."

No matter how small the town, there is always at least one rich man in it, and generally he is known locally as a millionaire, even if no one outside the town limits has ever heard of him. There is always some one family that owns the local "utilities," the water company and the bank and a choice collection of mortgages on the homes of more improvident citizens. Usually a member of that family has given a library or a "memorial" hall or a stained-glass window.

As in every small town, so in every large city and in every civilized or even partly civilized country, there is a large crop of the "biggest" incomes, really big enough to amaze and stupefy most of us. For, despite all the exaggeration in regard to wealth, there is a stupendous amount of it concentrated in very few hands. Indeed, the number of yearly incomes ranging from $1,000,000 up to about $5,000,000, not only in this country but in many others, is very great, and there are two at least in the world as high as $15,000,000.

Fortunately, such mammoth fortunes do not always stay in the same families from generation to generation. Some of them do; but new fortunes are constantly growing, and old ones being scattered and lost. Just now immense numbers of new fortunes are being made out of war prosperity, especially in this country and in Japan, and to a smaller extent in England.

Now, there is no way of knowing, really and truly, exactly what these very biggest incomes amount to. You and I have no way of learning exactly what the fortunes of John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, the ex-Czar, the Kaiser, Bertha Krupp, the Rothschilds, or any of the other world-famous rich people were or are, any more than we have of knowing precisely what the income of our neighbor, John Smith, figures up. For John Smith's receipts, unless he is some kind of public employee like a schoolteacher or a letter-carrier, are carefully concealed, nine times out of ten, from every one except the tax officials, who are sworn not to tell; and often the facts are misrepresented to them.

There are countless ways of concealing one's income. Money can be given away to wife and children before any record is made of it. Profits can be put back into business instead of being paid out as dividends. Income can be offset by merely nominal debts created for the purpose.

All these things can be, and are, done to conceal income by all sorts of people; and the very rich, through the help of lawyers, brokers, trust companies, and secretaries, have countless other ways of keeping the world from knowing how much they possess.

But, all the same, any one who really follows the subject carefully, who makes a business of it, can learn pretty accurately how rich certain people are and what their yearly incomes amount to. The local banker knows closely enough what the income of the richest local family is, if the banker really wants to know. So we can find out, from income tax figures, from occasional publication of lists of stockholders in various corporations, and from the appraisals of estates, about what the biggest incomes in this country—and in other countries—are.

Rockefeller's Income Not Known

NOW, there is very little doubt that Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller have the two biggest incomes in the world. Curiously enough, they are pretty much the same general size. There may be one or two other men in this country whose incomes in 1915 and 1916 were al most as large as Rockefeller's and Ford's, because of war-time munitions profits. But those incomes are not going to last at that rate, and there is a certain stability about the streams of wealth that flow into the pockets of Henry and John D. which is not equaled by mere upstart billionaires.

I put John D. first of all, and ahead of Ford; for, while his potential income is probably smaller than Ford's, the latter's wealth does not actually come out in dividends, the way Rockefeller's does. The Ford Company puts an immense part of its profits hack into the plant. Last year it made practically $60,000,000 profits, of which more than half belonged to Ford. But he did not take it all out in dividends, by a long shot.

In spite of innumerable facts that throw side-lights on the subject, there is no way of discovering precisely what John D.'s income is at present. One of his lieutenants stated some years ago that in his most prosperous years Mr. Rockefeller's income had been between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000. But since then he has given away several hundred million dollars on the one hand, and made several hundred million dollars in profits on his Standard Oil stocks on the other. On one single Standard Oil Company, that of Indiana, old John is receiving this year nearly $2,000,000 in dividends; and there are dozens of others. So it is safe to say that his total income is somewhere around $20,000,000 a year, perhaps a little less.

How would you spend $20,000,000 a year if you had it? How much money is it, anyway? If we took a whole division of soldiers out of the trenches, twenty thousand troops, it is unlikely that in civil life the whole army of them could earn more than Rockefeller's income. In one year his investments earn as much for him as about forty thousand average stenographers earn in a year. Assuming that Henry Ford's income is only a little less in actual distribution and a quarter or so more in possible distribution, the two of them together could have built the Panama Canal at practically the same rate of yearly expense at which the government built it.

Of course, only a crazy man with a $20,000,000 income could do anything with most of it except give it away. A man can't have more than about half a dozen houses, and of course he can't eat but one meal and wear but one suit of of clothes at a time. Only a miser with an actual disease for money cares to have more than a few hundred thousand dollars lying around in cash at any one time.

Result: John D. Rockefeller's hundreds of millions of dollars are represented by little bits of paper called stocks and bonds. All he can do is to collect these pieces of paper. He can't even really control the companies they represent, because the human limitations of even the ablest man make it impossible to follow the affairs of all these companies. So he might as well give away a lot of the money.

Ford's case is a little different. His wealth is more concentrated in one company, and he can actually put the money back just to see it grow. But he has been sued by other stockholders in his company on the ground that he has put back $50,000,000 more than there was any need of. Besides, he has practically given away scores of millions of dollars in higher wages to workmen and in lower prices and rebates to owners of cars.

It may be doubted if any one else in the world has ever had an income approaching those of Rockefeller and Ford, except perhaps the Czar of Russia in his palmy days before the revolution. The ex-Czar's fortune now, along with those of his wife, son, and daughters, is said to be only a paltry four or five million dollars. But once—and that only a few months ago—he had a nominal control over several billion dollars, and his income was estimated all the way from $10,000,000 to $40,000,000 a year. But he surely needed the money, for out of this vast sum he had to pay the wages of some thirty thousand servants and keep up three hundred automobiles and five thousand horses. In reality, the vast income was not his own at all; but, as head of the church and of a large royal family, he nominally owned a great many things that quickly reverted to the people when they once grew tired of maintaining him.

How Long Will the Kaiser's $5,000,000 Last?

JUST so, the Kaiser is said to have an income of $5,000,000 a year; but no one cares to bet just now on how long it will last. It is not fair, anyway, to compare royal incomes with those of private persons, although some of the princes and maharajas of India have a habit of holding on to their wealth just as if it really were their own and not that of their people. The two richest princes in India, the Gaekwar of Baroda and the Maharajah Sindia of Gwalior, undoubtedly have very large incomes. Gwalior has given from $3,000,000 to $4,000,000 for relief purposes since the war began, but it is most unlikely that the income of either of these potentates reaches the $15,000,000, estimate that has been made of them. A great part of their fortunes consists of jewels which pay no interest.

Before the severe land taxes and war taxes were put into effect in England, it is possible that one or more of the great land-owning dukes almost rivaled, in their rentals received, the prodigious incomes of Rockefeller and Ford. But the rich in England have had to pay dearly for their naval protection.

Frau Krupp von Bohlen, the famous German munitions maker, has enjoyed a pretty steady income of several million dollars a year, probably close to $5,000,000. She can safely be put in the five million dollar class, which is really quite a large one in this country, although not numerous enough to be at all overcrowded. It is the second class, so to speak, and naturally has rather more members than the first class, with its lonely two. Probably one other German manufacturer, August Thyssen, the iron and steel king of that country, could have paid himself dividends enough to add up to any income he wanted. But, like Henry Ford, he has put most of the earnings back into his property.

Japan's New Millionaires

SINCE the war began in Europe it is said that one thousand new millionaires have been made in Japan. These mushroom millionaires are called narikins over there, and they do not have to be as rich as in this country to be considered narikins. Yet some of them have done mighty well. An energetic and ambitious but previously rather impecunious ship-owner named Uchida made more than $2,000,000 last year. Japan also has some solid millionaires who were money kings long before the war, such as Baron Shibusawa and the Mitsuis.

