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From the Boston "Globe:"

A white-haired, morbid young man was raving about the emptiness of life.

"The sooner the world ends the better," he said. "We all ought to be annihilated."

"My dear fellow," his friend replied, "the world's packed with interesting things. They've just discovered that human life began on this earth about a million years ago-and you talk of wiping us all out." "A million years ago?"

"The papers are full of it."

"Oh, well," said the morbid man, miserably, "it's too late to do anything about it, then."

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By the Way

Professor in psychology: "What do you associate with the word 'mutton'?" Pupil: "Jeff."

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THE OUTLOOK, October 5, 1927. Volume 147, Number 5. 16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post

FR

ROM the "New Yorker:" Fascinated always by the sight worm about to turn, we paused the afternoon to watch a meek little gentl who was using one of the telephone b in the Plaza. He stood there a long obviously having slipped the opera mind. Seated at her station in the c of the booths, she was busily engag pushing in plugs, pulling them out, red numbers, making change for patrons declaring at intervals, "The liyen is bi Such an example of organized effic was she that the meek gentleman pal lacked determination enough to recall self to her attention. We had about a up hope that he would take his own when she caught sight of him over switchboard.

"Are you waiting for a number?" sh manded.

"Oh, no, ma'am," said the little ma just stepped in here to develop a pictu

An auto-renting company in Berk California, has learned that an averag 2.4 cents per mile is saved on gas whe cars are driven over concrete highway compared with earth roads. It is cluded, therefore, that the hard surfa of heavily traveled highways is in the terest of public economy.

A

FRANKLIN, Indiana, woman who is terested in pageants received, acc ing to the Indianapolis "News," ak from a stranger who said that she started to write a pageant and did not time to continue it. She wished to k whether the Franklin woman could complete it for her.

By way of explanation the woul pageant writer said: "I have named pageant 'Creation.' It opens with a fi entering, moving slowly, very slowly. 1 is man. A second figure enters, mo slowly, very slowly. That is vegeta Now, that is as far as I got."

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Answer to last week's anagram: "Gn "guns," "sung," and "snug."

Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 120 East
Office at Dunellen, N. J., under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post

The Outlook for October 5, 1927

131

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THE

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Published weekly by The Outlook Company, 120 East 16th Street, New York. Copyright, 1927, by The Outlook Company. By subscription $5.00 a year for the United States and Canada. Single copies 15 cents each. Foreign subscription to countries in the postal Union, $6.56.

HAROLD T. PULSIFER, President and Managing Editor
NATHAN T. PULSIFER, Vice-President

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief and Secretary
LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT, Contributing Editor

The Outlook is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature

Volume 147

Al Smith and His Party

The Outlook

HE West "couldn't see" Gover

TH

nor Smith as a candidate for
President in 1924. Now it can.

October 5, 1927

dency. He is merely the one outstanding
figure in his party, with some elements
of strength in places where he had none
in 1924.

That may be as much as the change Indiana's Bitter Dose
amounts to, but that is a good deal.

Number 5

Governor Crissinger's resignation removes from the stage in Washington the last of the Harding appointees of the "old home group." He was a Marion man, a personal friend of President Harding, and was hailed as being to

OUT of Indiana's reeking political small-town banking what Harding had

A conference of Smith Democrats OUT

from the Pacific and intermountain States was held recently in Ogden, Utah. It was not largely attended. A number of leaders who came in at the beginning "bolted." Those who remained were not, for the most part, Nationally known. But, such as they were and for such as they represented, they unqualifiedly indorsed the candidacy of Governor Smith for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.

That night a "fiery cross" burned on the heights of Mount Ogden, casting the flicker of its flames on the city of the Smith conference.

Clearly, Governor Smith is not in peaceable possession of the Democratic strength of that region. But, just as clearly, the fact that he is the outstanding figure in his party is recognized. Any strength that he has there is clear gain since 1924.

There is a feeling that he is to have the nomination by default. The withdrawal of Mr. McAdoo has left no organization opposed to him, and the wing of the party which is opposed to him has done nothing to bring about a new organization.

Edwin T. Meredith, of Des Moines, a McAdoo supporter and at one time apparent heir to the McAdoo strength, was recently in New York, and was quoted as saying that unless the dry, progressive

Democrats perfected an organization within thirty days they might as well concede the nomination to Governor Smith. But the announcement comes from Patrick H. Callahan, the dry, Catholic Democrat of Louisville, that no conference will be held until winter. He then, in the rôle of a Jeremiah, predicted that the Democratic Party will lose two million votes if it nominates Smith and two million if it does not.

