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MADAME KOLONTAÏ, HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE discrepancy does not make their political and economic theories any the sounder

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WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT ISN'T

HEN a bright reporter a few months ago hit upon the term "agricultural bloc" to describe a group of men in Congress who had come together to discuss plans for furthering certain legislation, he probably had little idea that he was employing a phrase that in a short time would cause certain interests to become greatly agitated whenever they heard it used or saw it in print. One cannot know, of course, but the probability is that if the newspaper correspondents had contented themselves merely with saying that a number of Senators and Representatives had held a conference to consider such legislation and how best to hasten its enactment by Congress, the great furor that has followed the formation of the so-called agricultural bloc would not have occurred. It likewise is probable that a number of misapprehensions apparently quite generally held in regard to this group of men might not have followed.

The men who constitute the so-called bloc, however, have no complaint to make because an apt designation has led to some rather generally held misunderstandings of their purposes, for there can be no question that a real service was performed in their behalf in the selection of the name bestowed upon them. The publicity that has flowed from this designation is not without its value to the bloc in attaining its ends. Still there can be no question that many people are under some misconceptions as to what the agricultural bloc is and intends.

First of all, the bloc is not a Soviet movement, as some radicals appear to think, and as they undoubtedly hope it will become. Such an idea is ludicrous to one who knows the men who are in the movement. There is not a man among them who can honestly be termed a radical. It is farthest from the thoughts of any of the men that ultimately there should be, instead of Representatives and Senators from the several States, Representatives and Senators from steel, and from coal, and from railways, and from oil, and from agriculture, as appears to be the hope of the radical writers. Rather, the agricultural bloc would be for the eradication of such tendency so far as it already has appeared in our Government. It is because the great producing part of the population too often have been the victims of special interests that the agricultural bloc has come into being.

This leads logically to mention of the second thing the agricultural bloc is not: It is not a champion of class legislation. It has sponsored no bills that are exclusively for the benefit of a par

BY ARTHUR CAPPER

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM KANSAS

ticular class or a particular section. It has discovered instances where legislation has ignored or discriminated against a particular class or section, and has sought to correct this; as, for example, the tariff that gave ample protection to manufacturing production but failed to protect adequately agricultural production, and the Federal Reserve Bank legislation, which provided a banking system for commerce but failed to provide adequate facilities for agriculture and stock-raising. Surely the extension of such legislation so as to embrace the whole country and all industry instead of merely favored sections and industries cannot fairly be termed sectional or class legislation.

A third thing the agricultural bloc is not is a factional or partisan group. There is no purpose to form a new party or a new faction of one of the old parties, or to cause any schism or regrouping of parties. There are Republicans and Democrats both in the so-called agricultural bloc. It happens that there are more Republicans than there are Democrats, but then there are vastly more Republicans than Democrats in Congress. Party politics is eschewed in the conferences held by the bloc.

It is easier to tell what the agricultural bloc is not than to tell what it is, for the very simple reason that, while its purposes are well understood by the members of Congress who participate in its conferences, it is not a definite entity. I mean by that, that the membership is not always the same. Sometimes the group is larger, sometimes smaller. On certain matters of legislation what might be termed the membership gains adherents, on certain other matters it diminishes. In other words, the term agricultural bloc describes a movement rather than a group. To a certain extent the word bloc is a misnomer. It is not an organization in the sense of having formally elected officers and a definite membership, although in the main the men who attend its conferences are the same.

The agricultural bloc really designates a movement occasioned by the profound conviction held by a number of members of both houses of Congress that without agricultural prosperity there can be no general prosperity in the country. When the farming industry languishes, all industry fails to prosper. This observation is so trite that it should require no reiteration, but apparently even so obvious a truism must be asserted over and over again if those who most need to learn the truth are to be enlightened.