We are told by the official Treasury figures that more than a hundred people

Continued on page 21

BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE BONDS

JUST KIDS

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MARY, MARY, PECUNIARY

Youth Challenges

By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

Illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock

THE world owes no small part of its advancement to the reflections of men in jail.

Bonbright, alone in the darkness of his cell, was admirably situated for concentrated thought. All through the sleepless night he reviewed facts and theories and conditions. His one profound conclusion was that everything was wrong: Capital was wrong, labor was wrong; the whole basis upon which society is organized was wrong. It was an exceedingly sweeping conclusion. He could see no ray of light.

Singularly, his own immediate problem did not present itself insistently until daylight. What would the authorities do with him? How was he to get his liberty? He could not ask his father to help him, for he did not want his father ever to know what had happened. Suddenly Malcolm Lightener occurred to him.

After a time the doorman appeared with breakfast.

"Can I send a message?" asked Bonbright.

The doorman scrutinized him.

"Maybe," he said grudgingly. "Gimme the message and I'll see."

"Please telephone Mr. Malcolm Lightener that the younger of the gentlemen he called on last evening is here and would like to see him."

"Lightener—the automobile feller?"

"Yes."

"Friend of yourn?"

"Yes."

"Um."

The doorman disappeared, to return presently with the lieutenant.

"What's this about Malcolm Lightener?" the officer asked.

"I gave this man a message for him," said Bonbright.

"Is it on the level? You know Lightener?"

"Yes," said Bonbright impatiently.

"Then what the devil did you stay here all night for? Why didn't you have him notified last night? Looks fishy to me."

"It will do no harm to deliver my message," said Bonbright.

"Huh. Let him out."

The doorman swung wide the barred door, and the lieutenant motioned Bonbright out.

"Come and set in the office," he said. "Maybe you'd rather telephone yourself?"

"If I might," said Bonbright, amazed at the potency of Lightener's name to open cell doors.

He was conducted into a small office; then the lieutenant retired discreetly and shut the door. Bonbright made his call, and asked for Malcolm Lightener.

"Hello—hello," came Lightener's gruff voice. "What is it?"

"This is Bonbright Foote. I'm locked up in the Central Station. I wonder if you can help me somehow?"

There was a moment's silence; then:

"I'll be right there. Hold the fort."

IN twenty minutes Lightener's huge form pushed through the station door.

"Morning, Lieutenant. Got a friend of mine here?"

"Didn't know he was a friend of yours, Mr. Lightener. He's in my office.'

Lightener strode into the room and shut the door.

"Well?" he demanded.

Breathlessly, almost without pause, Bonbright poured out his account of last night's happenings, unconsciously giving

Lightener glimpses into his heart that made the big man bend his brow ominously.

"I don't want father to know this," Bonbright said—"if it can be kept out of the papers. Father wouldn't understand. He'd feel I had disgraced the family."

"Doggone the family!" snapped Lightener. "Come on."

Bonbright followed him out.

"May I take him along, Lieutenant? And say, happen to recognize him?"

"Never saw him before."

"If any of the newspaper boys come snoopin' around, you never saw me, either. Much obliged, Lieutenant."

"You're welcome, Mr. Lightener. Glad I could accommodate you."

Lightener pushed Bonbright into his limousine.

"You don't want to go home, I guess.

We'll go to my house. Mother'll see you get breakfast, then we'll have a talk. Here's a paper boy; let's see what's doing."

It was the morning penny paper that Lightener bought, the paper with leanings toward the proletariat, the veiled champion of labor.

"Huh," he grunted as he scanned the first page. "They kind of allude to you."

Bonbright looked. He saw a two-column heading:

YOUNG MILLIONAIRE URGES ON POLICE

The story related how he had rushed to the police, after they had barbarously charged a harmless gathering of workingmen, trampling and maiming half a dozen, and had demanded that they charge again.

"It—it isn't fair!" Bonbright said chokingly.

"Fairness," said Lightener, almost with gentleness, "is expected only when we are young."

"But I didn't! I tried to stop them."

"Don't try to tell anybody so—you won't be believed."

"I'm going to tell somebody," said Bonbright, his mind flashing to Ruth Frazer, "and I'm going to be believed. I've got to be believed.

After a while he resumed:

"I wasn't taking sides. I just went there to see. If I've got to hire men all my life, I want to understand them."

"You've got to take sides; son. There's no straddling the fence in this world. And as soon as you've taken sides your own side is all you'll understand. Nobody ever understood the other side."

As the car stopped at Malcolm Lightener's door, panic seized Bonbright.

"I ought not to come here," he said, "after last night. Mrs. Lightener—your daughter—"

"I'll bet Hilda's worrying you more than her mother. Nonsense. They've both got sense."

Certainly Mrs. Lightener had.

"Just got him out of the police station," her husband said, as he led the uncomfortable Bonbright into her presence. "Been shut up all night. Rioting—that's what he's been doing. Throwing stones at the cops."

Mrs. Lightener looked at Bonbright.

"You let him be, Malcolm.... Never mind him. You just go right upstairs with him. A warm bath and breakfast are what you need. You don't look as if you'd slept a wink."

"I haven't," he confessed.

When Bonbright emerged from his bath, he found that the motherly woman

---

had sent out to a haberdasher's for a fresh shirt, collar, and tie.

"Guess you won't be afraid to face Hilda now," said Lightener, entering the room. "Grapefruit, two soft-boiled eggs, toast, coffee. Some prescription."

Hilda was in the library, and greeted him as if it were an ordinary occurrence to have a young man just out of the cell block as a breakfast guest. She did not refer to it; nor did her father, at the moment. Bonbright was grateful again.

After breakfast the boy and girl were left alone in the library briefly.

"I'm ashamed," said Bonbright.

"You needn't be," she said. "Dad told us all about it. I thought the other night I should like you. Now I'm sure of it."

"You're good," he said.

He sat silent, thinking.

"Do you know," he said presently, "what a lot girls have to do with making a fellow's life endurable? Since I started to work, I—I've felt really good only twice. Both times it was a girl. The other one just grinned at me when I was down on my luck. And now you—"

"Tell me about her," she said.

"She's my secretary now: Little bit of a thing,—but she grins at all the world. Socialist, too, or anarchist, or something. I made them give her to me for my secretary, so I could see her grin once in a while."

"I'd like to see her."

"I don't know her," said Bonbright. "She's just my secretary. I'll bet she'd be bully to know."

HILDA would not have been a woman had she not wondered about this girl who had made such an impression on Bonbright.

Malcolm Lightener entered the room.

"Clear out, honey," he said, "Foote and I have got to make medicine."

She arose.

"If he rumbles like a volcano," she said to Bonbright, "don't be afraid. He just rumbles. Pompeii is in no danger."

"You git!" her father said.

"Now," he said, when they were alone, "what's to pay?"

"I don't know."

"Will your father raise the devil? Maybe you'd like to have me go along when you interview him."

"I think I'd rather not.'

Lightener nodded with satisfaction.

"Well, then—I've kind of taken a shine to you. You're a young idiot, all right, but there's something about you. Let's start off with this: You've got something that's apt to get you into hot water. Either it's fool curiosity, or genuine interest in folks—I don't know which. Neither fits into the Bonbright Foote formula. I'm not going to criticize your father or your ancestors, whatever kind of fools I may personally think they are. What I want to say is: if you ever kick over the traces, drop in and tell me about It. I'll see you on your road."

"Thanks," said Bonbright, not half comprehending.

