should be carried on only in co-operation with qualified physicians.

On social problems, in addition to the declaration of the bishops on the relations between capital and labor placing human rights above property rights, declaring a living wage as the first charge on industry, for a substitution of co-operation for competition, for providing the worker with a voice in the control of industry so far as determining his conditions of work and life, the Episcopal Church has expressed its views on social questions as recorded by Dr. Chorley in his despatch to the "Tribune" in these words:

The Convention has gone on record against the marriage of defectives, mob violence in all its forms, secret organizations which stir up strife between man and man and set race against race and creed against creed. Raffles and gambling in any form are condemned as methods of raising money for churches and charitable institutions, obedience to the Constitution of the United States, especially concerning prohibition, was urged, and war as a means of settling disputes between nations was declared to be unchristian. A joint commission has been appointed to organize men's institutes, and the Convention has de

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clared itself as favoring free speech, free discussion of social problems, and a free press.

Whatever opinions one may have concerning the actions of the Church as thus recorded, it is evident that the Protestant Episcopal Church, while it holds fast the form of sound words, is also pressing forward with life and vigor.

MAINTAINING THE NAVY'S EFFICIENCY

D'

ESPITE decreases in appropriations, limiting the amount of battle practice which the United States Navy can carry out, officials in charge are doing everything possible to keep the efficiency of the Navy up to a high standard; and they believe that their efforts are meeting with success. Like a prudent housewife whose allowance has been diminished, they are obliged to "cut corners" and to economize to keep their house in order, so that if "visitors" should ever come they would be able to "receive" them.

In times of peace battle practice is the life of the Navy. Without it, officers and men alike would soon lose, not only the

efficiency, but also the morale and the

unity of action without which they would be helpless if ever faced by a real enemy. Unless the officers and men of the Navy keep fit by almost constant practice every vessel in the American fleet might as well be scrapped at once.

There has been no apparent lessening of efficiency in the American Navy, as far as can be observed from what can be made known without betraying secrets to foreign Powers, in regard to the latest battle practice operations of various units of the Navy. These show that the man behind the American gun still has a good eye, and that if he were ever called upon again to defend the rights of mankind he would give a rattling good account of himself. He can pepper targets full of holes, although the mark he is aiming at is many miles away-just how far and just what percentage of shots he makes is only for the eyes of a few Navy officials. The officials of some foreign navies would like to know also; it would be very interesting to compare it exactly with the marksmanship of their crack gunners; but the Navy guards this information zealously.

In a general way, however, they allow

something to be shown-even with pictures-of what the Navy is doing in the way of battle practice. They believe that the people of the Nation are entitled to know what the Navy is doing to keep fit for any emergency to which it might be called.

While the Navy is being cramped at the present time in the amount of battle practice of various kinds in which it can indulge, nevertheless by combining different operations, performing as much as possible in the way of actual maneuver and drill within a given steaming radius, the officers responsible for this part of the Navy's welfare-and a most important part-are succeeding in getting good results. The efficiency of the Navy, it is believed, is being maintained; at least, it is holding its own and not going back.

How long it could do this, however, under skimped appropriations is a question which cannot be answered with any degree of definiteness. It seems to be certain, from the best opinion available on the subject, that a few years of such limited battle practice would begin to tell on the general morale and efficiency of the Navy. With considerable periods of lying idle in port, with some portions of battle practice conducted while lying at anchor instead of "riding the waves" as in genuine battle practice, and with insufficient drill at times perhaps along certain lines of ship operation, there will of necessity come a time when there will be a drop from the high mark of efficiency which the American Navy has maintained up to the present time.

The American Navy is being limited in size; it must not be limited in its ever-ready attempts to excel its own previous records in efficiency.

