"A

RE you going to the series?" A friend asked me that just after my return from a month's jaunt to the Pacific coast.

"What series?" I asked.

"The World's Series, of course," he replied. "The baseball championship."

"Probably. . . . But I have just seen the settling of another World's Championship that makes the Polo Grounds show look like a censored classic."

Which of course was saying a good deal, but at least it focused the attention of my baseball-enthusiast friend, to whom forthwith was told the story of another really great epic of American sportsmanship, the Round-Up at Pendleton, Oregon-a superspectacular championship of which he, like many another Easterner, had never even heard.

Each year there are a number of these rodeos, or round-ups, throughout the West, perhaps the most notable of them being held at Pendleton, Oregon. Thither, with a group of Nationally known authors, I went this autumn. Our itinerant writers, who ranged from Frederick O'Brien and "Dr. Walter E. Traprock" of rather dissimilar South Sea fame, to Wallace Irwin and Charles Hanson Towne, were inevitably forthwith dubbed the "rough writers." In honor of the literary visitors the slogan of the Pendleton show, which normally is "Let 'Er Buck," was paraphrased to "Let 'Er Book."

The Round-Up is a great deal more than a merely "Wild West show." It is wild and Western enough and reminiscent of the picturesque past. But it is much more than an exhibition. It is a competition. It is a pennant race in which America's best horsemen and most competent cowboys compete.

Pendleton itself is a prosperous town in the heart of the wheat and cattle country of eastern Oregon. Normally, I suppose, its population is some fifteen thousand. But during the three days of the Round-Up, when it is the focus of interest for most of the Pacific Northwest and an increasing number of Eastern seeing-America-first-ers, it expands miraculously to thrice that size. Well over thirty thousand enthusiasts paid admission on the last day of this year's show. Which at that compares pretty well with a Polo Grounds attendance, especially considering that Pendleton is some three thousand miles from Eastern population centers and that the whole State of Oregon hasn't as many people as Brooklyn.

Consider, then, a frontier town-albeit a modern one with paved streets, porcelain tubs, elevators, and all the metropolitan trimmings-entirely turned over for three hectic days to the show, which the town itself owns and conducts, not

for profit but for the downright glamour of it and the glory of the West that was and is. Cowboy clothes are the order of the day-woolly "chaps," swashbuckling spurs clinking from leather boots, broadrimmed Stetsons, gay-colored silk shirts and scarfs, and, above all, gaudy vests hued like unto the aurora borealis.

"Assuredly," as Charles Hanson Towne punned it, "here is where the vest begins."

There is a saying, epitomizing generosity, that one "would give you his shirt." Just that happened in Pendleton, for our hosts at once insisted that we exchange our becollared drab affairs for their own giddy silk creations. In celebration of which hospitable transfer Wallace Irwin perpetrated a song that forthwith became the popular Round-Up hit and doubtless by now echoes merrily throughout cowland, to the tune of "Tourelay:"

When I was in Oregon scratching the dirt.

I met a young cowboy who gave me his shirt.

The shirt it was silk, and the shirt it was red,

So I held out my hand and these fine words I said:

"Cowboy, O Cowboy, I hope you do well,

You're a good-natured, bulldogging son of a swell."

So I put on the shirt, and I tucked in the tail,

And beat it back East on the Oregon Trail.

The show itself is staged on a quartermile track and in an arena at its center, the whole surrounded by bleachers and grand stands. There is, of course,

racing of all kinds bareback, pony express (where the riders shift the saddle from one horse to another at each change), Indian squaw, and, most picturesque of all, the wild-horse race, which last is an unexampled epic of concentrated excitement. A score of absolutely unbroken horses-animals who have felt neither bridle nor saddlesnorting, raging, are turned into the track. At a signal a group of mounted cowboys go after them, each ultimately roping one. Then, in a welter of wildeyed, fighting, biting, rolling, bucking creatures, the rider and his assistant somehow contrive to get a bandage over the horse's eyes, which, after frantic struggles, quiets him enough to make saddling possible. Then off with the eye bandages and on with the race-and often enough, off with the rider! Remember, no horse ever has been ridden. Their one interest is to get rid of saddle and rider. They have no intention whatever of going around the track. Instead they buck and "sunfish," actually roll over on the ground, and generally mill around like four-footed demons gone mad.