"I advise no boy to run against his father's wishes. But everybody starts out with something in him that's his own—individual, peculiar to him. Maybe it's what the preachers call his soul. Anyhow, it's his. Whatever they do to you, try to hang on to it. Don't let anybody pump it out of you and fill its room with a standardized solution. Get me?"

"I think so."

"I guess that's about all from me. Now run along to your dad. Got any idea what will happen?"

Bonbright studied the rug more than at minute before he answered:

"I think I was right last night. Maybe I didn't go about it the way I should, but I intended right. At least, I didn't intend wrong. Father will be—displeased. I don't think I can explain it to him."

"Uh!" grunted Lightener.

"So I—I guess sha'n't try," Bonbright ended. "I think go along and have it over with."

When he was gone, Malcolm Lightener made the following remark to his wife, who seemed to understand it perfectly:

"Some sons get born into the wrong families."

Bonbright entered his office with the sensations of a culprit approaching an unavoidable reckoning.

Presently he was aware that his father stood in the door, scrutinizing him. Bonbright's eyes encountered his father's. They seemed to lock.

"Well, sir?" the elder Foote said coldly.

Bonbright arose.

"Good morning," he said in a low tone.

"I have seen the papers."

"Yes, father."

"What they printed was in substance true?"

"I prefer not—to discuss it."

"And I prefer to discuss it. Do you fancy you can drag the name of Foote through the daily press as if it were that of some dancing girl or political mountebank, and have no reference made to it? Tell me exactly what happened last night—and why it was permitted to happen."

"Father,"—Bonbright's voice was scarcely audible, yet it was alive and quivering with pain,—"I can not talk to you about last night."

Bonbright was not defiant. His night's experiences had affected, were affecting, him, working far-reaching changes in him, maturing him. But he was too close to them for their effect to have been accomplished.

"You must not cross-question me," he went on. "There are things about which one's own father has not the right to ask. What happened last night happened to me. Nobody else can understand it. No one has the right to ask about it."

"It happened to you! You, as an individual, are not important, but as Bonbright Foote VII you become important. Do you imagine you can act and think as an entity distinct from your family?"

"A man must be responsible to himself," said Bonbright. "There are bigger things than family—"

His father had advanced toward his son's desk. Now he interrupted by bringing his hand down upon it.

"For you there is no bigger thing than family! Is this sort of thing being taught in college to-day? I suppose you have some notion of asserting your individuality. Bosh! Your individuality must express the individuality of your family, as mine has done, and as my father's and his father's did before me. I insist that you explain fully to me what occurred last night."

"I am sorry, but I can not."

THERE was no outburst of passion from the father; it would have been wholly out of keeping with his character. Bonbright Foote VI was a strong man, in his way; he possessed force of character—even if that force were merely a standardized, family-molded force of character. He perceived that here was a dangerous condition which must be cured—but not by seizing it and wrenching it into place.

"Let me point out to you," said he, "that you are here only because you are my son and the descendant of our forefathers. Suppose, as I have the authority to do, I should send you out of this office to earn your own living? Suppose I should find it necessary to disown you? What then? What could you do? What would your individuality be worth? Think it over, my son. In the meantime, we will postpone this matter until you revise your mood."

He turned abruptly and went into his own office. He wanted to consider. He did not know how to conduct himself, nor how to handle this distressing affair. He fancied that he was acting wisely and diplomatically; but at the same time he carried away with him the unpleasant consciousness that victory lay, for the moment, with his son. Individuality was briefly triumphant. One thing was clear to him—it should not remain so.

Bonbright's feeling, as his father left him, was one of utter helplessness. First in his mind was the fact that he did not know what to do—did not even know what he wanted to do. All he could see

---

was the groove he was in, the family groove. He did not like it, but he was not sure he wanted to be out of it. His father had talked of individuality. Bonbright did not know whether he wanted to assert his individuality.

One thought persisted through the chaos of his surging thoughts: He must call in Ruth Frazer and explain to her that he had not done what the papers said he did. Somehow he felt that he owed her an explanation—her of all the world.

She entered in response to the button he pushed; but there was not the broad smile—the grin—he looked up eagerly to see. She was grave; she was troubled—so troubled that she did not raise her eyes to look at him, but took her seat opposite him and laid her dictation book on the desk.

"Miss Frazer—" he began; and at his tone she looked at him.

HE seemed very young to her, yet older than he appeared before. Older he was, with a tired, haggard look left by his sleepless night. She could not help softening toward him: he was such a boy!

"Miss Frazer," he said again, "I want to—talk to you about last night—about what the papers say."

If he expected help from her, he was disappointed. Her lips set visibly.

"It was not true—what they said. I sha'n't explain it to anybody else. What good could it do? But I want you to understand. I can't have you believing—"

"I didn't read it in the papers," she said; "I heard from an eye-witness."

"Mr. Dulac?" he said. "Yes, he would have seen. Even to him it might have looked that way—it might. But I didn't— You must believe me! I did not run to the police to have them charge the strikers again. Why should I?"

"Why should you?" she repeated coldly.

"Let me tell you. I went there—out of curiosity, I suppose. This whole strike came so suddenly. I don't understand why strikes and troubles like this must be, and I thought I might find out something if I went and watched. I wasn't taking sides. I don't know who is right and who is wrong. All I wanted was to learn.

"One thing: I don't blame the strikers for throwing bricks. I could have thrown a brick myself at one of our guards. A policeman shoved me, and I could have thrown a brick at him. But I suppose, if there are to be strikes and mobs who want to destroy our property, that we must have guards and police.

"I went around where I could see—and I saw the police charge. I saw them send their horses smashing into that crowd—and I saw them draw back, leaving men on the pavement. There was one who writhed about and made horrible sounds! The mob was against us and the police were for us—but I couldn't stand it. I guess I lost my head. I hadn't the least intention of doing what I did, or of doing anything but watch. But I lost my head.

I did rush up to the police, Miss Frazer, and the strikers tried to mob me. I was struck more than once. It wasn't to tell the police to charge. You must believe me—you must. I was afraid they would charge again, so I rushed at them.

"All I remember distinctly is shouting to them that they mustn't do it again—mustn't charge into that defenseless mob. It was horrible."

He paused and shut his eyes as if to blot out a picture painted on his mind. Then he spoke more calmly:

"The police didn't understand, either. They thought I belonged to the mob, and, they arrested me. I spent the night in a cell at police headquarters."

Ruth was leaning over the desk toward him, eyes wide, lips parted.

"Is—is that the truth?" she asked; but, as she asked, she knew it was so. Then, "I'm sorry—so sorry. You must let me tell Mr. Dulac and he will tell the men. It would be terrible if they kept on believing what they believe now. They think you are—"

"I know," he said wearily. "But it can't be helped. I don't know that it matters. What they think about me is what—it is thought best for them to think. I am supposed to be fighting the strike."

"But aren't you?"

"I suppose so. It's the job that's been assigned to me. But I'm doing nothing. I'm of no consequence—just a stuffed figure."

"You caused the strike."

"I?" There was genuine surprise in his voice. "How?"

"With that placard."

"I suppose so," he said slowly. "My name was signed to it, wasn't it? You see, I had been indiscreet the night before. I had mingled with the men and spoken to Mr. Dulac. I had created a false impression—which had to be torn up—by the roots."

"I don't understand, Mr. Foote."

"No," he said, "of course not. Why should you? I don't understand, myself. I don't see why I shouldn't talk to Mr. Dulac or the men. I don't see why I shouldn't try to find out about things. But it wasn't considered right—was considered very wrong. And I was—disciplined."