BOYS AND BOOKS

T

HE recent occurrence of the hundredth anniversary of the birthday of "Oliver Optic" (W. T. Adams) has raised the question whether the taste of boys in reading has improved or deteriorated in the last fifty years. We doubt if there has been much change. Then, as now, the boy cared more for the substance of the story than for the manner of its telling. Then, as now, parents were glad to have their boys interested in reasonably wholesome tales like those then poured forth in such profusion by Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger, later by Henty, and in our day by the football authors of whom Barbour is king, if thereby they could be kept from sensational trash. Beadle's dime novels and the similar Munro ries of that day were no more objecable than the Cap. Collier and Old

The

Sleuth tales a generation later. hundred stories built up mechanically by Oliver Optic were perfectly properhe was a school-teacher and an advocate of moral training. If they had no literary grace or quality and if their boy heroes were marvels of ability beyond belief, this did not interfere with their popularity.

Emphatically, with the boy “the plot's the thing;" he has inherited the prehistoric taste of primitive man for the story of adventure and action. It was the tale, as distinguished from the novel, that Sir Philip Sidney had in mind when he spoke of "that which holdeth children from play." But for the boy fifty years ago who could see that there was something in the books of J. T. Trowbridge that simply didn't exist in the Oliver Optic stories-that, for instance, Trowbridge's Civil War tales, "Cudjo's Cave" and "The Drummer Boy," had imagination and character depiction, whereas Oliver Optic's "Young Lieutenant" and the long series of military and naval heroes that followed were perfectly wooden-for that boy there was a certainty that literary taste could be developed.

What the boy needs is for some onelibrarian, teacher, parent, or, better yet, other boys of a taste a little more advanced than his own-to steer him at just the right time from the pithless, machine-made story to the book that retains the excitement of adventure and yet has the glow of imagination. If it is something that he hasn't been told to read as an educational duty, so much the better. "Ivanhoe," for instance, has pretty nearly been killed for boys in just that way. And if the boy finds it himself, that is the best of all. Happy is the chap who has discovered by his own browsing that there is something more lively and satisfying than the conventional "juvenile" about school life in Stevenson's "Kidnapped" or Kipling's "Kim" and "Captains Courageous," in Reade's "Cloister and the Hearth" or Blackmore's "Lorna Doone."

A few weeks ago Mr. H. V. Coryell wrote in our Book Table on "What Books Do Boys Recommend to Each Other?" and described interesting experiments in finding the answer. He found that he could get boys to discuss informally the books they read, to tell other boys the books they like and why, and the very process improved their own taste. Moreover, "the honest recommendation of one boy to another carries far more weight than the recommendation of any grown-up; for boys, through sad experience, have come to suspect us adults of wishing to force 'dry old stuff' down their throats." The boys' opinions just after they read the books were

divided into those about books no boy should miss, fairly worth-while books, and "time killers;" and the first classification was certainly creditable and reasonably free from the curse of most such lists (especially those made by librarians), that of including just what the makers think every one expects them to put in.

We hope that librarians who deal with children will follow out Mr. Coryell's idea; it is educative to the boys as well as helpful in getting a first-hand view of what boys will read instead of what they ought to read. It would be particularly interesting to apply this test to new books; in the flood of holiday books the librarian feels safer in following the good old road and recommending "Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates" and "Treasure Island" than in picking out and recommending from among the new books those that will entrance and stir by true imaginative value.

GOING TO COLLEGE

RESIDENT HOPKINS, of Dartmouth College, has stirred the daily newspapers by asserting in an address to the student body of his institution that too many men are going to college. It is quite natural that just at this time the newspapers should be greatly exercised by the proposal to limit the number of college undergraduates. The football season has just opened. The sport page has grown to be one of the most important pages of American journalism. If college undergraduates are to be limited to those who are really after an education, and who regard athletics as an incident-a pleasant and important incident, it is true, but nevertheless an incident of college life what is going to become of the sporting page during October and November?

It will not do, however, to treat the discussion with too much levity, for President Hopkins spoke in all seriousness, and what he said is worthy of serious consideration. He regards a college education, which is always given, not at the expense of the student, but at the expense of taxpayers in State institutions and of private donors in endowed institutions, as "definitely a privilege and not at all a universal right." He believes that some way must be found to "define the individuals who shall make up the group to whom, in justice to the public good, the privilege shall be extended and to specify those from whom the privilege should be withheld." He does not wish this privilege to be "restricted to any class defined by the accident of birth, or by the fortui

tous circumstance of possession wealth."

