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Free for All

Human Explosives

s a graduate in both medicine and in civil engineering-the two great lifesaving professions of the world-I must accuse you of unfairness to Hudson Maxim (May 18, 1927).

Why always visualize war? Explosives do our mining, railroad and highway building, and innumerable other useful works, including provision of electric power and water supply-the principal factor in health. Even in war they have decreased I served two and the percentage of loss. one-half years under the British flag and two under our own, and know whereof I speak. The auto kills-in this countryabout as fast as our former enemies in the war, but how many does it save from typhoid, tetanus, etc. Why not condemn its inventor?

When we name our schools and squares and streets after the men who won the war by their constructive efforts-Reid, Carroll, Lazear, Ricketts, Gorgas, Wood, and Roosevelt (who visualized the value of world transportation)-rather than for those who supervised destructive work such as Pershing and Dewey (this is not adverse criticism), we shall go far in eliminating the collective duel, war, as we have already with the individual duel.

San Francisco, California.

F. A. RICHARDSON.

Production and Consumption

as

E have an over-production, or, some choose to call it, an underconsumption, of all farm products to-day. If we were to increase the selling price on these commodities, we would only encourage greater production, which would further increase the amount of over-production.

. Production and consumption, therefore, are the two salient points in the farm situation.

If the manufacturers of clothing, boots and shoes, farm implements, steel, automobiles, or any of the other basic industries meet this same situation, and they are meeting it continuously, the first step they take to correct the condition is to reduce production. Why not the farmer?

The Government cannot compel reduced production, but it can assist in not encouraging over-production. The Department of the Interior should withdraw from homestead rights every acre of public land not already filed upon, thereby assisting by not aiding this over-production. Why produce more when we already have too much?

The yield of the great number of homesteads is fairly comparable to the tremendous volume of business done by the five and ten cent stores throughout the country-small individual sales, but enormous in the aggregate.

There are undoubtedly authentic statistics available showing that we have fewer farmers in the United States to-day than we had ten years ago. Still the production is greater, due to increased yield per acre per man, which is explained by improved farming methods, such as power farming, proper fertilization, certified seed, and many other points which the farmer has been taught by our very efficient Department of Agriculture. Why, then, throw more acres under the plow for this same Increased yield?

The Government in the past has financed large irrigation projects. Some of these have been successful, while others have

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been dismal failures. Farmers who have been induced to buy land under these irrlgation ditches have been unable to keep up their payments and in many instances to even pay their water rent, and have been compelled to admit failure and desert their land, losing their payments and many a month of hard labor. The land then again reverts to the Government for resale to the next applicant, and still the Government does not get its money back out of the project. About the only good that has ever come to the taxpayer whose money was used in the construction is a monument such as the Shoshone Dam, that may be seen by travelers who enter or leave the Yellowstone National Park by the Cody Gateway.

TELEGRAF

COMPANIES

telephone service. Its cords link for in

stant speech those who are separated by a few miles or by a continent. Its guardian operators are of the telephone armymen and women vigilant to meet a nation's need for communications.

In plant and personnel, the Bell System is in effect a vast switchboard serving a nation that has been transformed into a neighborhood through telephone growth and development.

It would seem that one or two of such monuments should be enough, but during the closing hours of the last Congress much time and talk was spent on the Swing-Johnson Boulder Dam, for another Government irrigation project. Fortunately, this bill was not passed, and it should not pass; nor should any other bill pass which diverts one cubic foot of water from its natural channel for irrigation purposes, nor should a single acre of land be opened for homesteading until consumption has at least approached production, whether the product be cattle, sheep, grain, cotton, fruit, or walnuts.

Illoming Hereford Ranch,

Sheridan, Wyoming.

SIDNEY S. PORTER.

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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

THE OUTLOOK, September 21, 1927. Volume 147, Number 3. Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 120 East
16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post
Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post Office at Dunellen, N. J., under the Act of March 3, 1879.

Volume 147

The Outlook

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September 21, 1927

He is the first to live under the new roof of the White House. May he have un

der it for the rest of his term those peaceful pleasures that are his desire and his desert.

Turning on the Light in Indiana

Before his return, he had removed L

himself from the Presidential field, and therefore in the main from worrying and being worried by the politicians. Since his return, he has got rid of the specter of a special session of Congress, or even of the Senate alone. After brief conference with Representative Tilson and Senator Curtis, Republican floor leaders of the two houses, he decided that no special session was necessary, thus relieving himself-for three months, at any rate of a President's chief source of worry.

It is easy to believe that the President may now have a period of peaceful living in the White House. He comes back to it not merely from a vacation in the Black Hills but from an enforced sojourn in an old house on DuPont Circle.

IGHT is beginning to penetrate the dark doings of Indiana politics and government. Governor Jackson has been indicted on two charges, conspiracy to commit a felony and attempted bribery. With him were indicted on the same charges his former law partner, Robert I. Marsh, and the Chairman of the Marion County Republican Committee, George V. Coffin. On the same day, John L. Duvall, Mayor of Indianapolis, was indicted on the charge of violating the corrupt practices act.

Indictment does not, of course, prove guilt, and there should be no pre-judging guilt, and there should be no pre-judging of these men in the public mind. But indictment does prove that reasonable ground exists for believing that crime has been committed. The significant

thing is that, at last, the cold light of the

Number 3

lamp of the law will be turned upon a maze of charge and counter charge, of scheme and counter scheme, in what was undoubtedly one of the most deplorable political situations that any State has known.