All of this, however, comes nine months ahead of the nominating Convention. These Democrats may be amused next June at what they said this September. Governor Smith is not yet the choice of his party for the Presi

scandal has come a conviction in the first case tried. John L. Duvall, Mayor of Indianapolis, was found guilty of violating the corrupt practices act, was fined a thousand dollars, sentenced to jail for thirty days, and barred from holding public office for four years from the commission of the offense. The specific charge proved was that Mayor Duvall, when he was a candidate, bartered three city offices for money, but testimony was offered as to various other alleged corrupt transactions. Members of the Ku Klux Klan took the stand both to assert and to deny that Duvall promised not less than sixty per cent of all patronage to that organization in exchange for its support.

Some of the truth has been established in this trial. In other trials that are to come other charges will be cleared up. Whether any particular charge is proved or disproved is not of paramount importance. The essential thing is that Indiana has begun the process of purging itself of a poison in its body politic, for the presence of which not D. C. Stephenson nor the Klan nor Duvall nor Jackson, but the people of Indiana, were responsible.

A New Governor and the

Rediscount Rate Question
HARD upon the action of the Federal

Reserve Board in forcing the Fed-
eral Reserve Bank of Chicago to raise
its rediscount rate came the resignation
of D. R. Crissinger, Governor of the
Federal Reserve Board, and the appoint-
ment of Roy A. Young as a member of
that Board, with the belief prevalent
that he will succeed Mr. Crissinger as
Governor.

There may have been no connection between the asserting by the Board of a right to fix rediscount rates and the resignation of Governor Crissinger, but there is little doubt that the change in personnel will bring about at least a reconsideration by the Board of its newly asserted power.

been to small-town journalism. Much was expected of him-not so much by rural bankers as by those who are interested in rural banking.

Mr. Young, also, is of small-town origin, having begun his banking career as a messenger in Marquette, Michigan. Latterly, however, he has been a city banker. Nearly ten years ago he was appointed by President Wilson as Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and has occupied that position since.

It is generally understood that Mr. Crissinger, the small-town banker, stood for centralization of power in the rate fight. It will be interesting to see where Mr. Young, the city banker, stands in the reconsideration of the same question.

There is as yet no certainty that Mr. Young will succeed Mr. Crissinger as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. The President may designate any member of the Board as Governor. His position as a mere member of the Board, however, may be decisive. It has been generally understood that the decision of the Board to assert the rate-fixing power was reached by a majority of one.

Ambassador Morrow

No better augury for the settlement of

the conflicting claims of the United States and Mexico could well be imagined than President Coolidge's appointment of Dwight W. Morrow as Ambassador to Mexico. Many Americans can see dangers involved in the investment of American capital in the Latin-American countries. In view of their fears, it is pertinent to quote here some of the statements made by Mr. Morrow in an article in the American quarterly review "Foreign Affairs" for last January. Citing Mr. Root as an authority, Mr. Morrow points out in this article that the United States has never regarded it as suitable to use armed forces for the collection of contract debts of foreign governments to its citizens. He goes further and says that it is to the interest

134

of investors that the policy initiated by Mr. Root should be carried on. "Investors who buy foreign loans," says Mr. Morrow, "are in a position to appreciate what a fruitless remedy for breach of contract war is.... Is there any one who thinks that if a man owes him money and cannot pay it, there is profit in going out and killing the debtor?" And in conclusion Mr. Morrow says:

In the overwhelming majority of business transactions, we rely upon the ability and the willingness of the debtor to pay. On no other principle could modern business be conducted.

There is no international sheriff. But there still remains our reliance upon good faith, our reliance upon that law which is older than statute law the acknowledged custom of mankind.

These quotations indicate the spirit in which Mr. Morrow undertakes his new, difficult, but interesting task. Mr. Morrow's qualifications for this are further set forth at some length in an article on another page by the Contributing Editor entitled "On the Importance of Being an Ambassador."

A Trillion-Dollar Legacy-
Who will Get It?

TH

HE Dead Sea has suddenly come to life. The world has just been told by the newspapers that the neglected chemicals chiefly potash (fertilizer)— of this small body of water are worth a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars, not a billion. A trillion dollars is about three times the total value of the United States and everything within its boundaries. And thus, we are told, the Dead Sea is to be quickened by science and engineering into $1,190,000,000,000.