The social detriment which results from the overcrowding of cur colleges is twofold. Many of those who just succeed in getting their academic degrees would have had a better training and a better development of their gifts or capacitics by a working experience in the actual problems of life; and there are now so many men thronging university and college class and lecture rooms that the students who have a special capacity for this kind of training are hampered by the "slackening of pace due to the presence of men indifferent or wanting in capacity."

It may seem paradoxical to assert that many of these difficulties would disappear if more men would go to college. The trouble is that too many boys are sent there, either because it is the proper thing socially, or because their parents want them to be educated along lines for which they have no bent. Going to college is a very different thing from being sent to college. The boy who goes to college because he is determined to get a training in literature, or history, or philosophy, or languages, or mathematics, or chemistry, usually makes good himself, and makes his professors happy. We doubt if increasing the severity of entrance examinations would be of much benefit. Cramming methods can usually overcome such an obstacle. What will come nearer solving the difficulty is a rigorous weeding out of those who are indifferent or incompetent. This is the method which is pursued at Oxford and Cambridge and at the French universities. In France a university student does not recite his les sons. He hears lectures; he is told what to read on a particular subject; and then he is left with occasional consultation with professors or preceptors to dig his way into the subject himself. If he passes a very stiff examination, he gets his degree; if he fails to pass this stiff examination, he retires.

The ultimate purpose of education is tnot, we take it, to fill a boy's head with facts like an encyclopædia, but to train him to be able to see the proper relations of the facts which he discovers in his own experience, and to be able to make the right deductions from those relations.

There should be some institutions where men who have the intelligence and capacity can be trained to be leaders of their generation in actual life. Just as the high school is an outgrowth of the grammar school, so there might well be some high colleges into which only those should be received who are especially fit for the finest kind of training.

C

[ONGRESS has succeeded in conglomerating the Tariff Bill. The latest protectionist measure which has just gone into effect consists of a long and complicated series of clauses, imposing arbitrary duties with very little coherence or relation to one another. This must be the conclusion of even the layman who looks at Mr. Bell's interesting article on another page. The new law has probably less actual corruption and more illogical selfishness at the back of it than any tariff law passed since the days of that great protagonist of protection, Henry Clay. What the President regards as a great contribution to the science of tariff-making-we mean the clause which empowers the President and the Tariff Commission to change specific duties when they think the good of the country demands it-is not a solution, it is an experiment, and it may not work. The motive which inspired this provision was excellent, but the method is dubious. There are two serious objections to giving the President executive power with regard to the amount of duty to be paid on any particular commodity, and these objections cannot be airily dismissed.

The first objection is that it is bad for the President. The Chief Magistrate of the United States now has burdens of decision and duty which are overwhelming. To subject him to the appeals of importers who believe they are unjustly treated or of manufacturers who think they ought to have more profits is to add a new burden upon him which may prove intolerable. The second objection is that it is bad for American industry. The greatest danger to commerce is uncertainty. An importer buys a bill of goods in Europe. After he has paid his duties, and before he has been able to dispose of his stock, the President by executive order lowers the tariff tax on this particular commodity. His competitors are greatly benefited at his expense. Unless the President is most wisely advised and acts with great wisdom, importation under these circumstances may well be not only perplexing but dangerous. And the difficulties awaiting the importer await also the protected manufacturer. A manufacturer sends out his winter line of gloves at a price contracted by him on the basis of a certain duty. After his contracts are made, the President raises this duty and his competitors can, therefore, ask a higher price. Any provision which makes possible inconsider ate meddling with single and particular schedules of a tariff act and the consequent upsetting of the commercial equilibrium is a great peril to the coun

bill has averted this peril.

Whatever tariff changes are made should be based on facts ascertained after investigation in the interest of the whole public and should be put into effect only after full hearings and due notice of the time of change.

Perhaps in this stage the present bill in this particular is as good as could be expected; but its fundamental defect is twofold: It does not provide sufficient safeguards against sudden and unreasonable changes; and at the same time it limits the administrative action of the President and the Tariff Commission by a set of schedules that are unscientific and conglomerate.

