owning 50 per cent. of the stock of another railroad to buy it. In what form the House will permit the bill to pass is problematical.

IV

During the campaign, Mr. Taft talked of a savings-bank system which should retain deposits in the local banks. Later, he changed his attitude and proposed that the savings be invested in 2 per cent. Government bonds. An Administration bill was fathered by Senator Root, and provoked a bitter attack from the Insurgent Senators as a play into the hands of "Wall Street." Senator Cummins introduced an amendment providing that the funds should be invested in Government bonds only in time of war. Senator Smoot proposed and the Senate accepted an amendment providing that the funds be so used in time of war, or "other financial exigencies involving the Government's credit." Senator Borah got accepted an amendment for bidding the investment at less than 2 per cent.a concession to the Insurgents which secured their votes for the bill on final passage.

This is not the President's bill, and it is to be expected that he will veto it if it shall pass. The chances are that the House Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads will put the 2 per cent. bonds back into the bill and take the local banks out, and that the House will return the bill to the Senate in its original form.

With regard to the two most important features of the President's legislative programme, it may be said that they have aroused the opposition of the progressive members of his own party. He has aimed to reinforce the power of the Government in dealing with the railroads, and to afford the people of the country a safe deposit for their savings. Equally without doubt, he has in the formulation of his bills yielded so far to the advice of men whose interests are generally believed to be other than

gress will adjourn with a far larger number of disappointments for him than of gratifications.

THE ATMOSPHERE OF WASHINGTON

ONGRESS has been in session long

CONG

enough to have discussed all the most important bills in the committees and to have reported most of them and to have amended and discussed them; and many of these measures have been passed by one House or the other. You would think, therefore, if you came from Mars and knew nothing of Congressional ways, that you would hear in Washington of prodigious efforts by the Members of Congress to enact such measures as seem to be of the greatest benefit to the country - especially those proposed by the President as definite obligations that the dominant party is under to enact because they are the measures that it was presumably elected to enact.

But you hear no such talk. The talk you hear is of a three-sided political wrangle between the regular Republicans, the Insurgents, and the Democrats. Nor is it primarily about the best result for the country, but rather about the best campaign material for this summer's use on the stump.

This is not a new phenomenon. No man who knows our political methods would expect anything very different just before a Congressional election. Yet the domination of purely partisan and political considerations does seem somewhat worse than usual.

There are, in fact, four factions: the President and his Cabinet, the regular Republicans, the Insurgent Republicans, and the Democrats. No two of them agree on many measures and no two of them work constantly together. The Presidential faction is the least hopeful, and the Democrats the most hopeful not of legislative results but of election results; for legislation comes second in the thoughts of all but the President, and the election comes first.

NORRIS OF NEBRASKA

estranged many Senators and Representatives of his own party.

In general, then, while the President will "get something" of the legislation that he has asked, the likelihood now is that Con

ton Norris, of Nebraska, has done the country two services which entitle him to be regarded as one of the most useful members of the Sixty-first Congress. A year ago he found a way across the entrenchments laid

around the Payne tariff and won for Congress a chance to put kerosene on the freelist. This spring he wrested from the Organization freedom for Congress to assert its own control over its own rules. In both cases, his victory was the victory of a strategist, playing the parliamentary game against almost impossible odds, with a keener wit than that of the wit of those who had loaded "the game," watching his chance with a tireless patience. One man without One man without position, against two hundred welded into the most powerful political machine that Washington has ever known, he has twice beaten them at their own game.

Mr. Norris is a man worth knowing and watching. It is not frequently that he rises

from his seat in the southeast of the

House, amid the abandoned society of Democrats, under the Speaker's great white throne; when he does rise, the House listens. Mr. Norris spends most of his time in his office, Room 214, in the Congressional office building, in executive session with himself, a cigar in his mouth and his heels on the table. What is he thinking of -- boyhood days on the Ohio farm, the Indiana college and his debating society, the judgeship to which he was chosen by a plurality of 3, or the plurality of 22 which sent him to Congress?

