Keeping pace with this spread of well-being, and even outrunning it, has been the building and equipment of schools - from the country school-house to the college; and there has, of course, been a corresponding broadening of thought, of vision, and of sympathy. Take any measure that you will of the sentiment and of the attitude of the people of the South toward the rest of the world and you will find a remarkable change within the last decade. Even in politics, for instance, where the old solidity of opinion is most stubborn and persistent, there have come sharp differences of thought. In most of the Southern states there are two parties that on all local subjects differ sharply, and in some states even angrily. In Texas, for example, there are the pro-Bailey and the anti-Bailey parties, whose differences extend far further than the contest about the continuance of Senator Bailey in public life. In Alabama, in Georgia, in North Carolina, and in Virginia, there are two "wings" of the party that differ as sharply about local subjects as the Democrats and the Republicans differ in most

states.

Yet, up to this time, the solid South remains practically unbroken. True, Mr. Roosevelt carried Missouri, but Missouri is still a Democratic state. True, a Republican Senator was recently elected by the Kentucky legislature, but Kentucky also is still a Democratic state. So far as national politics go, the South is yet practically solid; and, speaking in general terms, the Republican party is still a mere gang of Federal office-holders or of Federal office-seekers; and there is little likelihood that the Republicans will win a single one of those states this fall. Their electoral votes, like their votes in both branches of Congress, will be practically solidly Democratic.

II

As a mere matter of formulated partydoctrine, it does not greatly matter in these days whether these states or any others be Republican or Democratic. The platform of The platform of one party will differ from the platform of the other party in no essential respect except their difference on the tariff. Each will pledge itself alike to regulate railroads and to punish the predatory rich and to bring a better currency and to do all the present tasks that engage the public mind. There will be much talk as the summer comes about centralization and local government; but the man doesn't

live who can point out any concrete difference between the acts of the Federal Government in this regard under one party from its acts under another unless, indeed, Mr. Bryan should happen to become President. In that event, the power of the Federal Government, if he should live up to his speeches, would suffer an extension such as no President thus far has ever dreamed of.

Why is it, then, that with all the change in thought that has come in the South and with the sharp differences of political opinion that have arisen on local subjects-why is it that the South remains solidly Democratic on national issues, and that we are witnessing the same disgraceful scramble for venal Negro delegates to the National Republican convention that disgraced the years of the Reconstruction era? Why is it that there is not a reputable Republican party in the South?

Such a condition is unfortunate for the South -- for a respectable and vigorous opposition is necessary to secure the best government anywhere. It is a disgrace to the Republican party and it is an evidence of the failure of the Roosevelt administration to bring to its organized support the large body of existing opinion that is privately favorable to it. Thus we shall see, in this enlightened time, and after the Negro has been practically eliminated from politics, a body (allowing for individual exceptions) of venal or cringing delegates go to Chicago with votes for a Republican nominee that may be controlled, if they are not actually bought, by cash or by promises or hopes of patronage; and, in a large section of this Union, the Republican party remains disreputable that, too, where there are thousands and tens of thousands of upright and courageous men who prefer Mr. Taft for President to Mr. Bryan, many of whom will vote for Mr. Taft, but without such organized effect as to change the character there of Mr. Taft's party, or to bring any moral support to his administration or any considerable liberalization of politics in the South. There is no task in political management than has been worse bungled than this. Mr. Roosevelt is popular in many parts of the South. Southern Democrats have supported a considerable number of his policies. You will find on any journey that you may take, through almost any of these states, large numbers of influential men who privately express the heartiest approval of his administration. But few men of

this class will go to the Republican convention or openly ally themselves with Mr. Roosevelt's rump and scrub party in those states.

III

Mr. Taft, therefore (assuming that he will receive the nomination), has an opportunity to do the South, his party, his administration, and the whole country an incalculable service, by avoiding the mistakes of his predecessors in the management of the Southern party problem. If he will disregard the Democratic-Republican line of division as it has hitherto existed there and openly take into his confidence the most influential and the

with Mr. Bryan whether they be Democrats or Republicans on local subjects and if he will (and can) separate the Federal offices in the minds of the people wholly from the notion of rewards for party service, he can bring to the support of his administration a strong moral force in these states and make his party respectable there; and, when it becomes respectable, it will become useful.