One thing in the bill that can be wholeheartedly commended is the defeat of the clause proposing that duties should be levied on an arbitrary and artificial American valuation. Let us at least be reasonable and logical. We either ought to prohibit all importations, or those importations which we do per mit to come into the country should be treated with common fairness.

Let it not be supposed that the editors of The Outlook have suddenly become theoretical free-traders. We have not. In this stage of civilization protective measures of various kinds are needed in National life, but they should be framed at least with the best intelligence of which the country is capable. A protective tariff law has three reasons for its existence. Its first object is to raise revenue; its second object is to promote and maintain manufacturing, not for the personal profit of the manufacturer, but for the general public prosperity; and third, it should be so framed as to protect its wage-workers from the cheaper wages or the lower standards of living prevalent in other countries, if there are any such. Five hundred members of Congress, pulled and hauled by conflicting interests, can hardly be expected to give these three functions of a rightly made tariff bill proper consideration. Some day, we suppose, the United States will have a scientific and impartial body which will deal with the tariff with an authority equal in extent and analogous in kind to that of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, as an adminsitrative agent of Congress, and an arm of the Executive. Such a body will be able to take the tariff out of politics, for by its investigations it will be able to ascertain and effect such duties as are necessary for revenue, for a subsidy of general manufacturing, and for the maintenance of the highest possible standards of living for wage-workers. Until something of this kind is done, we shall continue to have conglomerations and hodgepodges as the products of tariff legislation.

A

S no tariff bill of which the writer has cognizance-not even the "Tariff of Abominations" of preCivil War days-ever provoked the widespread excoriation for alleged excesses that has been lavished on the FordneyMcCumber Bill, even by professed protectionists, it is not easy for one who differs from the protectionist school of economics to treat it with entire judicial fairness. It must be said, however, that its departures from the Underwood rates are less glaring than has been asserted, and if the principle of excluding imports for the protection of home industries be sound, it has been but inadequately embodied in the new law. If the principle be unsound, its opponents have been derelict in not having discarded it in toto.

The bill, widely heralded as a "scientific tariff law," is of magnificent proportions. As reported to the Senate it made a book of 438 pages. As signed by President Harding it filled, with small type, nearly eight newspaper pages. Small wonder, then, that Congress struggled with it from the House hearings beginning January 7, 1921, to its final passage by the Senate, September 19, 1922, and its signature by the President two days later. Obviously, a bill of this magnitude cannot be adequately treated in a magazine article.

Among the favorable features of this supposedly scientific tariff law may be mentioned its administrative provisions, which, according to S. G. Van Hoesen, Chairman of the Customs Committee of the New York Merchants' Association, will simplify procedure and afford relief to importers in case of errors, which they did not have before. There will be those who differ from President Harding's judgment that the elastic provision of the bill will prove "the greatest contribution toward progress in tariffmaking in a century," but that it may afford relief from rates which prove too burdensome is not to be denied. Under this provision manufacturers, importers, and other interested persons may apply to either the President or the Tariff Commission for changes in rates or valuation bases, and the President may, with the approval of the Commission, which is to be enlarged, make changes within a range of fifty per cent of the tax imposed under the law. It is to be doubted if the President realized at the time the bombardment of applications for changes that will descend upon his head.

Opponents of the bill and some legal authorities predict an unprecedented amount of litigation growing out of this "elastic" provision by which the Presient instead of Congress will make iff rates, which is said to be uncon

Comparison of the bill as a whole with the Underwood law is made difficult by the fact that so many changes have been made from ad valorem to specific duties, or to combinations of specific and ad valorem rates, while the "elastic" possibility of upward or downward revision of rates further discourages comparison. From the rates as published I cull these few items:

The dye embargo is dead for this session. Congress could understand an embargo, though it may be doubted if any other than an expert chemist can understand all of the polysyllabic labyrinth of words and figures comprising the chemical schedule. There are lapses from the protective principle in the bill. Leather coverings for the feet are free, leather coverings for the hands are taxed up to 70 per cent. Wood shingles are free, metal roofing is highly taxed. The printer's linotype is free, the housewife's sewing machine is dutiable. The contest over rates and the methods by which agreement reached have strengthened the sentiment for taking tariff making out of Congress and placing it in the hands of qualified experts, if such can be found.

was

How will the new tariff affect the fortunes of our people? There are too many factors of uncertain trend to make detailed prophecies of any value. Already Chicago reports an upward revision in dry goods prices, but this may be credited to increased wages and higher prices of raw materials as well Also, Ivy L. Lee returns as the tariff. from Europe and tells Philadelphia bankers that cotton would be selling for 40 to 50 cents a pound if Europe could buy. But Europe has no dollars where with to buy, and under the provisions of the new law is unlikely to get any undue number of them. The European food situation is bad, too, but Europe

Germany in particular is badly off for food, but with a quarter trillion of marks already circulating and more issuing at the rate of twenty billion a week, she has broken her financial emergency brake and is slipping down hill for an upset. And German finances affect all Europe.

Tariffs and tariff making in their international aspects have been insufficiently discussed. The British have been startled at the passage of the new law, for they expected radical changes in it. They feel that it will not entirely exclude British goods, however, since shipments of these afford the only means by which the British war debt or interest thereon can be paid. But Lancashire is discouraged. French papers are bitter, contrasting our expressed solicitude for European recovery with this blow at European trade and industry. They also assert that we have cut off means of paying the debts owed us. Mr. Huntington Adams in an article in a New York newspaper sets forth that all the monetary gold outside the United States amounts to but $4,680,000,000, of which our debtors have only $1,720,000,000, and asks how the debts can be paid unless they can create here the credits necessary for their payment. Sir Robert Horne, British Chancellor, is coming here in October to fund the British debt, and perhaps the Government officials will be able to explain this to him.

That the whole question of international trade and exchange is in a critical condition is apparent from Lord Robert Cecil's assertion at Geneva that the economic situation is linked up with disarmament and that disarmament depends on a solution of the international debts. Of course the League knew this before, but it is disconcerting to have the fact advertised just now, while it is still trying to gather the nations together as a hen gathers her chickens.

The consensus of foreign opinion is that we will find we have hurt our own trade quite as much as we have injured that of others. Yet the Department of Commerce is engaged in a world-wide campaign to extol the merits of American products in order to expand our foreign trade, and the proposal to extend foreign credits to facilitate foreign buying is renewed.

We are told that the passage of this new tariff law was necessary because of the debased currencies and lower costs of manufacture in Europe. In the years since the war began our exports have exceeded our imports by 22 billions of dollars, and the balance still runs heavily the same way. In the debate on the tariff 74 exhibits of cheap German

Will the new tariff increase our prosperity? It is obvious that the emergency tariff law, which the new law supersedes, has not benefited the farmers, for whose benefit it was passed. Wheat has in the past few weeks been below pre-war prices and lower than before the law was passed. With Europe prostrate she can buy little. With our exportable products thus backed up, to whom shall we sell? Can labor maintain its standards if the farmer cannot sell and therefore cannot buy, and business again slackens? Has not labor learned that higher wages are valueless if prices advance proportionately? Heretofore great tidal waves of indus

trial depression have swept over the earth at intervals of about twenty years, regardless of tariffs, of fiscal systems, of standing armies, of parasitic aristocracies or other differences in national conditions. Count them-1835, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1913, 1921. The stimulus of our Civil War shortened the period several years. The stimulus of the World War, more intense and widespread, spent itself more quickly. The process of recovery has always come eventually, regardless of local conditions. The nations may grow accustomed to their new shackles and again make progress, but can it be said that their progress I will be aided by the shackles?

T

HE Adjusted Compensation Bill was, with two exceptions, submitted to the President by Congress in substantially the form reported in The Outlook for September 13. The two exceptions were the omission of the clause providing that funds for the bonus might be paid from the interest on our foreign debt, and the withdrawal of the plan for a $350,000,000 reclamation project which was to be made a part of the rehabilitation programme.