For three months the subject of his solitary cogitations was how to get past the Speaker and before the House a slip of paper which he had carried in his pocket until it had become thumbed and dog-eared and creased. That was all that he needed to work a revolution.

The Organization would give something to know what move Mr. Norris of Nebraska is thinking of now, in the smoke of his stogie in Room 214.

AT THE BUNG OF THE "PORK BARREL" HE Charlotte (N. C.) Observer recently published the following dis

amended, carries provisions for $1,270,000, the largest amount the state ever got.

"The best thing about the situation is that Mr. Simmons says that every dollar will stick in conference.

"This bill, as it left the House, carried $390,000. Senator Simmons may still add several hundred thousand dollars more for the purchase of the Albemarle and Chesapeake canal as a part of the inland waterway, if the survey gets in in time."

No doubt, the appropriations which Senator Simmons secured are for wise improvements. But the system under which they were secured is vicious. If he secures $1,270,000 for justifiable waterway improvements in North Carolina, there is no doubt that Senators with equal influence will get large sums for improvements in their states; and if there are no waterways which deserve such an expenditure, they will get it for waterways which do not deserve it.

They are expected to get appropriations, and the expectation is not based upon the value of the appropriation to the nation as a whole. Senators and Representatives have come to be regarded as solicitors from the National Treasury. They represent states and districts and they are more interested in "getting things" for their states and districts than in framing legislation upon broad national lines, when these two interests conflict. This is not primarily the fault of the legislators. The prime trouble is that there is no comprehensive continuous plan for such improvements. So long as appropriations can be got by the industry and the influence of Congressmen, the people will demand such results.

A Waterway Service or Commission which should plan for the whole country would relieve Congressmen from the necessity of begging for "the folks at home." So, too, a Director of Posts, working under the merit system, would remove from all political influences the necessity of filling post-office positions.

A "CAPITALIST” ON CAPITAL AND PINCHOT

space is gladly given to the follow

under the headline: "More for State Rivers:"

"Senator Simmons covered himself with glory before the commerce committee to-day by adding $265,000 more for North Carolina waters to the river and harbor bill, making the total amount added by him $870,000. The bill, as

ing

and public spirit and courage and a fortune to boot, and so much modesty that he will not consent to the use of his name; and, most important of all, he is interesting:

"I have been reading your article about Pinchot. No doubt all that you say is true,

and certainly I know nothing to the contrary. He has done much good in the forestry line, and though he has invented nothing newfor plenty of people have been cutting their woods in the fashion that he wants them cut

still, he deserves much credit for arousing public attention and for interesting President Roosevelt.

"But he has been doing another thing which I hold to be very detrimental to the public interest, namely, stirring up one set of men against another and inflaming the public mind with dislike, distrust, and even hatred of the corporations. It would not take much to make the

men who have earned and kept money simply transfer it to other countries - as, for instance, Canada - or put it in the bank or in safe bonds and refuse to develop anything. I already see a tendency of many to Canada, which has been going on some time, and is growing stronger, and I also hear lately that the Canadians do not want any enterprise in our country, but would rather go to South America than come here. Now, Pinchot has been talking-shriekingabout the water-power trusts - about one concern trying to corral all the water-courses used for power or for irrigation, etc. Pinchot knows that this is not true, for I have told him so.

"Pinchot is a man of great energy and ideals, and he is also a sentimentalist - which is good,

never saw

if reason is to be found in the same house. Now I hold no brief for Ballinger him, never knew anything about him, and dislike his face. I did put Pinchot's picture under the eyes of a keen woman and I may say that I have a great opinion of women's judgment of men - and she said: 'It is the face of a senti

mentalist.'

"Personally, I am glad he was put out of office, for he was very insubordinate. He had no right to talk to the President as he did; and, if I were President, I should ask Ballinger to move out of the way. Whether he is right or wrong, he is discredited, and the nation the one party to be considered - has a right to put Ballinger aside, just as it puts an unlucky General aside. For instance, MacDowell in the Civil War was a man of great ability and energy, but somehow or other, did not make things go, did not inspire confidence, and he was removed from active command.

