book, publishing it for him, and then buying it of him. Art, in its best estate, is a hardy product which often thrives under austere conditions; and it is a serious question whether this interesting scheme, if tried, will not contravene the law which makes creative work the fruit of the creative character and of vital experience. THE OPPORTUNITIES 1910 The New York "Tribune" recently devoted a page to a record of the wonderful things that may happen in 1910 in the various departments of science, invention, and human achievement generally. Ten years ago such a page would have been read as one reads a page in "The Arabian Nights;" but in the light of the achievements of the last decade it was not only credible but probable. No one can predict into what new countries science will take us during 1910, what,vistas of truth it will open up, what advances in human knowledge it will register, or what development of material resources it will witness. tions. These gifts are all for human betterment-largely for educational purposes. It is fortunate that, as the habit of giving develops, the science of giving defines itself more and more distinctly; for with the lavishness of modern generosity there would be great danger of debilitating great numbers of people if gifts were not intelligently bestowed. The endowment of education, not only OF by annual gifts from States, but by private individuals, is beginning to assume a magnitude commensurate with the wealth of the country. Never before has research had so many tools at its service or the opportunity of conducting its enormously valuable work under such favorable conditions. The equipment of science for service is one of the most impressive and beneficent facts of the day, and it is impossible to predict the benefactions that will flow to humanity from this enormously enlarged activity. This generosity extends not only to colleges, to science, to medical institutions, but also to the enrichment of the country on the side of beauty. During the past twelve months the art museums of America have received nearly five millions of dollars; the endowment of the libraries has been increased by about four millions of dollars. Nor has religion, in spite of the predictions of its decline which constantly fill the columns of the newspapers, lost its hold upon the givers of the country. Last year there was devoted to missions over twelve millions of dollars in recognition of the fact that the missionary work of the churches has never been so nobly conceived and so nobly conducted as to-day. Special gifts to individual churches and for specific religious work of other kinds amounts to nearly ten millions of dollars; and it must be remembered that these gifts which have been brought to the attention of the public are only part of a vast generosity which flows, not only in great streams, but in rivulets from all parts of the country and all sorts of people for all kinds of work. Achievements in any one of these directions are to be counted among the prosperities of the race; but they are not the highest prosperities. Thoughtful men and women are eager for a moral and spiritual advance as commanding in its achievements and as noble in its practical results as the advances made in the other fields of life. The past decade has seen striking moral development along two chief lines-the definition of higher moral standards in business and political life, and an immense extension of the habit and practice of giving. The record of generosity in this country for 1909 probably surpasses any previous record in any part of the world. So far as this generosity was reported, the gifts to public institutions during the past year exceeded those of any previous year by forty millions of dollars, and reached the great aggregate of one hundred and forty-one millions of dollars. Three years ago these benefactions passed the one hundred million point. With the return of the wave of prosperity, American generosity has responded by an enormous enlargement of its benefac In the presence of such a practical backing of the endeavor to make the world happier, even the pessimist must feel more cheerful; and there are those who will find special comfort in this generosity because they believe that it indicates one way out of the present economic unrest. POST-OFFICE REFORM The Postmaster-General, Mr. Hitchcock, in his annual report just published, adds to the emphasis laid by the President in his recent Message on the necessity that Congress should take some action regarding the annual deficit in the PostOffice Department, which this year has reached the huge total of seventeen millions of dollars. There are two views which may be logically held regarding the United States. Post-Office. One is that it is an institution to be supported by general taxation for the good of all the people, like city sidewalks, which the rich but bedridden invalid helps to pay for but never uses; or like the United States Coast Survey, which charts and buoys our harbors, and the deficit of which-for its balance sheet is all deficit-is partly paid by the citizens of Kansas and Nebraska for the special benefit of the citizens of Boston, San Francisco, and New York. This was the view of Rowland Hill, who may be called the creator of cheap postage, and was the theory upon which the two-cent rate of postage for letters was established in the United States. Cheap postage was