was that it would cost a little more and be a little more inconvenient to have three inspections instead of one, and the President gave them little more comfort than to make it quite clear that he was thoroughly in accord with my action for the provision of greater safety to human life. He told them he felt he was fortunate in having at the head of the Department of Commerce and Labor a man who was a humanitarian besides having large business experience, for, while it was his purpose to harmonize human and business interests, always when they conflicted he would lean toward the human side, as I had done in issuing that order.

SAVING THE SALMON

The President was deeply interested always in the natural resources of the country and their preservation, and asked me to take up the question of the Alaska salmon fisheries. It was certain that unless some drastic action was taken the salmon would be destroyed in the Alaskan waters just as they had been in the Columbia River. Roosevelt felt that Wood River ought to be closed. I devoted parts of two days to a hearing on the subject. The cannery interests were represented by their counsel and the Fishermen's Union by several of its officers. Senator Fulton, of Oregon, as well as the two Alaskan Delegates in Congress, pleaded for the closing of the rivers.

After hearing all sides and studying the question I signed an order directing the closing of both the Wood and Nushagak Rivers to trap and net fishing, and if the law had not applied only to rivers at a distance of five hundred feet from the mouth, I should have directed the closing also of Nushagak Bay, where extensive trap fishing was carried on.

HOW THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES ORIGINATED When I was President of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation, I was impressed with the importance of establishing a closer relation ship between the commercial bodies of the country and the Government. Shortly after I became Secretary of Commerce and Labor, therefore, I sought to accomplish that end. I had a study made by Nahum I. Stone, tariff expert of the Bureau of Manufactures, of the relations between the European governments and their commercial bodies, especially in Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. I sent invitations to about forty of the leading chambers of commerce, boards of trade, and other commercial organizations throughout the country to send delegates to Washington for a two days' conference, with a view to bringing about an organization of these bodies for the purpose of co-operation between them and the departments of the Government having to do with commerce and manufactures.

Accordingly, on December 5 a representative gathering of over one hundred

(C) Underwood

Diamond Head, from the Waikiki Beach, Hawaiian Islands. As Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Mr. Straus visited Hawaii, where he and his party received a rousing welcome

delegates met in my Department, and I put before them a plan for organization. I invited Secretary Root, who took a deep interest in the scheme, and he made a thoughtful address, in which he impressed upon the gathering the things that ought to be done, and could be done only through organization and the power of concerted effort. Andrew D. White, our Ambassador at Berlin, had sent to the President a letter containing the proposal that a method of instruction in commerce be applied at the instance of our Government, as had been done in agriculture; this interesting proposal I read to the meeting.

I then went with the delegates to the White House, where the President addressed them. In the afternoon Gustav H. Schwab, of the New York Chamber of Commerce, was elected temporary chairman and the organization of the Council proceeded. A committee on organization and one on rules were appointed, and it was decided that an ad visory committee of fifteen members was to have headquarters in Washington. On December 5, 1907, .therefore, the National Council of Commerce came into being.

Later the Council was reorganized and called the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, which to-day is an impor

tant institution in the commercial life of our country.

SESSIONS WITH LABOR CHIEFS

To bring about a similar relationship between the Department and the labor bodies, I called another conference in February, 1909, to which I invited the leading labor representatives throughout the country, and about fifty attended. Unfortunately, my term of office was drawing to an end and there was not time to organize this wing, but I urged the men to insist upon the continuance of the conferences and the co-operation with the Department thus established.

The matters discussed at this meeting were mainly how best to lessen unemployment, how the Division of Information under the Bureau of Immigration might be administered for the greater benefit of labor in general, and how the Nobel Peace Prize, which President Roosevelt had set aside for a foundation for the promotion of industrial peace, could be made most effective. There were addresses by Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor; Warren S. Stone, Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; William F. Yates, President of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association; and Terence V. Powderly, Chief

of the Division of Information in the Bureau of Immigration. The presiding officer was Daniel J. Keefe, Commissioner-General of Immigration and Naturalization.

During my term of office repeated efforts were made in Congress, backed by organized labor, to divide my Department and make two of it-the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor. I successfully opposed this plan, my idea being that labor and capital were the two arms of industry, the proper functioning of which could best be secured by co-operation, which in turn could best be promoted by administering their interests together. In this I had the support of Roosevelt. During the Taft Administration, however, the bill was passed creating the Department of Labor.