The Southern people are emotional in their political activities, yet somewhat remote, yet somewhat "raw," if you judge by the extreme anti-railway legislation of last year, and such actions; they are yet under the influence of strong and persistent traditions; they dislike the word "Republican"; they have the problem of the races yet associated in their minds with politics in spite of their practical elimination of the Negro and the impossibility of "Negro rule"; but they are no longer in the old party servitude. There are hundreds of thousands of the best men there who will not vote for Mr. Bryan. They have in industry, in commerce, in educational progress, and in most kinds of activity become not only an integral but a progressive part of our country. They are ready to show the same sort of division in national party politics that the people in the Middle West show, and especially are they eager to have their proper part in shaping national policies and in molding public thought. There is a vast amount of pent-up ambition and unused patriotism in them, an eagerness to serve and even to lead. All these qualities and ambitions can be organized into a strong support for such a high and clean man as Secretary Taft, if a little tact and great frankness be

is a good time to extend it abroad. Great extensions of our foreign commerce have in the past been made by this principle, and one of the reasonable expectations of this year is the growth of exports of manufacturers.

As regards the markets of South America, it turns out that the voyage of our fleet of warships to the Pacific came at an opportune time. The advertising of American wares was not mentioned as one of the reasons for this voyage; but it may turn out that this very prosaic but important service will be the best concrete result of Admiral Evans's much-criticized adventure. At every important South American port, the fleet, our navy, our Government, our institutions, our people, our aims, our industries, our trade - every conceivable thing that is ours have been discussed as many of these subjects were never discussed before; and they have been discussed in a most favorable mood - without suspicion of our political and diplomatic intentions. To put one result of all this into plain trade language, it has been a big advertisement of everything American. One exporter in New York reports that his South American correspondence has increased fourfold since the fleet reached Rio Janeiro.

If, therefore, our great armada and its gallant commander (this is the vocabulary, as nearly as we can catch it, of the objecting rhetoricians)-if our great armada and its gallant commander are to perish about May by the guns of the invincible Japanese (is a Japanese ship not hovering on the horizon of the fleet all the time?) if our great armada and its gallant commander, as we were saying, are to go down before a surprise attack just before they reach San Francisco, we may have at

least the sordid satisfaction of knowing that they did something to stimulate trade with the South American people who, contrary to all objecting theories, have been silly enough heartily to welcome Admiral Evans and to express their pleasure that our warships visited them. And it does seem that trade follows a fleet of sixteen warships.

THE GREATEST ENTERPRISE OF OUR TIME

IF

[F YOU were asked to select the American work or enterprise or event of the first years of this century that is likely to be remembered longest and most gratefully, you would probably guess best if you should say that it is the systematic preservation and reclamation of the natural resources of our part of the continent — that great system of works which includes irrigation and forest reserves and now the definite formulation of a comprehensive plan of inland waterway improvement. For it is not too much to say that this comprehensive plan it is all part and parcel of the one great idea is the most helpful and far-reaching physical enterprise that our Government or our people have in hand.

The remarkable group of men who have zealously worked to carry out, to formulate, and to explain these great plans have linked themselves to a task that will require the devoted work of a long series of successors. We shall not fully carry out the waterway work explained by Dr. McGee in this number of THE WORLD'S WORK for a good many decades. It will, in fact, require the life-time of one working generation to get a full understanding of it into the minds of the whole people and of the politicians. But it is a project which, once understood and once fairly begun, will not be neglected; for it will demonstrate its value at every step.

When a man once comes to understand the whole commercial, economic, agricultural, sanitary, and æsthetic value of a stream and of a tree, he becomes a changed man; and nothing can throw his life and his thought back to the old, careless level of indifference to them. He sees a higher reach and a greater breadth of life for a people who preserve and wisely use them. The essential great policy, therefore, that has been shaped and is now taking clearer and wider shape under President Roosevelt and Forester Pinchot, will become a settled and continuous policy of our Government, national, state, and municipal.