"Do you mean," she asked, a bit breathlessly, "that you have done none of these things of your own will—because you wanted to? I mean the placard, and bringing in O'Hagan and his strikebreakers? Were you made to appear as though it was you—when it wasn't?"

"Don't you misunderstand me, Miss Frazer. You're on the other side—with the men. I'm against them. I'm Bonbright Foote VII." There was a trace of bitterness in his voice as he said it, and it did not escape the girl. "I wasn't taking sides. I wouldn't take sides now—but apparently I must. If strikes are necessary, then I suppose fellows in places like mine must fight them. It doesn't seem right—that there should be strikes."

"I shall tell Mr. Dulac," Ruth said. "I shall tell him everything. The men mustn't go on hating and despising you. Why, they ought to be sorry for you. Why do you endure it? Why don't you walk out of this place and never enter it again?"

"You don't understand," he said with perplexity. "I knew you would think I am siding with the men."

"If you would own up to it, you're unhappy. You're, being made miserable. Why, you're being treated worse than the strikers—and by your own father! Everybody has a right to be himself."

"You say that; but father and the generations of Footes before him say the exact opposite. However, I'm not the question. All I wanted to do was to explain to you about last night. You believe me?"

"Of course. And I shall tell—"

He shook his head.

"I'd rather you didn't. Indeed, you mustn't. As long as I am here, I must stick by my family. Don't you see? I wanted you to know. My explanation was for you alone."

RANGAR appeared in the door—quietly, as it was his wont to move. 'Pardon, he said. "Your father wishes to speak to you, Mr. Foote."

"One moment, Miss Frazer. I have some letters," Bonbright said, and stepped into his father's office.

"Bonbright," said his father, "Rangar has just discovered that your secretary—this Miss Frazer—lives in the same house with Dulac, the strike-leader. She comes of a family of disturbers herself. Probably she is very useful to Dulac where she is. Therefore you will dismiss her at once."

"But, father—"

"You will dismiss her at once—personally."

A second time that day, the eyes of father and son locked. Bonbright's face was colorless; he felt his lips tremble.

"At once," said his father, tapping his desk with his finger.

Bonbright's sensation was akin to that of falling through space. It was borne in upon him how utterly futile he was. He could not resist. Protestation would only humiliate him. He turned slowly and walked into his own room, where he stood erect before his desk.

"Miss Frazer," he said in a level, expressionless voice, "the labor leader Dulac lives in your house. You come of a family of labor agitators. Therefore you are discharged."

"What?" she exclaimed, the unexpectedness of it upsetting her poise.

"You are discharged," he repeated.

And then, turning his back to her, he walked to the window, where he stood tense, tortured by humiliation, gazing down upon a street that he could not see.

Ruth gathered her book and pencils, and stood up. She moved slowly to the door without speaking. But there she stopped, turned, and looked at Bonbright. There was neither dismay nor anger in her eyes—only sympathy. But she did not speak it aloud.

"Poor boy!" she whispered to herself, and stepped out into the corridor.

RUTH FRAZER had passed her twentieth birthday, and now, for the first time, she was asking herself that question which brings disquieting speculations to the great majority of women: Should she give herself, body and soul, into the hands of a definite man? All women expect to be chosen by, and to choose, some man; but when he arrives in actual flesh and blood—that is quite another matter. Some, perhaps many, have no doubts. Love comes to them unmistakably. But not so with most. It is a thing to be wept over and prayed over and considered with many changes of mind until final decision is made, one way or the other.

Dulac had been interrupted in what Ruth knew would have been a proposal of marriage. The scene would be resumed, and when it was; what answer should she give?

Dulac occupied her mind as no man had ever occupied it before. The thought of him thrilled her. He wanted her; this magnetic, handsome man wanted her.

Dulac was clearly superior to most of the men Ruth had known. Then, unaccountably, she found herself thinking of Bonbright Foote, who had that morning discharged her from his employ. She found herself setting young Foote and Dulac side by side; and, becoming objectively conscious of this, she felt herself guilty of some sort of disloyalty. What right had a man in Foote's position to stand in her thoughts beside Dulac? He was everything Dulac was not; Dulac was nothing that Foote was.

She dreaded meeting Dulac at supper, and yet she was burningly curious to meet him, to be near him, to verify her image of him. Extra pains with the details of her simple toilet held her in her room until her mother called to know if she were not going to help with the meal. As she went to the kitchen she heard Dulac moving about in his room.

When they were seated at the table, it was Mrs. Frazer who jerked the conversation away from casual matters.

"Ruth was discharged this morning, Mr. Dulac," she said bitterly, "and her as good a typewriter and as neat and faithful as any. No fault found, either, nor could be—not if anybody was looking for it with a fine-tooth comb. Meanness, that's what I say. Nothing but meanness. And us needing that fifteen dollars a week to keep the breath of life in us."

"Don't worry about that, mother," Ruth said quickly. "There are plenty of places—"

"Who fired you?" interrupted Dulac, his black eyes glowing. "That young cub?"

"Young Mr. Foote," said Ruth.

"It was because I live here," said Dulac tensely. "That was why, wasn't it? That's the way they fight—striking at us through our women-folks. And when we answer with bricks—"

"I don't think he wanted to do it," Ruth said. "I think he was made to."

---

"Nonsense. Too bad the boys didn't get their hands on him last night—the whippersnapper! Well, don't you worry about that job. Nor you, either, Mrs. Frazer."

"Seems like I never did anything but worry, if it wasn't about one thing it was another—and no peace since I was in the cradle," said Mrs. Frazer dolefully. "If it ain't the rent, it's strikes and riots and losin' positions and not knowin' if your husband's comin' home to sleep in bed or his name in the paper in the morning and him in jail. And since he was killed—"

"Now, mother," said Ruth, "I'll have a job before to-morrow night. We won't starve or be put out into the street."

MRS. FRAZER dabbed at her eyes with her apron, and signified her firm belief—that capital was banded together for the sole purpose of causing her mental agony, and if she had her way—which was seldom enough, and her never doing a wrong to a living body—capital should have visited on it certain plagues and punishments hinted at as adequate but not named. Whereupon she got up from the table and went out into the kitchen to bring in the pie.

"Mrs. Frazer," said Dulac, when she returned, "I've got to hurry downtown to headquarters, but I want to have a little talk with Ruth before I go. Can't the dishes wait?"

"I did up dishes alone before Ruth was born, and a few thousand times since. Guess I can get through with it without her help at least once more."

Dulac smiled so that his white teeth showed evenly. In that moment Ruth thought there was something Oriental or Latin about his appearance—surely something exotic. He had a power of fascination, and its spell was upon her.

He stood up and walked to the door of the little parlor, where he stood waiting. Ruth, not blushing but pale, afraid yet eager to hear what she knew he was going to say, passed by him into the room. He closed the door.

"You know what I want to say," he began, approaching close to her, but not touching her. "You know what life will be like with a man whose work is what mine is. But I'd try to make up for the hardships and the worries and the disagreeable things. I'd try, Ruth, and I think I could do it. If I'm willing to run the risks and live the life I have to live because I see how I can help along the work, I've thought you might be willing to share it all. You're brave. You come of a blood that has suffered acid been willing to suffer. Your father was a martyr—just as I am willing to be a martyr."

Somehow, the thing did not seem so much like a proposal of marriage as like a bit of flamboyant oratory. The theatrical air of the man, his self-consciousness,—with the saving leaven of unquestionable sincerity,—made it more like an exhortation from the platform. Even in his intimate moments, Dulac did not step out of character.