In perhaps the clearest and most cogently reasoned statement which Mr. Harding has yet issued, the bill as submitted to him was vetoed on September 19. The President's statesmanlike veto is in exact line with his previous views on the bonus question, and deserves study in full. But perhaps the following excerpts cover its most important conclusions.

The President says:

In legislating for what is called adjusted compensation, Congress failed, first of all, to provide the revenue from which the bestowal is to be paid. Moreover, it establishes the very dangerous precedent of creating a treasury covenant to pay which puts a burden, variously estimated between $4,000,000,000 and $5,000,000,000, upon the American people, not to discharge an obligation, which, the Government always must pay, but to bestow a bonus which the soldiers themselves, while serving in the World War, did not expect.

He goes on to acknowledge the very real obligation of the Government to those "who left the armies injured, disabled, or diseased," and describes what is being done for the men broken by the war. Five hundred and ten million dollars is the charge on the Government on this account in the year 1922, and the President estimates that next year probably more than $470,000,000 will be required. There has been grave evidence that this money has not all been wisely and advantageously spent, but the President is right in pointing out

that this total indicates that the country wishes to deal properly and generously with its disabled men.

Of the actual benefits which the proposed bill would bestow on uninjured veterans, the President says that the bill states in effect, "We do not have the cash, we do not believe in a tax levy to meet the situation, but here is our note; you may have our credit for half its worth.' This," says the President, "is not compensation, but rather a pledge by the Congress, while the executive branch of the Government is left to provide for payments falling due in everincreasing amounts."

Of the financial arrangements called for by the bill the President further says:

When the bill was under consideration in the House, I expressed the conviction that any grant of bonus ought to provide the means of paying it, and I was unable to suggest any plan other than that of a general sales tax. Such a plan was unacceptable to the Congress, and the bill has been enacted without even a sug gested means of meeting the cost. Indeed, the cost is not definitely known, either for the immediate future or in the ultimate settlement. The Treasury estimates, based on what seems the most likely exercise of the options, figure the direct cost at approximately $145,000,000 for 1923, $225,000,000 for 1924, $114,000,000 for 1925 and $312,000,000 for 1926, making a total of $795,000,000 for the first four years of its operation, and a total cost in excess of $4,000,000,000. No estimate of the large indirect cost ever had been made. The certificate plan sets up no reserve against the ultimate liability. The plan avoids any considerable direct outlay by the Government during the earlier years of the bill's proposed operations, but the loans on the certificates would be floated on the credit of the nation. This is borrowing on the nation's credit just as truly as though the loans were made by direct Government borrowing and involves a dangerous abuse of public credit. More

over, the certificate plan of payment is little less than certified inability of the Government to pay, and invites a practice of sacrificial barter which I cannot sanction.

The President defines the essential elements of public credit thoughtfully and clearly:

It is worth remembering that the public credit is founded on the popular belief in the defensibility of public expenditure, as well as the Government's ability to pay. Loans come from every rank in life, and our heavy tax burdens reach, directly or indirectly, every element in our citizenship. To add one-sixth of the total sum of our public debt for a distribution among less than 5,000,000 out of 110,000,000, whether inspired by grateful sentiment or political expediency, would undermine the confidence on which our credit is builded and establish the precedent of distributing public funds whenever the proposal and the numbers affected make it seem politically appealing to do so.

The difficulty of arranging for an expenditure at this time whieh might have been easily accomplished during the war is outlined in the following words:

It is sometimes thoughtlessly urged that it is a simple thing for the rich Republic to add $4,000,000,000 to its indebtedness. This impression comes from the readiness of the public response to the Government's appeal for funds amid the stress of war. It is to be remembered that in the war everybody was ready to give his all. Let us not recall the comparatively few exceptions. Citizens of every degree of competence loaned and sacrificed, precisely in the same spirit that our armed forces went out for service. The war spirit impelled. To a war necessity there was but one answer, but a peace bestowal on the exservice man, as though the supreme offering could be paid for with cash, is a perversion of public funds, a reversal of the policy which exalted patriotic service in the past, and