It is unfortunate, but apparently the fact, that large numbers of our business men, and particularly in the East, do

not understand that the farmers of the country, besides being the producers of our foodstuffs and the raw materials that enter so largely into other manufactures, are also our greatest single consuming or buying class. As great an authority as Secretary Wallace asserts that the people who gain their livelihood from the soil constitute forty per cent of the buying power of the country. When the farmer is forced to sell his products for less than it cost him to produce them, he of necessity ceases to be so great a factor in the buying market. His buying is restricted to his actual needs, and when his credit becomes exhausted he ceases to be a buying factor at all. J. R. Howard, President of the American Farm Bureau Federation, recently asserted that one-fourth of the farmers of the country are to-day insolvent. Agriculture is sick; it must be restored to a condition of health and vigor if the rest of the country is to prosper.

The men making up the so-called agricultural bloc are not so fatuous as to believe that the remedy for this distressing condition lies wholly in legislation or in Governmental activity, but they do believe that the Government, acting through the President and the Congress, may do much to hasten the return of healthy conditions to agriculture. President Harding shares this belief, as is witnessed by the fact that he has signed every measure enacted by Congress at the instance of the farm bloc and but recently has called the National Agricultural Conference, soon to meet in Washington. The President publicly has indorsed other measures favored by the bloc which have not yet been passed by Congress.

An examination of the measures thus far enacted and proposed by the agricultural bloc discloses no utopian theories, but, on the contrary, reveals only proposals resting on a sound economic base. The extension of the tariff to embrace agricultural products has been mentioned. Surely no one who believes in the protection of American labor and capital employed in manufacturing industry will reject the policy because it is applied to American labor and capital employed in agriculture. Victims of the exactions of the packers' trust during and since the war hardly will complain because the business of that industry has been brought under the supervision of the Secretary of Agriculture, even if the primary purpose of the legislation is to afford some degree of protection to the farmer in the marketing of his live stock. The revival of the War Finance Corporation for the purpose of providing credit facilities for the sale of surplus

farm products in other countries has been a benefit to commerce quite as much as it has been a benefit to the farmer in extending his market. The advancing of $25,000,000 to the Farm Loan Banks as a revolving fund immediately available from which to make farm loans and the increasing of the rate of interest to be paid on Farm Loan Bonds, so as to make them more readily salable in the market, are measures made necessary by the disturbed financial condition following the war, which prevented the Farm Loan Bank system from properly functioning. Even yet our banking system lacks facilities adequate to the farmers' needs, and this Congress is expected to enact a law still further extending the banking facilities, so that the farmer may have a form of banking credit properly adapted to his needs. We probably have the finest commercial banking system in the world, with its thirty-day, sixty-day, and. ninety-day notes, backed by the rediscount facilities afforded by the Federal Reserve system. This system is perfectly suited to the turnover in commercial business. But the farmer's turnover is mainly once in twelve months, and in the case of the stockmen from one to three years. Our commercial system of credit does not fit their needs, and our country cannot be truly pros

perous until the farmer has credit facilities as well adapted to his methods of doing business as are the present facilities adapted to those of the merchant, manufacturer, and jobber. This defect in our banking system will be remedied by a measure fathered by members of the so-called agricultural bloc.

There may be some persons who will complain because the gambler in grains and other food products is hit by the Capper-Tincher Act, which went into effect the first of the year, and which brings the great grain exchanges of the country under the supervision of a board composed of the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Attorney-General, but I cannot believe that their number is many. This measure had the support of the farmer bloc. The Capper-French Truthin-Fabrics Bill, which applies to fabrics provisions similar to those applied to food in the Pure Food and Drugs Act, and is designed to require that fabrics shall be sold for what they actually are, is another bloc measure that should benefit the consumer quite as much as the producer of raw materials. The bill to provide that at least one member of the Federal Reserve Board shall be a representative of agriculture is an attempt merely to give recognition in the banking system of the Nation to the

country's greatest single industry; surely not an unreasonable proposal.