originally advocated, not merely as a convenience common to all the people, but on another ground of common welfare. It would prove to be, its advocates said, and it has proved to be, an effective agent for the diffusion of general intelligence and general prosperity. If the distribution of books, newspapers, and letters was seriously interrupted, not only would education degenerate, but the business of the country would come to a standstill. There is much to be said for this view of the function of the post-office, much to be said on this ground against any increase whatever in postal rates, much to be said in favor of paying for postal deficits out of the general tax fund. But in the present article we propose to consider the other view of the Post-Office Department, the view apparently of the President and the Postmaster-General. It is that the United States Post-Office should be considered as a self-supporting business. From this point of view the President does right in calling the attention of the board of directors of the business (that is, Congress) and of the stockholders (that is, the voters) to the deficit of seventeen millions. No money-making business is well managed that shows on its balance sheet such a deficit as that. Clearly something ought to be done about it. If the board of directors is efficient and really desires to promote the interests of the stockholders, or if the stockholders are intelligent enough to protect their own interests, they will ask the General Manager, Mr. Hitchcock, to explain the causes of the deficit and state his plans for reducing or abolishing it, or perhaps even for transforming it into a profit. Fortunately, on these points Mr. Hitchcock is very explicit. He reports that he loses in carrying the newspapers and magazines $63,000,000 a year, in delivering mail to the farmers and others who live on Free Rural Delivery routes $28,000,000 a year, and makes a profit in letter postage of about $74,000,000 a year. The deficit of $17,000,000 a year which thus appears he thinks may be reduced three or four millions by charging the various Government departments with their official mail, for which now there is no accounting to anybody whatever-a very loose proceeding for a self-supporting business. Mr. Hitchcock's only decisive recommendation for dealing with the deficit is to increase prices, thereby probably reducing the volume of his business; he does not suggest the reduction of expenses. Is this the successful and efficient method of dealing with a deficit in a self-supporting business? It does not seem so to us. Mr. Hitchcock says that the chief item of loss in his deficit is the $63,000,000 chargeable to the second-class postage on newspapers and magazines; that he pays the railways nine cents a pound for what he charges the newspapers and magazines only one cent a pound. His remedy is to increase largely the price of postage, from two to four hundred per cent possibly, on weekly newspapers and magazines. We have pointed out in a previous article that this would seriously cripple these periodicals. Is this the way to make the United States Post-Office successful as a self-supporting business? Is it the course that would be pursued by the general manager of a great private business? Mr. Hitchcock says that in the weeklies and monthly magazines he has to carry at a loss a great volume of advertising pages which he thinks are not admissible to cheap postage rates on the ground that they aid in the general diffusion of intelligence. It may be that magazine advertising is not a factor in the diffusion of general intelligence, although that question is susceptible of argument, but on business grounds alone we contend that the advertisements in the magazines and weeklies are a distinct source of profit to the PostOffice. Advertisements in the daily newspapers are addressed to persons in the immediate locality; they are designed to encourage personal calls at the shop or office of the advertiser. On the contrary, the chief object of advertisements in the weekly papers and magazines, which circulate all over the country, is to create correspondence by mail. They are very important and profitable feeders of that branch of Mr. Hitchcock's business which brings in a net profit of $74,000,000 a year. If Mr. Hitchcock wishes to reduce the profits of letter postage, one of the most effective ways would be to reduce the business of the weekly papers and magazines. The Outlook does not ask to be carried by the Post-Office Department because it is a purveyor of general intelligence. All it asks is that some general intelligence be applied by the readers of the newspapers and magazines to a consideration of the postal deficit. These readers constitute a large majority of the stockholders who are primarily interested in the business of the Post-Office. If the United States Post-Office is to be regarded as a business enterprise, the deficit should be treated as it would be in any well-conducted private business. Wise merchants and manufacturers who are not monopolists do not increase prices until they have exhausted every honorable and reasonable means to reduce cost. Who knows but that the item of railway cost to the PostOffice might be materially reduced if an effort in that direction were seriously made? Might not Mr. Hitchcock get some useful suggestions on this phase of the subject from the express companies, which