A wonderfully unforgetable sight is that concentrated inferno of insane horseflesh and roistering fearless manflesh. This year, just to see a lean buckaroo named Punch Guyette ride the bereft cayuse which luck wished on him -ride him right side up and upside down, horse and rider somehow somersaulting quite completely, with Punch remaining in the saddle, all with a whoop and a laugh, was in itself quite worth the trip from New York.

And that wild-horse race was, of

course, only a detail, a sort of curtainraiser, a tasty appetizer for the big events. The contests for bucking, bulldogging, and roping are the top-line attractions. And working up to the championship decisions of the last day are a welter of hair-raising elimination trials, so that the fifty or so riders are put through their paces, under all sorts of circumstances, and the crowd is fairly saturated with a veritable saturnalia of exciting sights.

Those Round-Up names mean little to us back here. Suffice to say that Yakima Canutt (who this year rode third in the bucking) is a Babe Ruth of cowland. Howard Tegland, world champion, and Ray Bell-who wears a neat white collar even when astride twelve hundred pounds of horse-hided insanity-are every bit as well known out there as Dempsey and, say, Harold Bell Wright; while the Western reputations of marvelous women riders like Mabel Strickland and Bonnie McCarroll rank right up with Mary Pickford and Elsie Fergu

son.

are

The bucking horses which supply the motive power, so to speak, for the riding contests are the pick of the untamable "bad" animals of all the West. Their names become historic. There "Lena" (no lady, she!), "U-tell-Em," "Bill McAdoo," "Wiggles," "Angel," and others. This year two especially badmannered beasts were christened "Doc Traprock" and "George Putnam." Neither, we regret to state, succeeded in unseating his rider!

The matter of getting the saddle on a "bad horse" is a problem in itself, solved by the "wranglers." Ultimately the rider gets aboard, but not necessarily for long, for those horses know every trick imaginable likely to encourage an immediate divorce between themselves and the unwelcome stranger perched upon their hurricane deck. Be the horse a trained bucker or an outlaw, he can be counted upon for all sorts of gymnastics, ranging from the "side wind" and "sunfish" and "weave" to the straight buck and the high dive, not to mention the pleasant trick of rearing and falling back on the rider.

They ride with only a halter, no reins or bridle being used. And they must ride with style-ride "slick"-that is, straight up, with a close seat, and "no daylight showing." And really to impress the judges the rider must "rake" the shoulders and rump of his horse with his blunted spurs, and "fan" the animal at every jump, swinging his hat with a full arm sweep. And, above all, he must not "pull leather" or touch the saddle with either hand.

And then the roping. That means to ride after a wild Texas long-horn steer, get a lasso around his horns, throw him, and "hogtie" him by fastening his four feet together while the cow-pony at the other end of the rope holds the steer helpless on the ground. And it must all be done under two minutes.

But, from the standpoint of individual muscular prowess and sheer human grit, "bulldogging" is the showiest event of

all. The steer is driven out of a chute. and he emerges much as a limited mail train comes out of a tunnel. They give him about thirty feet start, and then the man starts after him on a horse running like a scared jack-rabbit. The horse draws alongside and the man leans over, hooks an arm around the steer's horn, and slides from the saddle. The horse goes on, so does the steer for a few jumps, the man dragging through the dust and acting as a brake. Finally the two come to rest. Then the man reaches for the steer's nose and, clasping his hands around it with the horn between his arms, leans backward and tries to throw the animal. Sometimes the steer shakes him loose, sometimes it whirls and tosses him, but we have seen a man bring down an animal in seventeen seconds from the time he started after him. They call it bulldogging, but it's the greatest wrestling in the world.