But this was not apparent to Ruth. Glamour was upon her, blinding her. The personality of the man dominated her personality. She saw him as he saw himself. And his cause was her cause. If he would have suffered martyrdom for it, so would she.

She raised her eyes to his, and looking into them saw a soul greater than his soul, loftier than his soul. She was an apostle, and her heart throbbed with pride and joy that this man of high, self-sacrificing purpose should desire her. She was ready to surrender; her decision was made. Standing under his blazing eyes, in the circle of his magnetism, she was sure that she loved him.

But the surrender was not to be made then. Her mother rapped on the door.

"Young gentleman to see you, Ruth," she called.

She heard Dulac's teeth click.

"Quick," he said. "What is it to be?"

The spell was broken. The old uncertainty, the wavering, was present again.

"I—oh, let me think! To-morrow—I'll tell you to-morrow."

SHE stepped—it was almost a flight to the door, and opened it. In the dining-room, hat in hand, stood Bonbright Foote. Dulac saw, too.

"What does he want here?" he demanded savagely.

"I don't know."

"I'll find out. It's no good to you he intends."

"Mr. Dulac!" she said, and faced him.

He stopped, furious though he was.

"Please sit down," she said. "I want to bring him in here. It may do some good."

She stepped into the dining-room. "Mr. Foote," she said.

He was embarrassed, ill at ease.

"Miss Frazer," he said with boyish hesitation, "you don't want to see me—you have no reason to do anything but despise me, I guess. But I had to come. I found your address and came as quickly as I could."

---

"Step in here," she said. Then, "You and Mr. Dulac have met."

Dulac stood scowling. "Yes," he said sullenly. Bonbright flushed and nodded. Dulac seemed suddenly possessed by a gust of passion. He strode threateningly to Bonbright, lips snarling, eyes blazing.

"What do you mean by coming here? What do you want?" he demanded hoarsely. "You come here with your hands red with blood. Two men are dead—four others smashed under the hoofs of your police! You're trying to starve into submission thousands of men. You're striking at them through their wives and babies. What do you care for them or their suffering? You and your father are piling up millions—and every penny a loaf stolen from the table of a workingman! There'll be starving out there soon. Babies will be dying for want of food—and you'll have killed them. You and your kind are blood-suckers, parasites! And you're a sneaking, spying hound. Every man that dies, every baby that starves, every ounce of woman's suffering and misery that this strike causes, are on your head. You forced the strike, backed up by the millions of the automobile crowd, so you could crush and smash your men so they wouldn't dare to mutter or complain. You did it deliberately—you prowling, pampered puppy!"

Dulac was working himself into blind rage.

Bonbright looked at the man with something of amazement, but with nothing of fear. He was not afraid. He did not give back a step; but, as he stood there, white to the lips, his eyes steadily on Dulac's eyes, he seemed older and very weary. He seemed to have been stripped of youth and of the light-heartedness and buoyancy of youth. He was thinking, wondering. Why should this man hate him? Why should others hate him? Why should the class he belonged to be hated with this blighting virulence by the class they employed?

Ruth stood by, the situation snatched beyond her control. She was terrified; yet, even in her terror, she could not avoid a sort of subconscious comparison of the men.

"Mr. Dulac. Please! Please!" she said.

"I'm going to tell this—this murderer what he is, and then I'm going to throw him out!" Dulac raged.

"Mr. Foote came to see me," Ruth said with awakened spirit.

Dulac turned on her.

"What is this cub to you? What do you care? Were you expecting him?"

"She wasn't expecting me," said Bonbright, breaking silence for the first time. "I came because she didn't get a square deal. I had to come."

"What do you want with her? You've kicked her out of your office—now leave her alone. There's just one thing men of your class want of girls of her class."

BONBRIGHT'S face reddened.

"Dulac," he said evenly, "I came to say something to Miss Frazer. When I have done I'm going to thrash you for that."

Ruth seized Dulac's arm.

"Go away!" she cried. "You have no right— If you ever want an answer—to that question—you'll go now. If this goes on—if you don't go and leave Mr. Foote alone, I'll never see you again; I'll never speak to you again. I mean it!"

Dulac, looking into her face, saw that she did mean it. He shot one venomous glance at Bonbright, snatched his hat from the table, and rushed from the room.

Presently Ruth spoke.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Bonbright smiled.

"It was too bad. He believes what he says about me."

"Yes, he believes it; and thousands of other men believe it. They hate you."

"Because I have lots of money, and they have little. Because I own a factory and they work in it. There must be a great deal to it besides that. But that isn't what I came to say. I—it was about discharging you."

"Yes," she said. "I knew it wasn't you. Your father made you."

"Father made me discharge you—I couldn't help it. And you don't know how ashamed it made me—to know I was so helpless. And—sometimes it isn't easy to get another position, so—so I went to see a man, Malcolm Lightener, and told him about you. He manufactures automobiles, and he's—he's a better kind of man to work for than—we were. If you are willing, you can go there in the morning."

She showed him her smile now—not the grin, but a dewy, tremulous smile.

"That was good of you," she said softly.

"It was just trying to be square," he said. "Will you take the place? I should like to know I'd helped to make things right."

"Of course I shall take it," she said.

"Thank you. I—shall miss you. Really. Good night, Miss Frazer—and thank you. "

She pitied him from her heart. His position was not a pleasant one. And she spoke on impulse, not calculating possible complications:

"If—you may come to see me again if you want to."

He took her extended hand.

"I may?" he said almost incredulously. "And will you smile for me?"

"Once, each time you come," she said.

To be continued next week

Her Boy

—Continued from page 7

playing on Broadway. The head waiter adjusted his black tie and said Number 42 might be back any time.

"Did you hear anything they said to each other?" asked Proudfoot. "This is very important."

"It is life and death!" added Lily dramatically.

"I could not just recall," replied the other man, flicking some crumbs from his coat cuff. "I think Number 42 was a friend of his. He seemed to be trying to beg him not to do something."

Cassius choked, coughed, seized a glass of water and gulped it down. He stared at Lily; Lily stared at him. There was no assurance for each other in their expressions.

Thoughts were tumbling over and over in Cassius' mind. Would Abbie believe his story? Was God going to punish him at last for having Leslie Stower discharged? What would his doctor say if he could see his patient now? Copper was on the rise. The market in the morning would show a lift in the price. But if Leslie Stower, alive and well, would walk in, the bottom could drop out of copper as far as Cassius Proudfoot was concerned.

Leslie Stower, however, did not come. Nor did waiter Number 42. The minutes slid. The quarter hours fled. They were filled with miserable pictures of young Stower—on his way to the morgue.

GOODNESS knows what time it was when waiter Number 42 returned to Ottie Benjamin's. Cassius cared not.

"Yes, sir; the boy was very low in the mind," said Number 42, who had long black hair that fell over his eyes when he leaned forward over the table. "He said he was going up to the Maylesfield. He had heard of a job up there. It's a very swell apartment-house, and I told him there was no use to try for it; but he would go, sir. He said he wanted to make one more try before the end."

Proudfoot swallowed hard and tossed a five-dollar gold piece on the table.

"Come, Lily MacMahon," he said gently.

"You oughtn't to waste all this time on us," she protested, trying to smile through her new tears. "I'll bet you're something important."

Cassius shook his head. "No," said he. "Not."

None the less, it was a great shock to him to find that it was daylight.

Daylight—the brightening gray of morning! Cassius Proudfoot could not remember such an upset of system. He was stunned. He felt a terrible guilt. He gazed at the windows of the limousine, at the fine rain, at the umbrellas of early risers. He felt the interest that one feels in the streets of a new country.