CONCERNING POLITICAL FENCES

On April 3, 1908, the Savannah Board of Trade celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, and I was asked to be one of the speakers. On this trip my wife and younger daughter accompanied me. The Mayor and prominent citizens of my former home, Columbus, upon learning of our presence in the South, sent us a pressing invitation to visit that city, where a dinner was presently given at the Opera House. The dinner was served on the stage, and while the toasts were being responded to the curtain was raised, disclosing an auditorium crowded with people. I was touched by this fine attention by the citizens of my former home, who took great pride in the fact that one of their former townsmen was a member of the Cabinet. In the audience were several of my schoolboy friends and those of my brothers, and I found several friends and companions of my parents still among the living.

In the South at that time it was still rare for a person to change his politics, and one of the questions that was put to me was why had I, a member of a Democratic family, once a Democrat myself, and even having held office under a Democratic President, changed over to the Republican side. In other words, why had I been on both sides of the political fence?-though they were too polite to ask the question in that direct form. I told them that perhaps no one had a better right than they to ask. It was true, I said, that I had been, as it were, on both sides of the fence, but that was not my fault; the fence had been moved. This produced great merriment.

CHRISTMAS AT THE WHITE house On Christmas Day Mrs. Straus and I received an invitation by telephone to come to the White House between three and four o'clock to see the Christmas tree. Some thirty or forty guests were there. In one of the side rooms in the basement of the house was assembled a large company of children. The room was darkened, that the lighted tree

Pht stand out. There were presents

for all the children, and Mrs. Roosevelt played Lady Bountiful to see that each child got its gift. Upstairs in the Red Room the gentlemen sat smoking. It was a genuinely joyful and happy day.

The social season in Washington is usually begun with the President's New Year's reception, which lasts from eleven o'clock until half-past two on New Year's Day. At a few minutes before eleven o'clock the officials and their wives assembled upstairs, and promptly at eleven the President and Mrs. Roosevelt led the march to the Blue Room. The procession marched toward the main stairway, where the line divided, the ladies going to the left and the gentlemen to the right, reuniting at the first landing; then through the main hall, where the passageway was roped off through a crowd of specially invited guests.

The order following the President was: the Cabinet officers; the doyen of the diplomatic corps, the Italian Ambassador and his staff; the Ambassadors and Ministers of the other nations, according to rank. After them, grouped in more or less regular order, the Justices of the Supreme Court, headed by the Chief Justice; Senators; Representatives; Army and Navy officials; the officers of the Government.

On New Year's Day every one is accorded the right to pay his or her respects to the President. The officials come straight to the White House and the uninvited guests form a line on the grounds. On the particular day of which I speak the line stretched through

THE DRAMATIC STORY OF THE PROGRESSIVE CAUSE

The birth of the Progressive party and Roosevelt's campaign for the Presidency in 1912 are tersely described in next week's chapter of the Autobiography. Roosevelt's defeat is explained. The attempted assassination of him by a lunatic in Milwaukee is described. His dramatic appearance at the final mass-meetings at Madison Square Garden, contrary to the advice of his physicians, is brilliantly pictured. This chapter contains some of the finest and most memorable excerpts from Roosevelt's speeches. The nomination of Mr. Straus himself as candidate for Governor of New York in the same year, the stampeding of the convention, and his participation in that tumultuous campaign are depicted with great vividness in this historic chapter.

the grounds, along Pennsylvania Avenue and down by the State Department Building, probably more than half a mile long, and the President received about sixty-five hundred people in all. At two o'clock the iron gates of the White House grounds are closed, and those who had not reached that point by that time were barred out. The reception had to end promptly, as the Cabinet ladies who assist have to be present at the receptions at their own homes from half-past two until six, in accordance with a custom that has been in vogue probably since the days of Washington. Our buffet in the dining-room was kept wel! replenished, and there were champagne and punch served. We had in all about four hundred guests.

SOCIAL LIFE IN WASHINGTON

The official functions at the White House during the Roosevelt Administration were agreeable and in stately form. They were usually followed by an informal supper to which were invited personal friends and visitors.