And let this be clear: there is no cruelty to animals. The broken bonesand necks too-are the lot of the twolegged contestants. Not an animal this year was injured. It is the men and the women who take the big risks and get the real hurts.

"Let 'er buck!"
"Ride 'em, cowboy!"

Those cries of the Round-Up echo still in our ears, and the memory of all that goes with them is a magnet that inevitably will draw us again westward to this courageous competition an epic of sportsmanship so essentially American.

"H

-ENRY and me," Governor Allen of Kansas and William Allen White, the famous editor and publicist of the same State, have given dramatic publicity to the Industrial Court experiment in the famous sunflower commonwealth. Henry is at the moment haling Bill before the high courts of the State to determine whether Bill's theory of free speech under the law is or is not sound. We all have a right to speak of these fine personalities in this undeferential manner, because that is the way they do it in Kansas, and Henry and Bill do it themselves. Their recent legal controversy has undoubtedly ruffled their nervous systems, but it doesn't appear to have shattered their friendship.

As I understand it, it all came about over the railway strike. Bill is an instinctive and militant idealist and lives in Emporia. Emporia is a railway shop

town on the Santa Fé. The shopmen there are neither aliens nor seditionists nor men who love violence or anything of the sort. They are just plain Americans whose children are in the high school and who sit on the school board and are generally a part of the backbone of a very democratic community. Bill is universally respected in the highest degree in his home community, as he is by everybody in America who knows him and his influence for the right. When the strike started, he got in touch with the shopmen in the town and was a sort of guide, philosopher, and friend. He was anxious for them to pull through without violence of any kind. He expressed fifty per cent of sympathy for them. He said it was a good cause because living conditions had not reached the point where wages should have come down, but it was a bad strike because it was likely to inflict a heavy loss upon

the farmers of Kansas and the West. But he was willing to go with them fifty-fifty. and he wanted them to be men of peace.

In an important railway shop town the shopmen are apt to be a very dominating part of the population. In time of strike the merchants carry them on credit, and it is to the advantage of the merchants in the long run to display a kindly bias toward the men who have temporarily left their jobs. One of the methods adopted at Emporia of exhibiting kindly feeling was the posting of placards in the windows of the merchants expressing a hundred per cent sympathy with the strikers. Bill came down to the "Gazette" office one morning and he passed the placards on every block. When he got to his desk, he said to one of the boys, "Go out and get me one of those posters." Bill marked out the one hundred per cent and put fortynine per cent just below it and hung ↑.

poster in the window. He announced that he would raise his sympathy one per cent a day as long as the men kept the peace.

And here is where Henry comes in. The Governor for a year or two has been conducting a difficult laboratory experiment in compulsory arbitration of disputes in the essential industries gener ally in the State. The new Industrial Court Law forbids picketing altogether in case of a strike on an essential industry. A railway is an essential industry, and the recent strike was putting the new law to a new test in the State of Kansas. In many of the shop towns, what the Governor believed to be subtle forms of picketing were resorted to. Merchants, at the behest of strike committees and strike sympathizers, were refusing to sell the necessities of life to the strike-breakers. One hardware dealer told a detachment of the State police that he thought it inadvisable to sell them metal watering-troughs for their horses. The Industrial Court said this was a form of intimidative picketing and forbade it. Then in various shop towns the placard in the window of the merchant was resorted to. "We are one hundred per cent against the strike-breakers," and the Court forbade this as intimidative picketing. Then came the friendly placard such as appeared in Emporia, expressing one hundred per cent sympathy for the strikers. This also the Governor and the Court put under the ban, as the last step in a conspiracy, as they viewed it, 'to make the drastic picketing provisions of the new law of none effect.

And thus arose the clash between freedom of speech and the freedom to work, between Henry and Bill. Henry said to Bill: "You must take that placard out of your window. You are joining in a conspiracy, and your luster as a citizen only adds to the menace of it." Bill said: "All right. You bring action against me in the courts, and we will see if you can drive free speech so far into a corner in the State of Kansas; and in the meantime I will take the placard out of the window and ask every other merchant in the State to do likewise."