THE Maylesfield is an apartment where those who care to make the show spend ten, twelve, and fifteen thousand dollars a year in rent. It is made of Bedford stone cut in great blocks; it faces on Park Avenue; and grand simplicity was the architect's key-note. A great arch suggests a portal through which kings and princes might pass. Set into this portal is a massive iron grill, and in the center of this grill are heavy plate-glass doors.

As the limousine drove up, one of these doors was opened; and standing in the opening, clad in a uniform of magnificence done in blue and gold, was a proud figure—head erect, body straight, and a face that wore the expression of a conqueror.

"It is my Leslie!" cried Lily.

She climbed over Cassius, pushed open the limousine door, and rushed toward young Stower. At this moment the sun burst through the clouds; its great downpour of radiance fell upon the humble Leslie Stower. With a cry of ecstasy, Lily threw her arms around his neck.

Cassius Proudfoot could hear their voices after a moment.

"Nothing to it," said Stower. "It was because I'm the kind of feller I am, Lily. They can't keep me down. Nothing to it. I'm on the door and hall day-times one week, nights the next—see? Twice the money I ever got. Nothing to it, Lily—we can get married, see? And if anybody asks you what got me this job, tell 'em it was personality—just personality."

Cassius smiled. A warmth came into his heart—a great new warmth. He felt the years slide away. Something that the big American business man had lost had returned. He climbed out of the limousine.

"Oh, the gentleman!" exclaimed Lily.

"Huh," said Leslie contemptuously. "So it's him, is it?"

"Yes," replied Cassius Proud foot, bowing his head humbly. "It is me. Come here a minute, Leslie Stower."

The boy approached suspiciously.

"I'm sorry," said Cassius in a low voice.

"Aw."

"Yes, I'm sorry. And I want to say this: I'd like to do something for you."

"What can you do for me?" asked young Stower. "Money? I don't want your money, an' Lily don't want it. Influence? Nix. A feller who can get fired at ten o'clock at night and go out and cinch a new job and be on it at six o'clock in the morning don't need nothing. All I want is my job and my girl and a chance."

Cassius bowed his head.

"Then there's nothing I can do for you?" he asked.

The boy straightened up, looked around at Lily, drew in a deep full breath, and spoke in a low voice. He said:

"Yes. You can break me for this if you want. But I thought all night about what you can do fer me. Go straight to—"

"Hush!" said Proudfoot gently. "I know this is a great moment for you—and for me. But remember you are in the presence of a lady."

THE sunlight was streaming into his apartment windows when Proudfoot returned. Sparrows perched on the sills outside and twittered about the return of fair weather. Abbie's door was still closed, and, though he wanted to wake her, he did not. It was still too early. So, whistling a tune of his youth, he stood in the window where the sunlight was warm, and looked out at the blue sky and its great billowy white clouds which ever changed their form in the morning breeze.

At last he stopped his low whistling and, stooping down, picked up the slippers that Abbie had knitted for him.

"No money could buy 'em," he said at last. "No, Cassius Proudfoot; you've learned it at last—human beings aren't production units nor an economic mass.

---

No one has ever invented any substitute for the personal touch."

He kicked at a rose in the carpet with the toe of his shoe. Once more he whistled.

A tap on the door silenced him.

"It was a young lady, sir," said the bellboy. "She left this for you. That all, sir?"

"Good morning!" said Cassius suddenly. "How are you this morning?"

The boy grinned.

"Fine and dandy. How are you, Mr. Proudfoot? Is that all, sir? Thank you, sir."

Cassius tore open the envelop. A little silver stamp-box dropped out into his great palm.

"Huh!" he ejaculated. "And a note."

Leslie is sorry [it said]. I made him see. You are not used to people. This stamp-box belonged to me—nothing much, but it will remind you of your kindness to us. LILY.

Cassius stared down at the bit of silver.

"This will remind me of my kindness," he repeated. "Yep, I need that."

When Abbie came out of her bedroom at eight-thirty, he was leaning back in the brocade upholstered chair, fast asleep. There was a smile upon his face and a little silver stamp-box was clasped tightly in his powerful hand.

"I wonder why he got up so early," said Abbie Proudfoot. "He looks so young! After all, Cassius is just my dear, good boy."

Gone to Buck the Hindenburg Line

THE University of Oregon had a champion football team in 1916. It cleaned up everything in sight on the Coast, and even administered a 14—0 defeat to the University of Pennsylvania in a game played at Pasadena on the first of this year.

Here's the team—and here's the interesting thing about it:

Every single man on the team, and every substitute, with one exception, has enlisted for service in Fance. The one exception is a married man who has been exempted, and is doing his bit by managing a big ranch.

Is it still worth while to go on with it, Wilhelm? What do you think?

The Biggest Incomes in the World

Continued from page 10

in this country paid taxes last year on incomes of more than $1,000,000. But there are no official figures made public to classify the tax-payers above $5,000,000. To a certain extent it is guesswork to say which are the five, the three, and the two million dollar people; yet there is plenty of circumstantial evidence.

It is safe to say that in the $5,000,000 class the surest members are, first of all, George F. Baker, the New York banker, and the Harkness family, ranking next to John. D. Rockefeller as owners of Standard Oil stock. Then come the estate of the late Colonel Oliver H. Payne, another big Standard Oil man; the Marshall Field estate; Henry C. Frick, who was one of Andrew Carnegie's partners; possibly Carnegie himself, in spite of his having given away large sums; probably James Stillman, the New York banker, and possibly J. Ogden Armour, the meat packer.

Enough is known from published lists of stockholders to place these men and their families pretty accurately. In the case of Baker, enough has actually been published to account for at least $3,000,000 a year without counting in reinvestments of unspent income. His holdings in his own bank, in the "Steel Trust," in the Bell telephone system, and in half a dozen railroads have been made public. As for the Harkness family, enough is known of the holdings of three or four members to place their total wealth up toward $200,000,000. Marshall Field died a good many years ago, leaving something like $50,000,000 in the best of stocks. Some authorities say that this has since grown to nearly $200,000,000. At any rate, it is mostly owned by one very young man, now in the Illinois cavalry.

Then, there are Vincent Astor, Viscount Astor in England; William A. Clark, former senator and mine-owner; Arthur C. James, mine-owner; Mrs. Harriman, Mrs. Russell Sage, Colonel Green, the son of the late Hetty Green; J. P. Morgan, and one or two of his richest partners; W. K. Vanderbilt the elder, the Brady estate, the Widener estate, the Duke family, Commodore Morton Plant, the Archbold, Flagler, and other Standard Oil estates, the Standard Oil Pratt family, Henry Phipps, one of Carnegie's partners, George Eastman, the photograph king, and, finally, a group of men especially enriched since the war began, such as the du Ponts; Charles M. Schwab, August Heckscher, and such automobile kings as Durant and Willys. All these men must have incomes of around $2,000,000 a year, or more, if known facts are any criterion. Then there are families celebrated chiefly in a local way, such as the Mellons of Pittsburgh and the Mathers of Cleveland, that are probably fully as rich.

Some apparently stupendous incomes may be more illusive than real. There is Marcellus Hartley Dodge, a relatively young man, who is supposed to own nearly every share of the $60,000,000 stock of the Remington Arms Company. Also a stockholders' list showed that at one time he owned 400,000 shares of the Midvale Steel Company, which are now paying $12 each year. That would make nearly $5,000,000 a year from Midvale Steel alone, if Mr. Dodge still has the stock, which he is supposed to have sold. But his Remington Arms Company had some hard financial sledding a while ago in filling its huge contracts, and rumor has it that young Mr. Dodge did not continue his ownership and control in quite the same literal sense as before. It was said that his father-in-law, Rockefeller, came to the rescue.