There will be many to claim triumph as the result of these indictments. Among them will be D. C. Stephenson, the convict who once was the most awesome of all the Grand Dragons of the Ku Klux Klan-who had as his attorney in those days one of the men now indicted, Robert I. Marsh. Among those to claim triumph will also be Thomas H. Adams, the Vincennes editor. The fact is, however, that neither Stephenson's threats nor Adams's exposures amounted to much.

The triumph belongs, more than to all other men, to William H. Remy, the young Marion County Prosecutor. By regular, plodding, legal methods he has accomplished this thing over innumerable obstacles. He had the patienceand the nerve to let one grand jury after another expire without pressing his charges to an issue, until at last a grand

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In the first of the matches of 1927 for the international polo cup played at the Meadowbrook Club on Long Island, New York, the British team was overwhelmed, 13-3, by the American " Big Four," Devereaux Milburn, Captain; Malcolm Stevenson, Thomas Hitchcock, Jr., and J. Watson Webb

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s a result of disagreements and friction between the Moving Picture Operators' Union and the Exhibitors' Association, practically all the four hundred moving-picture houses in Chicago were closed on Monday, August 29, and remained closed until September 4.

One moving-picture circuit, the theaters it controls or owns, and all the working employees became involved in a question as to whether four or two operators were required by the existing agreement. One theater changed from exclusive moving-picture work to combined vaudeville and picture performances and discharged two out of its four operators under the letter of the general agreement. The unions claimed that the change was unfair and called out operators in all the circuit houses, whereupon the Exhibitors' Association ordered a lockout and closed practically all places of amusement in Chicago that show moving pictures.

There are three unions concerned with the operation of moving-picture theaters -operators, stage-hands, and musicians. The situation was complicated by the fact that the agreements between the exhibitors, on the one hand, and the stage-hands and musicians, on the other, were expiring. The stage-hands engaged in a strike for higher wages for themselves. In the background, our Chicago correspondent tells us, is a long period of dissatisfaction of the exhibitors with what they term the arbitrary and highhanded tactics of the operators and the stage-hands.

After the theaters had been dark for about a week representatives of the two sides were brought together in confer

The Outlook for September 21, 1927

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Arkansas one must have paid his N order to be eligible for jury service in

All houses that can be moved are being moved to newly made streets on the high ground. Those that cannot be moved are being razed.

Other communities may not all be able to follow the example of Columbus in detail for many of them, there is no high ground-but they can all learn from it appreciation of the fact that, if the Valley is to be freed from the danger of flood disaster, communities must themselves take heroic steps.

Federal Reserve Powers

poll tax. A criminal trial was postponed recently in one of the flooded THE Charter of the Federal Reserve

counties of that State because it was impossible to find twelve men who had been able to meet this obligation. This, at least, is the story that the daily newspapers have told. Even when due allowance is made for exaggeration, it indicates something of what Secretary of Commerce Hoover found

upon his

recent return to the overflow area.

Sixty thousand persons, it is said, are still dependent upon the Red Cross for food and clothing. Of the 101 counties flooded, all but twenty have measurably recovered. Crops of some sort have been grown; and, while there may be little money coming in, men are managing to feed and shelter their families. This may seem small progress toward recovery but it is, in fact, a marvelous achievement.

The destitute twenty counties, where such achievement has not been possible, are all in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Ninety per cent of the land in them, it is said, is owned by small farmers who will harvest no money crop and, if they are to stay on the land, must be financed for the making of future crops. "This," says one of the correspondents accompanying Secretary Hoover, "is the biggest of all problems growing out of the flood." But it is

not.

The biggest problem has been and will continue to be, not relief, but prevention. To put the prostrated counties again on their feet would be no solution if they were to be left subject to disaster again and again. Prevention is a long task, a heroic task, not for the Government alone, but for the people of the Valley.

Columbus, Kentucky, is setting an example. The entire town, founded more than a hundred and fifty years ago, is in process of moving. Every lot owner has deeded his land to the city, with the stipulation that it is not to be used again for residential purposes. The city has deeded to every lot owner a new lot on the bluffs back from the river.

Banking System expires in 1934. It is probable that the institution will come up for much reviewing in the next Congress through a desire to secure early legislation for its renewal and from disputes that have developed as to its powers.

The latest of these arises over the question of fixing the rediscount rate of interest to be charged by the regional banks. Hitherto this has been a local question, and the rates have usually reached a parity by mutual adjustments. In this way eleven regional Federal Reserve Banks-all except the one in Chicago came some time ago to a 31⁄2 per cent rate. Chicago held to 4. As a result the Federal Reserve Board in Washington has ordered the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank to cut its rediscount rate to 31⁄2 per cent. There followed a protest, based upon the alleged right of the regionals to act independently, backed by the claim that centralization of the power to fix the rate is contrary to the meaning of the law, is dangerous, and can be unfairly applied. Already the announcement is made that Senator Glass, one of the authors of the Federal Reserve Act, will lead a fight in Congress to have the rate-making power lodged definitely with the regional banks.

The situation grows out of a complexity difficult to remedy. Of late more than $3,200,000,000 is kept regularly employed in financing operations on the New York Stock Exchange. This is "call" money, loaned subject to repayment on demand. A sudden shift in the discount rate that is to say the price charged for the use of the money-can easily upset the market. Such a case occurred some months ago when the regional bank in Philadelphia changed its rate in the closing hours of the market. Wall Street had a seismic shudder in consequence.

As half of the money loaned in Wall Street comes from country banks it can readily be seen that without a uniform rediscount rate things are apt to be

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