"Of all things, do not let us have anybody in power stirring up trouble. What is needed, honestly, more than most things, is a proper understanding between the people and the different classes of life. The locomotive engineer doesn't understand the point of view of the railroad president, although the railroad president drove a locomotive ten years ago. I be

lieve it to be very necessary now that kind feelings and high sentiments should be encouraged between people who do one kind of thing and people who do another."

There is no need of it; for, the Lord knows, No, no let us not stir up trouble. trouble is active enough on its own account, without our stirring. But there is something wrong in what may be called the Conservation situation - something somewhat less than satisfying; and when the race is run, we bet our money on the Sentimentalist. And if we win that wager, we will bet both capital and winnings that the American investor will manage to resist the temptation somewhat longer to expatriate himself or his money. James Russell Lowell said in his address on Democracy that he could never become as much concerned about the rights of capital as about the rights of men, because capital had always shown great ability in taking care of itself. And surely this is true the more men that have chances to make and to accumulate capital, the safer both men and capital will be.

AMERICAN HELP FOR LIBERIA

ONE of the closing acts of Mr. Root's

Mr.

administration of the Department of State was to write an urgent letter to the President saying that the time had come for the United States to help Liberia. Roosevelt sent it to Congress with a strong, personal endorsement, and a Commission was sent to Liberia to ascertain the facts. Its report has been submitted to the President and Mr. Taft has recommended to

Congress that we accept a larger responsibility for the administration of the Negro republic. This means, in effect, that Liberia remains on the map of Africa and there are at least two European governments which will not welcome the information.

The essential facts about the Liberian government that were reported by the Commission are apparently the same that were outlined in this magazine a few months ago by one of the editors who had made a personal study of the situation- the facts being:

(1) That Liberia is not bankrupt, its debt being only two and a half millions. and the interest being regularly paid.

(2) That the Americo-Liberian population is a remarkably harmonious and peaceable people, with no tendency toward revolution or anarchy.

(3) That the republic has been repeatedly robbed of territory on three sides by England and France, and that this process is still going on.

(4) That Great Britain, using the English loans to Liberia as a subterfuge, has apparently been bent upon reducing the republic to the status of a British protectorate. If Congress shall act favorably upon the President's recommendations, this Govern

ment will

(1) Encourage some American bankers to take over the Liberian debt, as was done in the cases of Central American republics. The effect of this will be to lift the British yoke from the Liberian Government.

(2) Lend the friendly offices of the State Department in an effort to settle the British

men were despatched to Liberia in the scoutcruiser Birmingham.

The presence of an American cruiser off the Liberian coast was very timely, for another reason. As an aftermath of the British intrigue, the natives in the original Maryland colony at Cape Palmas started a disorder that was much magnified in the European cablegrams — as has been done many times before. The Liberians have shown remarkable cleverness in handling these native quarrels. Once or twice in the last thirty years they have had to fight, but diplomacy has usually proved more effective. A German gunboat was anxious to land marines, but the Marylanders requested the captain promptly to leave Liberian waters.

Small African countries have learned that

European marines are difficult to get rid of when once they are invited ashore.

THE PHILANTHROPIC TRUST

safeguard the undoubted rights of Liberia over large areas of productive territory.

(3) Help the Negro government reorganize its various departments on a better basis. and lend a few experts in finance, agriculture, and education until the Liberians are competent to do without them.

Surely there is nothing in these proposed measures to excite alarm, even though the country thus assisted happens to be in Africa. As a matter of fact, if the American people were really familiar with occurrences of the last two years, they would probably want Congress to go much further than the President has recommended.

Meanwhile, steps have been taken which. the Liberian government will interpret as being favorable to their cause. Dr. Ernest Lyon, who has already served six years as American Minister at Monrovia, and who has steadily opposed the intrigues of the English, has been returned to his post. A professor in Wilberforce University has gone with him as Secretary of the Legation, and Lieutenant Davis of the Tenth United States Cavalry has been assigned to duty as Military Attaché- the object being to teach military science instead of learning it. As a further evidence of the friendly interest of the American Government, these gentle

money to a self-perpetuating board "to promote the well-being and to advance the civilization" of mankind and to promote "any or all of the elements of human progress" in a word, to be applied, over an indefinite period, always by the judgment of living men, for what seems to them the best purposes of civilization. A national charter, practically identical with the charter now asked for, was granted by Congress to the General Education Board, to which Mr. Rockefeller has given $53,000,000. The only difference between them is, that the charter now asked for permits a wider range of philanthropic activities than the General Education Board has.