earn very large profits and pay the railways very much lower rates than the Post-Office pays? The Post-Office Department is in some respects the most important of all the branches of the Government which are represented in the Presidential Cabinet. The domestic life of the Nation could, at a pinch, go on without a navy, an army, foreign treaties, scientific agriculture-valuable as that is—or Federal supervision of forests and public Jands, but it would be entirely disorganized in a week if the Post-Office Department were suddenly abolished. Our Postmasters-General have been men of sagacity and administrative power, who have in the face of great obstacles made the United States PostOffice one of the fine governmental institutions of the world. Mr. Hitchcock will conduct it, we confidently expect, in accordance with the successful achievements and high standards of his predecessors. He has some special gifts and abilities which ought to make him one of the world's great postal experts and adminstrators. But we do not think he has yet completely grasped the idea of the economic value and the social function of cheap universal postage. BOSTON'S EXAMPLE If Boston prides herself on being in a peculiar sense a center of intelligent patriotism-and she has much justification for doing so—she will have an excellent chance next week to show the real stuff she is made of. Municipal elections are generally of merely local interest; the Boston municipal election on Tuesday, January 11, is of National importance for some special reasons which we shall here endeavor to explain. A few years ago, as a result of growing dissatisfaction with graft, political jobbery, and inefficiency in municipal administration, an official body called the Finance Commission, composed of some of Boston's ablest and most public-spirited citizens, was appointed to investigate the evils, expose them, and recommend a cure. Their work finally resulted in a new Charter conferred upon the city by the State Legislature. Public opinion regarding this Charter was aroused in an interesting campaign of discussion carried on by those active in municipal reform. One striking incident of this campaign was a procession of members of the Merchants' Association, who marched from the Chamber of Commerce to the beautiful old State House, on Beacon Hill, led by Mr. Storrow, who is now one of the candidates for Mayor. The remarkable thing about the Legislature's part in framing the Charter was that it yielded to this public opinion and granted, the citizens of Boston an opportunity to determine certain salient features of the Charter in a general referendum. There were placed before the voters of Boston, for an expression of their choice in this referendum, two plans. Plan Number One provided for a Mayor and a large number of Councilmen to be elected by districts. Under this plan all the elective municipal officials were to be nominated by the old-fashioned political convention system. Plan Number Two provided for a Mayor and a small city Council of nine members to be elected at large, all elective officers to be nominated by petition. Thus in municipal elections the party primary and convention are practically abolished, although there is nothing to prevent the Republicans or Democrats from holding conventions in a purely extra-legal way, choosing their candidates, and requesting their adherents to sign the necessary petitions. Plan Number Two was carried by a handsome majority at the referendum which formed a part of the regular election in November, and a municipal election will be held on January 11 to choose a Mayor, nine Councilmen-atLarge, and one School Commissioner, all of whom have been nominated by petition. The issue of paramount importance is in the Mayoralty contest. Boston is the first of the great cities of the country, although the way has been paved by smaller communities, to attempt the non-partisan, non-convention, non-boss method of electing a chief executive. If she succeeds by the use of this method in getting a Mayor who is a first-class administrator and who regards public office as a public trust, she will not only have helped herself but have helped the cause of good municipal government throughout the country. If, on the other hand, she chooses a Mayor who, like Richard Croker, is “in politics for his own pocket," the associate of corrupt contractors, and the accom modating agent of unscrupulous corporations, she might perhaps be allowed to suffer her own misfortunes without any comment from outsiders, except for the fact that she will thus give every partisan boss in the United States the opportunity of saying, "I told you so; the only way to obtain good government of cities is to have party machines and party conventions managed by party leaders." Has Boston a candidate for Mayor who may be elected on the platform, Public office is a public trust? In the judgment of The Outlook, she has a candidate who is conspicuously of this type. There are four candidates for Mayor. One is Mr. Nathaniel Taylor (a relative of the proprietor of the Boston "Globe "), who stands for nothing in particular, has little following, and may be ignored. Another is Mayor Hibbard, a strict Republican, formerly Postmaster of Boston, an honest man of mediocre ability, who seeks reelection, but whose candidacy, if it has any effect at all, can have only the effect of insuring the success of Mr. Fitzgerald, the