Our series of official dinners began with the one to the Vice-President and Mrs. Fairbanks and ended with the dinner to the President and Mrs. Roosevelt. In addition we followed the pleasant custom of the President and had guests to informal luncheons three or four times a week. These luncheons we gave in the sun-parlor back of our diningroom, which was one of the attractive features of our Venetian Palace.

It was my privilege to give the last Cabinet dinner to the President, on March 2, two days before the close of the Administration. The event had been postponed for a week on account of the death of the President's nephew, Stewart Robinson, whose mother was the President's sister. Governor and Mrs. Hughes, who were among our invited guests, stayed over when it was found that the dinner had to be postponed. Mrs. Roosevelt later informed me that she planned that our dinner should be the last, knowing that I had some sentiment about it which she and the President shared.

I have made several references to the wonderfully human touch characteristic of Roosevelt. On February 5, the day beginning the last month of his Administration, a messenger from the White House brought me a package containing a large folio, a handsomely illustrated memorial volume describing the Castle of Wartburg in Saxony, in which Luther was confined and where he worked on his translation of the Bible. The book had been prepared by official direction. and Roosevelt had received two copies of the royal edition, one from the Kaiser personally and one from the Chancellor, which latter he sent to me with this inscription:

"To Mr. and Mrs. Oscar S. Straus, in memory of our days together in the Administration; days which I have so much enjoyed and appreciated. Theodore Roosevelt. February 5, 1909."

N

O matter how fond we may be of reading and how we may look back with a sense of delight at some of the most delicious moments of our lives when we were absorbed in some entrancing tale, it still remains true that all of us experience restless periods, when nothing in the way of a book seems to satisfy us.

And the worst of it is, this feeling appears to grow; just the thought that it is growing, that it is little by little getting the best of us, makes us yet more restless. That is, it does if we have a conscience. Singular to state, a large proportion of us still have consciences lingering somewhere about in our systems, although we may not realize this. It is the restless wandering of this conscience as it travels up and down our spinal cord and flops about in our medulla oblongata, only to rise up and patter aimlessly through the bewildering maze of our gray matter— it is this that only aggravates our case of literary neurosis. There is undoubtedly, however, a proportion of people who either have no literary conscience at all or who by long practice have succeeded in utterly eliminating it. To contemplate these poor wretches may be of great benefit, because they serve as a warning-they reveal concretely what we ourselves may come to unless we take ourselves in hand. These are the people who go from mystery story to mystery story, who, like advanced opium-eaters, demand a thrill on every half-page, and who if you should as much as mention to them the novels of Jane Austen would fall into a coma.

But it doesn't matter whether this disease of literary neurosis has only just attacked us or whether we are in the last, say the Oppenheim, stage of it, the quality of the result is the same; only the degree and intensity differ. Let us face it bravely and discover if we can cure ourselves of it.

It is a universal malady. It afflicts the scholar alike with the dilettante. Rousseau writes somewhere of the delights of a vacation where one takes along all the books one has planned to read-and never reads them. There is undoubtedly the greatest benefit in that kind of evasion. Indeed, a most convincing argument could be built up which would show the superiority of the moral progress to be made from not doing all the things we have planned. There may be, indeed, a deliberate intention to evade the things we plan. Thus there is the old jest of the lady who always does shopping without ever buying anything; and most of us have had the experience of laying out a journey beforehand and by some slight accident of having our direction completely diverted to some other destination sud

THE LOST ART OF TRUTH TELLING

The author of many volumes and a veteran reviewer comments on an Outlook book review in the following words:

I must say a word in praise of Willis Fletcher Johnson's review of Van Loon's "America for Little Historians." It is not only a great piece of work, but it shows the highest kind of editorial judgment to publish it. Our periodicals generally are governed by too much timidity. Telling the truth is almost a lost art. If you can keep on reviving it in The Outlook you will command a great audience. The American people are pathetic in their craving for the truth, and to place it before them requires not SO much courage as fine intelligence.

Willis Fletcher Johnson is honorary professor of history of American foreign relations at New York University. His incisive exposure of the inaccuracies in Mr. Van Loon's work, which has been widely recommended by librarians and school-teachers, was almost the first authoritative comment which the volume received. was a type of review which The Outlook is always eager to secure and ready to publish.

It

un

state: "I love deep reading more and more. Every day in every way I am getting better and better about deep reading." Do not fail, in repeating this formula, to add the magic phrase "In every way," because then you can tackle everything. Works on psychology and theology will fill you with delight, and a bound copy of the "Congressional Record" will excite your passionate interest.