Although the charter of the General Education Board provoked no criticism, the request for this new charter has called forth most extraordinary eccentricities of opposition.

The main facts are these: Here is a man with a colossal fortune, already the most generous giver of wisely-directed gifts perhaps in the whole history of philanthrophy. He has, in fact, reduced giving money helpfully to a better scientific method than any other man of great fortune. He gives it not by impulse but by the deliberate judgment of his trained advisers after thorough investigation.

But even more important than the wellthought-out plans that govern his gifts while he yet lives is his recognition of this principle: that money can be used more wisely for the help of mankind by any fairly competent body of living men than by the direction of the wisest man that ever lived after he is dead. The history of philanthrophy is made up in large measure of ludicrous and tragic failures caused by conditions imposed upon gifts by dead men. Human needs and opportunities for help and conditions under which real help may be given change. They often change so rapidly that benefits of one decade become hindrances in the next.

Mr. Rockefeller, therefore, shows the highest practical wisdom in wishing his great fortune to be applied to human helpfulness over a long period - always by the judgment of living men. Experience has proved that this is a better plan than any other.

The theoretical and imaginary dangers that the creation of such a philanthropic trust have suggested cannot become real dangers under the provisions of the charter asked for, because at all times it "shall be subject to alteration, amendment, or repeal at the pleasure of the Congress of the United States." But suppose it be granted that some danger to the public welfare lurks in incorporating a self-perpetuating body of men to administer this philanthropic trust, the same danger, whatever it may be, is made still greater by refusing to incorporate it. Mr. Rockefeller could leave his money to his heirs or to whom he pleased, for whatever purposes he pleased in other words, to individuals. All the dangers that

many years of thought and experience; for he explained in his Reminiscences, how he had conceived the central idea of it as far back as the early days of Chicago University. And he has seen the plan tested for a number of years in the working of the General Education Board. Other large benefactors, too, have adopted the same plan, notably, the Carnegie Board for the Advancement of Teaching and the Sage Foundation.

The funds of the General Education Board ($53,000,000) are not withdrawn from productive uses, and the income is devoted to education in the most diverse ways; and as new opportunities to advance educational work arise, a self-perpetuating board can and will seize them, for the benefit of mankind. But if this money had all been distributed to institutions that now exist or had been given only for such definite uses as any one man or group of men could see at any one given time, a portion of it - large or small would surely have missed the best use, as conditions change.

Looked at from any point of view, the philanthropic trust-although this phrase for the moment arouses some prejudice is by so very much the best method of applying large sums of money for the help of mankind that it bids fair to hold a place among the most useful devices of modern organization. Its perfection, if not its discovery, will probably be the thing whereby Mr. Rockefeller will be remembered longest, and philanthropists of the future will imitate it. For it is scientific and constructive.

CURING BLINDNESS BEFORE IT HAPPENS

years ago a Leipzic physician

as long as they are within the control of individuals, who may do with them what they will; and they are minimized if they are left to self-perpetuating bodies of men pledged to devote them without compensation to themselves to the public to the public welfare. Such a body is always amenable to public opinion, and under the provisions of such a charter as this now asked for, always within direct reach of Congressional action.

II

Mr. Rockefeller evidently worked out this plan of a "philanthropic trust" after

ΤΗ

has been of greater benefit to the human race than all the philanthropies for the blind put together. It was simply this: one drop of a weak solution of nitrate of silver in the eye of a newborn child will positively prevent the opthalmia ("sore eyes") of infants which is the direct cause of much of the blindness that is now in the world. Within a very few years he had convinced the physicians of all countries that this is

true.

As a result, "the Credé method" is practised by nearly every physician who has