These measures fairly indicate the purposes of the so-called agricultural bloc. It is the contention of their champions that they are broadly constructive and not intended merely for the benefit of a single class. The fact is the farmer has fallen rather behind the procession in modern society. He remains the one individualist in a vastly complicated organism. Consequently the banking and marketing machinery of modern society, while well enough adapted for commerce and industry, has not been so well suited to the farmer's requirements. It must be modified in important respects or else new machinery will have to be set up to meet the farmer's needs. His only desire is to be permitted to do business in a fair market and under conditions of equality with his city neighbor. He is asking for no consideration from Government that has not already been given to other industry, and he must receive this consideration if he is to prosper and play his full part in the restoration of prosperity to all industry and to the whole country. The agricultural bloc is committed to such a programme, and is pressing it in the belief that in this direction lies the road to re-established prosperity and better conditions in trade and industry.

U

RI BEN AHITHOPHEL came down from Jerusalem to see the Prophet. He wondered why he had retired to the solitude when the people were asking for him. He found him sitting on a stone. A group of men were about him, men with hunger in their eyes.

The scenery was one of contrasts. Rugged hills framing fields of flowers; in the distance the Jordan rushing southward. And the Prophet seemed to blend with it all. But Uri Ben Ahithophel saw none of that.

"I have come to see you about your work," he began.

The Prophet looked up.

"I think your work looks very promising. You have made a good start. Now what you need is somebody to manage your campaign. I have had a good deal of experience in affairs like that, and I should like to-"

A snake wriggled through the grass and disappeared in the jumble of rocks. "Now what you need, first of all," Uri continued after he had recovered, "is to gain the favor of influential people. As I said before, you have begun well. People are talking about you, and you know if you can get people to talk about you you have gained a great deal. They even say you have performed miracles. Now there is no reason why you shouldn't make a big success of your

THE DEVIL

BY ARTHUR B. RHINOW

enterprise. And I say, the first thing to do is to get the backing of influential pecie.

"Now, there is Annas, the high priest, for instance. Believe me, he is the most powerful man in Israel. If you could get him to indorse you, that would help immensely. And of course some prominent Pharisee, also. Annas, you know, is a Sadducee, and you cannot afford to take sides. With two such leaders backing you, you could not fail. And I believe my connections would enable me to enlist that support. One only has to know how to approach men like that in the right way; and I have had experience. All I would ask you to do is not to say or do anything to offend them. That would never do. You understand that, of course. All the rest you can leave to me. And all I ask of you for myself is a promise to remember me when you enter into your kingdom, so to speak. That's all.

"And believe me, without such men as Annas your enterprise will never amount to very much. Get the right people interested first."

The Prophet studied the lilies lovingly. "And after you have had the indorsement of those men," Uri went on, "then you ought to be careful about the disciples you choose. Get men that are representative, men of the better classes, men that impress the people. Then you

will be able to control means, and you know you cannot do anything without money. For instance, I am just now thinking of a certain rich young ruler. Fine fellow, and he has great possessions."

"The prophet has chosen his disciples," one of the men answered. There was a deep glow in his eyes, and he held a bag.

"What kind of men are they?" the interviewer asked quickly.

"Oh, Galilean fishermen, a publican, and other men of that kind."

Uri Ben Ahithophel shook his head. "Fishermen and publicans? That will never do. Why did he choose them?" "Because they believe in him."

"Well, that's all right so far as it goes. But this is a practical age, and we must be practical to succeed. Look at the way the Romans do things, and our own politicians. They're shrewd. And even a religious movement must be conducted in the right way. Imagine how Annas would launch a campaign like that. And it is very important to get the right kind of people to push things. You look as though you might be a help to him, but those other men are just muscle and dreams."

Uri Ben Ahithophel again turned to the Prophet. He saw him take a reed and write on the ground.

"There is something else I want to

"I

talk to you about," Uri continued. have heard people say that you were of Nazareth. Now I wouldn't advertise that too much. You know the people say, 'Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?' And we must avoid anything that might offend the people. 'Give the people what they want,' is the way to succeed.

"Now, tell me," Uri went on, "is there not some other place with which you are associated by ties of something or other?"