You see, it may be quite possible that legally and practically Henry is right, and at the same time that instinctively Bill is right. The question of how far we should go in a country like ours, even in essential industries, in suppressing freedom of speech and all picketing is a delicate one, and nobody contends that a thoroughly wise statute has as yet been framed in Kansas or anywhere else in the country. A measurably perfect statute we shall no doubt grow into, as they have in England, and perhaps we shall get a better one than in England. In the meantime these instinctive flashes of good red-hot American indignation against what may have the look of oppression or suppression are not by any manner of means altogether unhealthy. There is room for ill on the planet as well as for Henry.

It was the same resurgence of the American sense of right which arose in many parts of the country at the late Daugherty injunction. It was not that men objected to the use of the injunction in some phases of labor dispute, although many felt that the criminal phase could better be dealt with by other process; but it was because of the drastic and seemingly unnecessary lengths to which the phraseology of the injunction seemed to reach. It seemed to a great number to be a touch of Russia and Prussia which boded no good for industrial America. It will not do for men who wish wisely to defend both property and public right to go to such lengths in the suppression of a rational freedom that they may furnish both example and incentive to a more radical dominant class some day to go and do likewise against property and the general welfare. Such practice is not good public training for the growing mass of workers of any land. As Bill White puts it, "I've got all the freedom of speech I want. But I would like to see this country grow into so clear a sense of what is right and just that my children and my children's children will have all the freedom of speech they want."

It yet remains to be seen whether Davies Warfield, the enlightened President of the Seaboard Airline, with his human strategy and his able spirit of fairness and conciliation, has not done more to break the railway strike than the Daugherty injunction. And it is the Warfield method which has in it promise of a permanent settlement. Far be it from me to decry the use of force to the limit by Government when the general welfare is gravely threatened, but force which is not rooted in wisdom and justice is only the opposite pole of anarchy. And I think we need to remember that as long as the essential industries remain at least semi-private, and have in them still the element of purely private management and profit, and sometimes very serious evils of such management, it is especially incumbent upon Government to recognize those evils and clear them away, because compulsory arbitration or injunction which leaves a bad status quo in the essential industry is not a permanent remedy at all. Permanent stabilization of essential industries should, save in exceedingly exceptional cases, precede the discussion of a permanent programme for the compulsory settlement of strikes and follow hard upon compulsory settlement in the exceptional cases. This stabilization will be opposed by narrow-minded operators and managers, on the one hand, and by narrowminded labor leaders, on the other, but there is no peace until it is done.

To return finally to Kansas and the Industrial Court. I think Governor Allen is entitled to great credit for making the experiment. As a matter of fact, contrary to much prevalent opinion, the Court has done some admirable things. My information is that if the law were put to referendum in Kansas, probably

two-thirds to three-fourths of the State would vote to retain it. The Court has put some men in jail, but it has been reasonably fair. And its decisions on the side of labor have been numerous and noteworthy. It has not been a capitalistic court. The impression that it has seems to have grown partly out of misrepresentation and partly out of the somewhat belligerent attitude of the Governor toward the labor leaders in his addresses before Chambers of Commerce and other such bodies. The Governor is a born fighter, one of the best in the country, and the labor leaders have hit his idea hard. And he has struck back in like manner. But this has not been the temper of the Court. As a matter of fact, the fiercest opposition to the Court seems now to come from the group of employers in Kansas known as the Associated Industries, who by propaganda and lawsuit are doing everything possible to break its morale and reputation and get rid of it.