It seems odd to most of us that so incomprehensible a mine of wealth should have been discovered only at this late date. But, as a matter of fact, the knowledge of its existence is not particu

The Outlook for October 5, 1927 more billions of tons-figures like this mean little and statistics are as dry as the Dead Sea environs themselves. The point is that here nature has been concentrating for at least hundreds of thousands of years all these invaluable chemicals, using a process which man sometimes uses, but only at great costthe evaporation of solids from solutions. Literally, the Dead Sea is and long has been a big evaporating dish, the sun its flame.

Deposits of potash exist in other parts of the world; those of Alsace are the best known. Here it is a case of the same thing going on in far more ancient geologic periods-a sort of "fossil" dead sea; another of the same nature is rapidly coming to light in Texas, buried in this case by thousands of feet of more recent sediments. Greatest of all potash stores is granite, containing pink felspar, which is a compound of aluminum, silicon, oxygen, and potassium. Yet man cannot economically touch its potassium and must wait for rain and frost and

atmospheric acids to break it slowly down from the rock. This goes on all the time on all the continents, but the potash escapes to the sea; in the Dead Sea basin, without outlet, this escape

cannot occur, and concentration there

fore takes place.

Who will get the potash? First, the British. The Palestine governments will also get a royalty enough to keep

them fat, at least. And American interests are said to be trying to obtain a further slice. In any case, it looks as if the French-German fertilizer interests and all the other potash fertilizer interests had something to worry about.

What does the wealth of much fine gold amount to when stacked up against enough fertilizer to quicken a primary industry like agriculture?

A Six Months' Strike

larly recent. Those who have to do with Ho

mineral statistics have long known that there was at least a great deal of valuable mineral in the Dead Sea basin, though the full extent of it is a matter of recent realization. The Turk, who long blighted civilization in that part of the world, successfully opposed until recently the exploitation of the Dead Sea wealth. But no sooner had Allenby won the Last Crusade in 1918 than British geologists were heading for the Dead Sea to make a careful quantitative estimate of the suspected billions. They turned out to be trillions.

Potassium chloride, two billion tons; sodium chloride ("salt"), twelve billion : magnesium and calcium salts,

ow many people know that a softcoal strike has been going on for six months in several States and is still unsettled? The reason illustrates pointedly the difference between this soft-coal strike and the anthracite strike two years ago. After half a year there is no shortage of soft coal and wages in the non-union and independent mines have not risen perceptibly. This is just another way of saying that if both union. and non-union mines were fully at work the production of soft coal would exceed the need.

The obvious question asked is how such a strike can continue. Yet it does continue. The union leaders have refused an offer to settle at the current

wages of the districts and insist on the letter of the agreement made in Jacksonville three years ago. For one reason it continues because many of the 170,000 miners nominally out of work have actually taken jobs in the non-union mines or are working in some other employment. On the other hand, it is said that some union mines are paying the Jacksonville scale.

This peculiar situation is due to the fact that bituminous mining may exist on a small scale in some places with profit, in others not-depending on the ease of transportation and the extent of commercial needs. As both soft and hard coal miners belong to one National body, the United Mine Workers, there has been considerable influence brought to bear on the strikers to maintain their fight for other than their own local benefit and in the interest not of their economic needs but of the policy of the American Federation to maintain favorable contracts at all costs.

To fix wages without regard to production seems like trying to make water run up-hill.

Tips or Wages-Which ?

E

VERY one smiled who read in the newspapers that Pullman porters dislike tips. How fully the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters represent the large number of our colored friends known generically as George, the account does not show, but the Brotherhood seems to be earnest and honest. And there is a good deal to say in favor of their proposal to abolish all Pullman tips.

They say that they regard the practice as making their service menial. Descending from social to financial ground, they suggest that the Pullman Company is an undeserving beneficiary of the tipping system because it pays its porters only about half what it would have to pay if tips were not allowed, and that its stockholders are unduly benefiting thereby. ing thereby. Economically speaking. they argue that it would be better and sounder business for everybody if their salaries should be raised and be paid by the Pullman Company instead of by the public on a haphazard or chance basis.

A brief on the subject is to be laid before the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is argued that if tips were abolished railway fares would include the cost of porter service, which is now paid for indirectly and irregularly by passengers, and that this involves violations of railway law as to rates.

Incidentally, it appears that Pullman porters now get a minimum wage of

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