"He was born in Bethlehem," he with the bag volunteered.

Uri Ben Ahithophel leaped up. "In Bethlehem?" he cried. "The very place! The birthplace of a king."

"He is of the seed of David."

"He is? Come, come, this is great. We shall begin the big demonstration at Bethlehem. Leave that to me. We

shall advertise you as the son of David. That alone will give you popular applause. We shall speak of the glorious reign of David and Solomon, and that

a scion of that illustrious house has come to them to lead them to-"

The Prophet's look silenced Uri Ben Ahithophel. He remained quiet for a long time. At first he had an unearthly feeling, then his mind reverted to the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. He turned to the man with the glowing eyes.

"Your master might win the whole country," he said, "if he listened to reason; but-"

He shook his head sadly, and left.

N

AN ISLAND HERO.

BY FULLERTON L. WALDO

PUTTING OFF TO THE LIGHT IN A FOG

ORTHEAST of the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is an islet upreared to a height of nearly two hundred feet above the mean of the tides. It is called Bird Rock, and it is the finest bird nursery of the North Atlantic region. Its brow is forever beclouded with a flapping and crying myriad of gulls, auks, kittiwakes, murrs, gannets, and other water-fowl, and round its base the waves leap like wild creatures in a white and roaring fury that never wears itself out, though it has bitten and torn the living rock away.

A moving-picture operator visited the island, and was dangled over the brink of the cliffs at the end of a rope to secure his pictures. He was warned not to look down as he mounted the rickety ladders, lashed end to end, through the crevices to the top of the rock. The leaping sea at the foot of the ladders and the deafening birds flying about

him, affrighted for their eggs and their eyries, made the ascent as perilous a venture as the taking of the photographs.

Peter Bourcq was lord of this tiny insular domain. Peter had been there for twenty-eight years. His story was this. Before his coming two keepers of the island light had lost their reason, owing to the horrible loneliness. The second had to be taken to the mainland in a strait-jacket. The Canadian Government was greatly concerned to obtain a successor in his place. For a long time no man offered himself. Then Peter Bourcq came forward. "I will accept the place," he said, "if you let me take my wife and son with me." The authorities gladly consented.

When Peter went to the island, he resolved at once to do everything possible to keep the family life on a sane and normal plane, in order to avoid the fate that overtook his predecessors. He had

at first only his wife and a son to consider; later a daughter was born, and a welcome flower she was, abloom among those gaunt and barren crags. The lighthouse steamer came. but once a year, bringing letters and newspapers. Peter made a box with a compartment for each day. Then he took this annual mail and divided it among the pigeonholes; and every morning at breakfast they could pretend they were getting the post for that particular day-though it was a year old!

The evenings in rotation were given to study the French language, the poetry of Robbie Burns, the lore of the rocks and the birds about them. Each of the four studied music-cabinet organ, violin, cornet, voice; and the birds that fluttered and cried round the faithful light must have heard in bewilderment the rival sounds. As for the light itself when there was fog (and that might be for weeks and months at a time) it was necessary not only to keep the fog-horn going but to fire guncotton bombs at twenty-minute intervals. Father and son relieved each other at this task; and if the boy for any reason failed, the father was awake immediately to know why. He could not sleep unless the noise stabbed the silence on the very instant.

They even made a croquet court, which took up all the space not filled by the lighthouse and the tower; but the storms soon swept away the earth that had been transplanted with such labor from the mainland.

At the end of twenty-eight years Peter took his family ashore. He said he thought he owed them a taste of life among people in the world. Before he could get away he had packed his belongings three times to leave by the annual lighthouse steamer, but twice they had to tell him that he must stay another year, since they could find none to fill his place.

Few men have had so lonely an occupation. Few have been faithful to a trust so hard and so forbidding. Peter Bourcq did his work well, and has earned his reward. He showed again that a brave and resolute man is master of his fate in circumstances that would crush the weakling.