A great deal can be learned for the whole country by experimenting with the idea in Kansas. I am not at all sure that compulsory arbitration of disputes even in essential industries will be widely successful until pretty close to the industrial millennium. The experience of Australia with compulsory arbitration in businesses affected with a public interest is not very hopeful. The penalty falls down. Just as you cannot indict a whole people, so the State will always have great difficulty in putting, it may be, several hundred thousand workers into jail because in a crisis they failed to obey the law. And in Australia the daily struggle before the courts of the two classes in interest seems to have strengthened class consciousness instead of softening it. The old natural cleavage of Conservative and Liberal in party politics seems to have vanished and in its place a dominating majority working group has established Labor Party rule. Compulsory arbitration has brought little that is reassuring in Australia.

Kansas as a State is peculiarly constituted for the experiment. It is very predominantly agricultural, and a State administration can have the farmers, who are not in love with the mine and factory laborers, anyway, right at its back. Politically in Kansas it is not an extraordinarily difficult problem. But it is a constantly worrisome problem at best and does require patience and firmness and sound sense in its outworking. During the railway strike things in Kansas have been pretty tense at times and the effect of the decisions of the Court and of the pressure of authority for law and order has often been in doubt. I suppose that is one reason why Henry felt that Bill's sudden incursion into the fray was a bit gratuitous and harassing.

I think it is a mistake for the Governor to urge the plan so vigorously upon other States, as if it were of universal application and a completed

N some of the Prussian sanitariums

the consumptive patients are forbidden to cough. This measure is based on the right principle-coughing irritates the lungs and makes the disease worse. But the efforts to stifle coughing often exhaust the patient much more than would the most violent cough.

This sample of Prussian discipline comes to my mind when I am thinking about American optimism. It is at times harder to stop crying than to stop coughing. But your optimism demands that you smile even when you feel like an ocean of tears. Everybody smiles here, more frequently than in any other country I have visited, with, maybe, the exception of Japan. Yours is such a serene, cheerful smile! And yet, more and more often I see in your papers popular articles on "NEURASTHENIA, THE GREAT AMERICAN DISEASE."

I studied both your smile and your neurasthenia, till I connected them. It seems to me that the first breeds the other.

Psychologists state that it is dangerous to suppress anger, sadness, spite. It sinks down into the depths of your soul and lies there like a heavy stone. It helps forming inhibitions. At times it drives one insane.

Now, with all the blessing of American civilization, you still have lots of things to be angry about. You want to swear and cry at times like every normal human being, but-you are taught extreme reserve. Often you would frown at your capricious customer, swear at your exacting boss, stamp your feet at your lazy employee. But no, you must

BY MARIA MORAVSKY

smile. For it was repeated to you over and over again:

"Say it with a smile."
"The voice with a smile wins."
"Hurray for optimism!"

This optimism of yours is the most remarkable sentiment I ever saw upsetting human lives. You even grow insaneoptimistically. On Ward's Island, in one of the largest insane asylums in the States, there is a section called Millionaires' Ward. It is the biggest one. Its inmates consist mostly of people who failed in life. But so strong was their optimistic belief that sooner or later they would succeed that, after innumerable cheerful efforts to conquer fate and circumstances, they went insane-cheer

fully.

To be sure, most of them are happy. The administration kindly furnishes offices for the most persistent of the "millionaires," in which they make their enormous business transactions, each one bringing more millions. Among these "successful business men" there is a gentleman who thinks himself a benefactor of humanity; he hands every visitor a check "according to his needs." This man looked to me a symbol of your optimism: it continues to hand to you one worthless check after another. And on each is written: One Million Hopes!

I have watched a striking example of ravages wrought by hopes on a friend of mine. She is a capable fiction writer, contributing to many a leading magazine. She often reproached me for my eternal "kicking," for being "horribly pessimistic," and believing in the strength of circumstances. She herself was optimism embodied.

Two years elapsed, as they say in novels. The business in this country went from bad to worse, contrary to the assurances of the daily cheerful editorials in your leading newspapers. Naturally, it was reflected on fiction magazines. The editors began to buy less and pay less. Things grew so dark that many brilliant free-lance writers had to go into the advertisement game, instead of following "free creation."