But suppose after a fair trial this remedy should fail, as I am told occasionally happens. What then?

I have discovered a method that, although not without its difficulties, is of great benefit. If we come to analyze our motives for doing anything at all, we shall be amazed to see how the incentive comes from outside stimuli. For example, if you have a note coming due at the bank, say, in three months, your attention is very apt to be riveted to that fact and you have not the slightest difficulty in working like mad to be able to pay it. An automobile accident liability policy is the dullest reading there is, but if your car runs into anybody you read every word of the policy with your eyes glued to it. In much milder cases than these the thing works with astonishing power. You are fond of golf, but business has kept you nailed to your desk. Suddenly an old golfing partner drops in and says, "Come on! There's just time to get to the links." You are up to your ears, but the call of the wild golf ball is too strong, and so you fall, like the angels. You are off!

To circumvent literary neurosis, therefore, it is only necessary to cultivate a few literary specialists-say a Walter Scott rooter, a Jane Austen enthusiast, a Conrad crank, or a Shakespeare trailer. At first it will seem as if nobody ever read anything; but little by little you will be able to scare up these literary fans; and to-day our means of communication are so ample that you can reach any one of these anywhere in a few moments.

I recall quite vividly my first contact with a Conrad crank. I had picked up one of Conrad's novels a few days before meeting him, and, being afflicted with an attack of literary neurosis, I had wandered over its first pages aimlessly hoping there would be a killing. I couldn't get on with it. I mentioned this to the Conrad crank. There was a lambent gleam in his off eye; he grew rosy under the gills; then he began on me. In thirty minutes he had me worked up to a Conrad frenzy. I took an early train home that afternoon and sat up half the night until I had finished "Victory."

If you are a victim of literary neurosis with time and a fit of it both on your hands, call up one of your availables. Bait him a little. Say to him:

"Old man, is there anything good in what's his name-Robert Louis Stevenson? What is the best thing he ever

In the same test-tubes

IN

N 1802 Eleuthere Irénée du Pont de Nemours, at the invitation and with the assistance of Thomas Jefferson, built on the Brandywine River the first du Pont plant the first powder mill to be erected in America. Jefferson had seen the vital necessity to the country's safety of insuring its supply of explosives, and so du Pont became powder-maker to the United States Gov

THE HE Chemical Engineer is a strange mingling of abilities-a coupling of the man of science with the manufacturing expert. He is a chemist who knows manufacturing as well as his science, and who can take the chemist's discoveries on the experimental scale and put them into production on the larger scale of commerce. His province is the practical transformation of matter from useless to useful forms. And he has brought into the world's manufacturing plants a new knowledge, a new set of abilities, that has revolutionized industry in the past generation.

The du Pont Company was one of the pioneers in developing the Chemical Engineer. Since its founding by E. I.du Pont de Nemours, who was himself a chemist, it has been building on the foundations of chemistry, for the manufacture of explosives called for increasingly higher forms of chemical knowledge. And in the early years of this century, the du Pont Company had come to have one of the finest research staffs in the country, and in addition a staff of Chemical Engineers, men who knew manufacturing as well as chemistry.

This staff was essential, for since 1802 the du Pont Company's larger service has been to be ready to supply the Government with whatever explosives it might need for the country's defense. And for the same reason, the company had acquired sources of supply for the large quan. tities of the raw materials that it might one day need— acids, nitrates, coal-tar products and other materials that were absolutely essential to the production of explosives. In war, immense quantities of such materials are desperately needed-in peace, very little-yet the supply of materials has to be kept open, for who knows when they may be instantly needed?

But how? The Chemical Engineer found the answer. And in the answer lies the key to the du Pont Company's family of products. For the products that du Pont makes are not unrelated products. Each of them has its root in one or another of the materials used in making explosives.

It may be another use of the same materials as in the manufacture of dyes. It may be a variation in process, as in the case of Pyralin and Fabrikoid. It may be a product like paints, varnishes, enamels, etc., in which the knowledge of the Chemical Engineer is needed, and the colors produced in dyes, may be used. It may be a product like ether, or a long list of chemicals that other industries use, which the du Pont Company produces in manufacturing its other products.