Usually, where prodigious fortunes have been made by the owner himself, the owners are now very old men. This is true of the biggest multimillionaires in Germany and Japan as well as here. These are the men who have been a long time at work piling it up, with the help of banks, corporations, trusts, and what not. Henry Ford is the conspicuous exception, as he is just fifty-four years old.

Back to the Land with My Husband

OUR back-to-the-farm experience has been so satisfactory that I think others may be interested in hearing it. My husband and I had both grown up in a city, gone to common school, high school, and college, and my husband to law school. So we naturally thought of the city as home.

We were married a year and a half after my husband was graduated from law school, when he was twenty-five and I was almost twenty-three. We lived through the usual starvation period for a young lawyer, but we managed pretty well, for both of us understood money matters and had expected to have very little money those first few years. So by the end of the second year, when our first baby came, we were ready for the added expense he caused.

About that time a new political situation arose and my husband found interesting, congenial, and profitable work in organizing its forces. With the increase of practice and political duties our reading and most of the little pleasures of home life dropped off.

When our little girl came, she and her two-year-old brother just about filled my time. However, their hours were so regular and their health so good that I soon found I could leave them with one of their grandmothers and go with my husband to political meetings, the theater, and lectures occasionally.

It was then that I began to realize what we were drifting into the life that too many city young people live: with no high aim particularly, and just a drifting—decidedly different from what our ideals had been in planning our life.

The atmosphere of politics is quite different from that of a dignified law practice, and when politics occupies a young lawyer's time and thoughts, his regular practice is bound to suffer. Although my husband was making more money than ever before, our living expenses were higher and our way of living—especially his way of living—was different; so the money seemed to fall far short of doing what it should have done. I came to see the false ideals and the discontent among the people around us, especially among our newer friends.

Our married life seems to have been divided into periods of two years each, and this period—the fifth and sixth years of our marriage—was decidedly the worst and darkest period. Before the end of that two years I had decided that we were going to make a change.

I preferred to go to the country or a small town in a different State. I did not intend that my husband should give up his profession—at least, not permanently; but I thought the country, with its fresh air and healthful work, was the place for us for a while.

We had no money to make a start in a new place, but my husband had an offer of a position in the country in an adjoining county. He was to help organize and manage a farmers' corporation. It was not exactly what I wanted, but it seemed a good chance, so we accepted it.

It took us two months to discover that the company was not in the order it had been represented to be, and that there was nothing in it for us—not even salary for those two months. That was the last of August, and we knew that we would have to do something before winter came.

We talked it over together, and then set out to find a house near there in the country. We found a house that we could rent cheaply, and also found that farm-work was plentiful.

While my husband worked for the farmers that fall, I canned all the fruit and vegetables I could get, so that we should have something to eat during the winter.

THAT time really marked the change in our life. We dropped all pretense, tried and did live on the wages my husband earned—and earned is the right word. Unaccustomed as he was to the heavy work and long hours, he succeeded in overcoming the great handicap of not knowing how to do the work. Men who have grown up or lived as boys on a farm can never know how hard it is for a "tenderfoot" to learn the little tricks of the farming trade—how to hitch up and work a team, manage the implements, plow a straight furrow, or mend harness.

We took a new place in society. Heretofore we had belonged to the so-called "better class," and, while we were not rich, we had kept up a certain pace and had done as others were doing, just for the looks of the thing. Now we were among strangers, and could be ourselves and live upon what we had without causing comment.

The next thing we did was to start the children in Sunday-school and to begin going to church ourselves. My husband had never gone to church or Sunday-school, but soon found that he liked it and joined the men's Bible class. In that way more than any other, I believe, we established ourselves among the farm community as respectable people and desirable neighbors.

By January we decided to risk farming for ourselves on a small farm we could rent. In the spring we bought a dozen hens, a team of horses, a wagon, and a plow, and went to work. In some ways we were a failure—the corn crop wasn't good, mostly because of an unusually early frost, and we raised only two chickens. The garden was a fine one. We had tomatoes, peas, and several other vegetables before any of the farmers had them, and we raised enough of everyhing to live out of the garden all summer, to can enough for all winter, and sold a good many dollars' worth besides.

We took care of some sows for a farmer, and got four pigs to raise—two that we killed for winter meat and two that we kept for this year's brood. Recently we have bought a cow, so we have milk and butter and cheese. We are having better success with chickens this year, and another good garden.

The best thing we have done is to find ourselves. We have accomplished something—maybe not so well as some one else could have done it, but still it was our own best, and we have learned a great deal. We are more valuable citizens than we were before, because we are helping create, and are living honestly on our own resources. We have established ourselves at our own value, and mean to increase that value steadily and as rapidly as possible.

Then, too, we have found joy in living. There is nothing like farm independence for the health, disposition, and character. We are all as well as we can be; we are contented; and I am sure my husband and I have added many good qualities to our character. We have a mighty happy home life, we enjoy the children and each other, our new friends and those of our old friends that we ask to visit us. We have the same interests now as we work side by side and can help each other.

I THINK I know any number of wives who would give a good deal for the peace of mind that is mine as I stand in our door and watch my husband plowing the field, feeding the hogs, or mending the fence. To be sure, we have been "hard up," but we have got through so far. Some days we haven't even enough money to buy postage stamps; but something always "turns up," as the Micawbers expected it to, and our sense of humor helps us along.

The children are having their rightful pleasure and chance to grow strong and happy, and to know how God does things in this world.

The second year of our life in the country is nearly up, and I can say that this period has been the best, in spite of all the hardships, work, and worry. Yes—there is certainly a "dignity of labor."

Jest Set

LANSON SMITH married Almon Hubbel's half-sister
Maria—the one Almon Hubbel's wife
Said she didn't care if she never see ag'in.
Maria was a dose, but she done her duty,
Once she seen it.
She was Orthodox to the core,
And he was Unitarian, and rather sore
On the subj' 'cause he had turned coat the year before.
Folks ast her where she'd worship now,
Seein' she'd got married;
And she said as how
They'd fixed it up that she
Should go to his church every other Sabbath,
And on the off Sunday he
Would go to hern.
"I shall worship," says she, "in the Orthodox pew,
And jest set in the Unitarian."

(From "Si Briggs' Talks," by Made- line Yale Wynne. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.)

What is the Best Way to Close a Sale?

By JAMES H. COLLINS

BILLY often thought he must be peculiar—maybe wrong somewhere. For it was mighty hard for him to close a sale. His prospects liked him; he found no difficulty in making an approach. He was an earnest little chap, so that people listened to what he had to say, and were impressed. But, somehow, when it came to asking how many dozen the customer wanted shipped and when. Billy often bungled things. His customers put off the order, and frequently the sales-manager sent around a good "closer" to finish the job.

It was Uncle Jim Botsford who first gave Billy a little light on the subject of closing up a sale, and Uncle Jim's advice was a pretty piece of closing in itself. For he told Billy what to do, but said nothing about why.

Uncle Jim had had years of experience in the Southern trade.

"When you begin to talk to your man, just consider him sold," said he. "Just talk if he had already bought from you and you were explaining his own goods to him."

After this Billy's sales began to improve. But it was a year or more before he saw what Uncle Jim hadn't told him—which was to take his mind off that awful moment that he had thought was coming, when he must ask the customer for an order.

Young salesmen usually pay a great deal of attention to the closing point—too much. They have heard that there is a way of looking into the customer's eyes and knowing when the moment has come to say, "Sign here on the dotted line." Perhaps there is—but it takes years of selling to develop that instinct. They believe that there is some device of logic by means of which the customer's mind can be led up to the closing point by a halter, as it were.