During these times of literary famine I cursed our fate in my most somber Slavic fashion, and waited for the worst to come, while my poor optimismpoisoned friend was daily expecting the sky to clear and success to blossom out. And here we are, with about the same material results, which are far from what we think we are worthy. I remain in my usual mental state of well-balanced pessimism, contemplating life with more or less critical look, while she is having hysterics every day and professes a desire to “end it all in the East River."

I believe it was her exaggerated optimism which brought her to despair. When you expect too much from life, the slump your hopes take is usually more or less violent. It often brings severe nervous breakdown.

Personally, however, I consider my friend's neurasthenia the lesser of two evils. If she continued to force herself into smiling much longer, she might have ended in the Millionaires' Ward.

Beware of the Millionaires' Ward. I am afraid that every one of your forced smiles is a brick added to building up insanity.

B

(C) Underwood

EFORE I became a member of President Roosevelt's official family I was in what he termed his "kitchen cabinet." My experiences in both cabinets are among the treasured recollections of my life.

We were the unofficial advisers who met round the luncheon and dinner table and afterwards in the White House study, where the President spoke without reserve of his executive problems and read for our criticism and counsel his rough drafts of Congressional messages, speeches, and notes to foreign governments.

Holding no portfolios of state, these "kitchen cabinet ministers" yet gave of their best; were always prepared to toi! to any extent to be of assistance to the President. He had the quality of vitalizing things-a situation or condition coming within his executive ken became so charged with life and imagination that men wanted to put their hands and minds to it. They served Roosevelt as energetically and loyally as if the grave

responsibilities of state were upon their own shoulders.

International relations and labor arbitration were the public activities which interested me most. The President had appointed me a member of the permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague to succeed the late Benjamin Harrison, and shortly thereafter in his charming manner had designated me as a member of his "kitchen cabinet." Thus there had commenced for me a memorable series of conferences.

We met usually at the White House table. The President commenced the discussions by speaking frankly of whatever problems of state were occupying his attention. In explaining he had a manner of addressing his remarks directly to the man from whom he wanted an opinion. This gave his guest the opportunity to devote the highest possible concentration to the subject while the President was speaking. An opinion, if it won his approval, was greeted with a "Good! Fine!" and

he incorporated it immediately into his plans.

I never knew any one whose mind was more open to suggestions. I never knew any one who acted upon suggestions with more promptitude. Yet it was not simply impulsiveness. It was

not a matter of taking the first advice that was offered, but of being quick to see and act upon the right advice.

ROOSEVELT, THE IMPULSIVE

There is much misapprehension regarding Roosevelt's so-called impulsiveness. This was evident to those who had an intimate view of the man at work. He was quick. He was a prodigious worker. He was so constituted and so self-trained that he had to do things immediately, get them out of the way. What people called his impulsiveness might have been more aptly termed his preparedness.

I had hundreds of opportunities to observe his methods. When he accepted an invitation to deliver an address or write an article, he would prepare it immediately, even if the occasion were two, three, or six months off. He revised considerably, showed his work freely to friends and associates for criticisms, but completed it at the earliest opportunity. He never waited. This method served to perfect his thought and expression on a given subject. His promptness left him free for other things.

The President never seemed to be hurried, though he always worked with a wonderful driving force. He seemed never to waste any time. It was play or work, and both with his whole heart.

During his last few months in the White House, while making preparations for his African trip, for instance, he accepted the invitation to deliver his now famous address at Oxford University. The address was not to be delivered until after his return from Africa, yet immediately after accepting he began writing it, and revised and completed it before he left America. He practiced the same method with his Nobel Peace Prize address, which he delivered at Christiania. It left him free for play. He did not want to think about Oxford addresses while in Africa.

His public addresses were almost invariably the result of preparation. It was seldom that he spoke extemporaneously. The fire and animation which he imparted in the delivery of his speeches certainly conveyed no impression that they might have been carefully prepared and considered at a desk in a study. His papers were so smal! and inconspicuous that they did not interfere with his natural gestures. The