It will become a fundamental part of the people's thought so soon as they wake up to the advantage of possessing the most richly endowed portion of the earth. In a word, this comprehensive movement of which we now read and write and talk with a dawning appreciation will work a new era in the natural history of the continent itself and in the thought and development of our people, and bring a new attitude of mind toward the earth and the culture of it and the enjoyment of it as a home for a saner, richer, life, to say nothing of its larger vield, its more healthful qualities, and the incalculable addition to our wealth.

THE HOURS OF WOMEN'S WORK

or

THE Supreme Court of the United States has declared the right of every state to make laws that shall limit the number of hours that a woman may work in mechanical labor. This decision (and no saner wiser decision has been handed down by this court in many years) sustained the right of Oregon to make a law limiting to ten the hours of a woman's work. In handing down this decree Justice Brewer said:

"Legislation for the protection of women may be sustained, even when like legislation is not necessary for men, and could not be sustained.

The limitations which this statute places on her contractual powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as to the time she shall labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit of all. The difference [between the sexes] justifies a difference in legislation and upholds that which is designed

to compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon her."

This is the language also of humanity, and of common sense. How well it squares with the platform of those who demand equality of the sexes and equal rights may be left to them to find out. That it squares perfectly with the sentiment and the judgment of the most enlightened races may be inferred from the fact that it is strictly in accord with the laws of Great Britain, Germany, and most of the other civilized nations that have legislated upon this all-important matter.

There are now nineteen states in the Union that have embodied in their statutes such legislation for the protection of women. In New York, the state of all others where women work at mechanical trades, a law to this effect was

passed in 1899. Last June, the Court of Appeals of this state declared the law unconstitutional by a vote of 3 to 2. That decision That decision has not yet been appealed to the Supreme Court. In the light of the present ruling, it is not too much to hope that in some way or other such an appeal may be taken, so that the Federal judges may bring New York again into line with the laws of civilization at large.

The decision also paves the way to a sweeping reform in the South and the Middle West. The list of states that have adopted this enlightened law does not include Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Minnesota, California, Texas, or Arkansas. Can it be that these states, many of which boast themselves not less chivalrous than the nineteen that protect their women, have been waiting for some such decision on the question of constitutionality? Shall it be said that Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Oklahoma are the only Southern States in whose courts a woman seeks, not in vain, protection for her weakness? That, in rare individual cases, it will be a hardship to limit the hours that a woman work in a factory may be taken for granted. The decision of the Supreme Court sweeps aside this objection, on the ground that such work, even though sought by women, is inimical to the best interests of the race at large. The sober common sense of the people will approve that ground, and applaud the humanitarian spirit of the decision, no matter how the advocate of the sweat-shop and the factory may rail against it.

may

A MARKET-PLACE WITHOUT SPECULATORS HIS is an extract from a conversation with an officer of a big corporation whose head office is located in Wall Street:

"Every day since the first of February, I have taken a midday walk about this district. My journey includes the two blocks of Wall Street from Trinity Church to William Street, and the four blocks of Broad, from Cedar Street to Beaver. On, the first day of February, I counted sixteen 'to let' signs on those blocks. On the twenty-sixth, I counted fifty-two. These are tombstones set up over financial corpses.

An air of desperate gloom pervaded it. The cheap eating-places were crowded at noon; the high-priced restaurants were relatively deserted. A dozen or more very expensive uptown offices were cut off by the brokers, because they did not pay. Many of them would have liked to close their downtown offices, too, but they could not. Their clerks were reduced to the smallest number. A man who lost a position in Wall Street in those days found it profitable to take a long rest in the country. He had little or no chance to make a new connection in his old haunts.

Of course, some of this gloom was mere hysteria, but a man may be pardoned for being somewhat hysterical when he contemplated a debit balance growing every day, when he looked at the melancholy remnant of a onceprosperous investment business and reflected that the income from it would not pay his office-rent.

In normal times, no genuine Wall Street man talks out loud about receiverships and bankruptcy. If he has suspicions, he whispers them in the privacy of his office or his club; but, in those days, you might have heard big brokers and bankers and active financiers talking on the street corners about the "prospects" of this road going down, of that firm being forced to liquidate. of this other company being compelled to cut its dividend. This conversation about misfortune ran about the streets and alleys of the market-place. In normal times it clothes itself in innuendo and slinks in the shadowed corners. A printed hint of a receivership is in usual times wont to be met by a haughty threat from the legal department of the interested company, and talk of libel suits would fill the heated air. But during these dull months the haunted corporation sent its president to the offending newspaper, and he said: "Please don't say that; it injures us very deeply!" Manners suffered a great change.

way.

living in the great financial centre of the country these days!"