representative of the worst methods of the Democratic city machine. The third is ex-Mayor Fitzgerald, a politician of the Tammany type, who is openly championed by the vulgar political moneymakers and secretly supported by gentlemen of eminent respectability who want special political privileges for their "public service" and " public utility" corporations and similar enterprises. The fourth candidate is Mr. James J. Storrow, an overseer of Harvard, a partner of the influential banking firm of Lee, Higginson & Co., a member of the aris tocratic Somerset Club, and yet proved by his record to be a civic Democrat of the best type. He is an executive of experience and distinguished ability, and as Chairman of the Boston School Board has consistently practiced the doctrine that public office is a public trust. He has been a leader in the movement which has culminated in the new Charter, unswerved by the fact that some of his associates, business and social, have denounced him as a demagogue and traitor to his own class. It is asserted that some of the great corporate interests are opposed to him because they know that special privileges for corporations will be a thing of the past if he becomes Mayor, although in private they will not question the fact that for absolute fitness he is head and shoulders above any other candidate. We urge Mr. Storrow's election on the simple ground of general patriotism, for it will give an immense impetus to the general movement for good municipal government throughout the whole country. In the time of the Civil War Boston's desire for a good National Government finally triumphed over her love for cotton. Next Tuesday we hope and believe that her desire for first-rate municipal government will triumph over the love of some Bostonians for dividends. THE CONVENTION HABIT It used to be said that the characteristic of the Middle Ages was that everybody belonged to some definite corporation or calling; that a man was born, lived, and died a peasant, a member of a guild, or a burgher in a city; and that the difference of modern life is the force of the individuality acting for himself. The pendulum is, however, now swinging back the other way. Laborers, capitalists, churchmen, manufacturers, and scholars are united in a thousand different societies, founded on the principle that the individual sacrifices part of his independence for the sake of the influence of his mass. This is especially true of the great fields of learning. In the last twenty-five years nearly all the separate arts and sciences have organized them national societies, holding periodical meetings. There is in the United States a recently organized Academy of Arts and Letters, of which The Outlook has given its readers an account, and which is likely to acquire great influence; but under our system there is and can be no central academy or group of academies like those in France, recognized throughout the country as an official body; there are not forty immortals in this country, but nearer forty thousand, to judge from the membership lists of the learned societies. Of these, none are more active than the group of organizations which have been meeting in New York during the past week. The parent of them is the American Historical Association, organized in 1884 by a small group of historical scholars under the impetus of the late Professor Herbert B. Adams, of Johns Hopkins University. The very next year Aaron's rod budded, and out of the original association sprang the American Economic Association. A few years later appeared two younger sisters in this family of societies, the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Society; and in connection with these four organizations five other kindred societies have joined in a kind of general convention. New York is accustomed to such meetings, which commonly are little regarded outside the number of those in attendance and their friends; but this meeting made an unusual impression because of the large gathering on the opening night at Carnegie Hall, which would have been addressed by the President of the United States had Providence and the Pennsylvania Railroad cooperated; and was addressed by Mayor McClellan, Governor Hughes, and President Butler, of Columbia. Outside of this meeting the sessions came more closely than commonly to the attention of New Yorkers, because it is the practice of these associations to hold sessions on current questions of various kinds. The old idea that history concerned itself only with the distant past, that economics was a dismal science of abstract reasoning, and that the study of government was the study of the texts of constitutions, has long gone by. In the various meetings of the extraordinarily full programme were discussed such topics as "The Control of Corporations," "Ballot Reform," "The Political Union of South Africa," "Problems of Country Life,” "Valuation of Public Service Corporations," "The Situation in the Balkan Peninsula," "The Ethnic Elements in the History of the United States," and "The Effects of Reconstruction." papers more or less formal was lively discussion, and in the assembly room of the Waldorf-Astoria representatives of the white race and of the negro race courteously set forth their points of view on the race question. This feeling of the responsibility of men of learning-professors, investigators, professional men Alongside of |