A certain salesman had a line in which the price ran into considerable money. If he bluntly told the price, it chilled the customer; for his line was sold to people who did not buy that stuff regularly. So he hit upon a scheme to cover this shortcoming. He called his scheme "the rate-man's idea."

When the argument had developed to a point where the customer asked, "What will this cost me?" the salesman always scribbled something on a scrap of paper and concealed it. Then he went on to tell about the rate man.

"Before coming to you, I went to consult our rate man, to be sure prices were correct. Neither of us had figured. We both thought it would run into big money. He made a mental estimate—seven thousand dollars. When I remembered all we wanted to give you for a bang-up job, that seemed too low—it must be nearer ten thousand, I'd have sworn. Then I figured it, item by item. I got a shock! The rate man got a shock, too, when I told him, and wouldn't believe till he figured it himself. But we were both right, and here's the price."

Then the scrap of paper would be shown. The price was scribbled on it, and it looked reasonable to the customer, because the rate-man story had prepared him for something in thousands, and the real price was only hundreds.

The closing point!

Very often it would take a psychologist to detect it. For the salesman talks to his customer, and his customer talks to him. By and by the order comes out like an afterthought.

It comes out easily, because the customer has made his own decision, instead of being forced into one.

In certain lines of selling, like life insurance. or real estate, where the purchase runs beyond every-day transactions, the salesman must often drive his customer to a decision by force of logic. Unless the buyer knows that the course he is being urged to take is right, and that he Must make this effort, he will not decide—or, if he does, he will not stick to his decision.

If there is any best way at all to close a sale, it might be expressed thus: "Don't try to make a sale at all, but let your customer buy."

What Will Peace Do to My Investments?

By CHARLES R. BROWN

WHAT will he the influence of peace on prices of investments?

Is this a good time to buy?

This is the type of question most frequently heard in financial circles at the present moment. Will the end of hostilities, the readjustment of conditions throughout the world, sustain or increase, in the next two or three years, the earnings of the great transportation and industrial interests of the United States?

Some large corporations must suffer from peace, notably those whose securities have been so tremedously booned during the war period. It would be highly illogical to expect any other result. But this applies to a comparatively limited number of Stock Exhange investments. Allowing for these exceptions, we can by another standard better appraise investments as a whole—namely, by the outlook for activity and prosperity of our country at large.

In the last analysis, our transportation and industrail activities are an accurate measure of our national progress. Hence it is necessary first to take a broad view of the position in which peace will find us.

Any view based on such an outlook can hardly fail to produce a substantial degree of optimism. One of the most forceful of the many epigrams credited to the late J. Pierpont Morgan was that "whoever is a bear on the country will go broke." The war certainly has not changed fundamentals. If anything, it has rendered Mr. Morgan's phrase more appropriate.

United States Leads in France

CONCEDEDLY our own country today occupies first place in the financial world. It would be extravagant to predict that as against London this position can be maintained permanently. But it would not be so extravagant to say that it will be occupied for a number of years. Avoiding technicalities, this financial power means a stupendous lever for retaining the foreign trade that, as a result of the earlier exigencies of our world competitors, we have acquired. We will put up the strongest possible fight to maintain and increase these advantages. This will aid in continuing in peace times the prosperity that has developed so wonderfully in war times, and will compensate for the termination of war business.

Financially, then, we start in a remarkably favorable position. Our "waste of war" has hardly begun, since we began our participation with an accumulation of profits derived from three years of highly profitable contracts from what have now become our formal Allies. We still are "on velvet."

Let us see how this happened. Before we entered the conflict our bankers and investors had lent, in round numbers, $5,000,000,000 to the Entente goverments. In the same period we had repurchased a similar amount of American securities that previously had been held abroad. Here is a combined item of $10,000,000,000 representing investments of profits. Meanwhile, out of additional profits our entire industrial fabric had been placed on such a profitable and substantial basis as a few years ago whould not, even by the most extreme optimist, have been considered possible. Our agricultural developement, too, has been correspondingly startling; and agriculture still is the fundamental basis of our prosperity.

Allies Will Pay for Our Bonds

STILL another phase of the transition from war to peace demands recognition. We are starting the war with huge expenditures. Congress has been called upon to appropriate billions. But, of the $5,000,000,000 of Liberty Bonds that Congress originally authorized, it was provided that the proceeds of no less than $3,000,000,000 could be lent to our Allies. Further appropriations will mean similar foreign loads, of which our European friends pay both the principal and interest. Thus, when—say in thirty years or more—we are called upon to pay off the bonds, our goverment will first collect the funds from our Allies. It will not be necessary to repay that part of our national debt by means of taxation. It will be self-extinguishing.

These are some of the favoring phases of the war that do not appear to have been appreciated widely. They are important—most important—from the standpoint of those who have money invested. Whether, in the immediate future, quotations will further decline is something that appeals more particularly to the speculator than to the investor.

Free Booklets You May Have for the Asking

How customer-ownership is strenthening public-utility securities is interestingly shown in a 24-page pamphlet entitled "Rational Public Ownership" which is being distributed by H.M. Byllesby & Company, Inc. 218 South La Salle St., Chicago, 1219 Trinity Building, New York City.

Partial-Payment Combinations, a circular which gives definite suggestions for the purchase of time-tested stocks on the partial-payment plan, has been issued by John Muir & Co. Copies may be had on application to the main office of the firm, 61 Broadway, New York City.

For the reinvestment of interest and dividends and the purchase of securities on part payment, Liggett & Drexel are issuing a valuable booklet. Ask for E. 20.

The Citizens Savings & Trust Company of Cleveland Ohio, has issued an interesting booklet giving full details of the plan of banking by mail at 4 per cent. interest which is giving satisfaction to depositors in all parts of the world. The Company will forward copies of the booklet free on request. Ask for booklet "P."

Information of value for the average investor on $100 bonds and other securities yielding 3 to 7 per cent. is supplied by Coleman & Reitze, 50 Broad Street, New York, through their weekly market letter, The Financial Review, which will be supplied if requested. Address Department E.W.

Events of the time have more significance for the investor than for the general reader of news, for they often seriously affect financial interests. The meaning of what is happening is made clear in the Bache Review, the widely know publication, which also presents investment suggestions. Copies mailed free on application to J.S. Bache & Co., members of New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York.

The Odd Lot Review, published every Saturday, aims to reflect in brief and comprehensive style the principal development affecting values in standard securities. Sample copies will be sent on application to the offices of the publication, 61 Broadway, New York City.

Their booklet, "We're Right on the Ground," outlining in a comprehensive way the advantage of farm mortgages as a safe investment, won for E.J. Lander & Co., Grand Forks, North Dakota, third prize in the contest at the recent St. Louis Convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the world. Offered free to readers of the magazine.

Your income can be materially increased by selection of season securities which pay attractive dividends. Without any obligation on your part, Holland & Company, 62 Broadway, New York, will send you a list of such securities, with valuable suggestions, as well as explanation of the monthly investment plan. Ask for booklet 50-E. W. Free upon request.

Perkins & Company of Lawrence, Kansas, make their loans upon personal examination of security and guarantee titles perfect. They mail their interest drafts to their investors to reach them the first of the month, so that there are no delays in interest payments. Write for circular No. 721.

An interesting booklet on 6 per cent. farm mortgages in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana has been issued by the Oklahoma Farm Mortgage Company of Oklahoma City, which will furnish copies free on request. Write for List 204.