This fairly epitomizes the sentiment of the market-place during the mid-winter months.

iron-clad contract, strengthened, in minor cases, by a surety bond. The old free-andeasy habits that made the higher circles of Wall Street finance a marvel to the plain man have, in large part, disappeared.

The deeper meaning of all this is not as gloomy as it appears. The fact is, that when gloom settles upon Wall Street, the very best business of the market-place tends to grow rather than to diminish. The thing that causes melancholy to become the daily portion of the average Wall Street man is the cessation of trading in stocks, or of speculation. Yet that very thing, in nine cases out of ten, gives a new impetus to the buying of bonds and to the buying of good stocks for cash by the "people outside" that great horde who in the heyday of the market are scorned by the trader, but who in days of gloom listen with enforced patience to the groans of this same trader and smile. The old-line bond houses and the true investment houses do a business that gives no deep discouragement; and, but for the idle traders that thrive on speculation, Wall Street presents somewhat the appearance that it would have if selling on margins and all forms of "gambling" were prohibited.

ABOUT PROHIBITING STOCK-GAMBLING

MR.

[R. WILLIAM P. HEPBURN, of Iowa, has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to tax the transfer of sales of stock made on or after June 1, 1908, 50 cents on every $100 share, the tax to be paid by a stamp affixed to the certificate.

This bill, of course, is drawn to stop gampling in Wall Street, for the tax is prohibitive. Probably more than 75 per cent. of the transactions on the New York Stock Exchange are mere "trading," that is, buying or selling stocks with an idea of taking a profit ranging from 12 cents to $1 a share, or even merely "balancing up," and it becomes evident that such a tax would probibit more than threequarters of the "business" transacted on the exchange.

Now there is no doubt but the mere gambling in stocks and grain ought to be stopped in the interest of public morals, just as gambling on horse-races ought to be prohibited; and there is little doubt that a time will come, with the steady growth of the public conscience, when these demoralizing practices will cease. But the prohibition of stock-gambling in Wall Street is not as easy and obvious a task as one

might infer from reading Mr. Hepburn's bill. Nor is it probable that it will now become a law. For so long a step forward in morals is seldom taken at once; and there are serious economic difficulties in the way of the sudden coming of such a change.

Let us suppose that three-quarters of this speculative business should be swept away after June 1, 1908, what would be some of the immediate results? The most costly square mile of territory in the world is probably the section that lies between Cedar, Beaver, William Streets, and Broadway, New York. This covers the heart of the financial district. Its enormous value is due to the use that is made of it. The Hepburn bill, become a law, would destroy that use immediately. For it must not be supposed that the strictly investment business would stay when the marginal trading is driven away. What buyer of 1,000 shares of stock would do his buying in Wall Street and pay $645 for the service he received, when he could have his order executed in London for $148, including the cable tolls? The bill would utterly destroy the present uses of the financial district.

New York City is to-day struggling along perilously near its debt limit. Such a law would cut nearly, if not quite, half a billion dollars from the valuation of the square mile of territory referred to. Could New York stand it? The question may be referred to Mr. Metz, the comptroller of the city.

That a very larg part of the terrific gambling in stocks that has marked the past ten years of prosperity may well be eliminated is a truism. But a bill that directly threatens a financial cataclysm with its results to the guilty and innocent alike, whatever great moral force it may have, will not at once overcome these prodigious physical and economic difficulties.

Yet the path is clear enough before our legislators. Germany blazed it wide and straight in the Bourse legislation of 1896. Yet, in spite of the care and exactness used in framing that law, the very classes it was aimed to assist are clamoring loudly for its amendment. The clearest lesson from the experience of Germany seems to be a lesson against wholesale restriction of market functions. We shall at some time have a clean-cut law to destroy the gamblers in Wall Street, to stop, by Federal act or otherwise, the juggling of corporation accounts, the corruption of our