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HE average bleacherite, were he to take a bat in his hand, could not hit a balloon floating over the plate. The average tennis player is more or less awful. The average golfer takes over 100 (and lies about it). The average writer leaves the reader cold and unmoved. The average boxer is a good deal of a mark. The average law yer is seldom thoroughly prepared.

Averages run low, but it is the solution of the average man's problem that really counts for anything. The genius needs no "solution." He'll pull through somehow, by definition of genius. But the average one of us is pretty much of a dub, and needs all the "solutions" he can get. In the following remarks, therefore, the word "average" is understood as applying to all but the men who are named or referred to for illustration.

Take any young fellow starting out, either in business or a profession. Say that he is strong, that he takes good care of himself, that he has plenty of "pep" and a clear brain. One or two, then three, four years go by, but he gets no results to speak of. He has the strength, the energy, the push, and still he cannot build up the business. He knows in his heart that it is not his youth that beats him, that there are as many opportunities as ever, but he is headed for disaster. He may connect up with some established concern or firm, but as an individual he fails.

Now there are so many possible reasons for that failure that to attempt to cover the ground would be silly, but if I were the president of a college (which I am not) or the head of any school or institution, turning out annually hundreds or thousands of graduates equipped, more or less, to stand their ground in the various walks of life, I would at least point out one rock on which many of them go to pieces-a rock so pitifully easy to avoid that I don't recall ever hearing it even mentioned in a baccalaureate or occupying a niche in the advices to graduates at commencements of school, university, or college, and I've heard a lot of them.

To illustrate: Shortly after the armistice was signed I went to a club to lunch. There were some distinguished speakers whose remarks were worth hearing. It was altogether the best function of its kind I'd ever attended, and I looked up the chairman of the committee in charge, and found it was the late John B. Stanchfield, probably the greatest trial lawyer of his day (great, by the way, because he was simply better prepared in every way than most of his adversaries-he took no chances). I did not know Mr. Stanchfield, but I wrote him that I liked that

type of speaker and hoped we would
have more such. He wrote me the day
he received my letter expressing his ap-
preciation, and two days later he came
into my office and thanked me person-
ally. He'd never heard of me and he
was a "fairly" busy man.

In 1916 Roosevelt was being pounded
right and left because he was too bel-
ligerent and not anxious enough to keep
us out of war. I thought he was right,
and said so in a letter of about a para-
graph in length. He answered me at
once from the office of the "Metropolitan
Magazine," in a note so cordial that I
was almost embarrassed. He didn't
know me from Adam of course, and his
mail was not small, I imagine.

At the time when Mr. E. H. Gary first appeared publicly in defense of the open shop in the controversy between the Steel Corporation and certain groups of its employees, without going into the merits of the case, I liked the clean-cut way in which Mr. Gary laid down his company's proposition without any beating about the bush or false pandering to labor (labor hasn't any more use for hypocrisy than the rest of us, and Gary knew it). I received a mighty quick. and frankly cordial acknowledgment of that note at once.

Now I despise the fools who sit around writing to big men or getting introduced to them, apparently with the idea that they themselves somehow shine by the reflected light of their gods; so don't misunderstand me. In none of these cases-years apart-did I care a continental whether I got an answer to my letter or not. They called for no answer, naturally, and had there been the slightest suspicion from their contents that the writer expected or hoped for one there wouldn't have been any.

If you want to see a man who is a leader, from the President down, you can see him and quickly too—if you have something to say. You can't waste his time, not more than once, but you can see him. It's the little man who doesn't know how to arrange his desk that's always in a "conference" and who never has "time."

I had a client once who got into difficulties with the District Attorney's office. His partner was also involved and had as his personal counsel a little fellow whom we'll call Blankbacher, and as his uncle a gentleman who retained one of the best-known lawyers in New York, an ex-District Attorney, and a very well liked and reputable man, to look over the situation. Blankbacher was much incensed at this, and openly referred to the ex-District Attorney as a "stuffed shirt." A conference followed, and the next morning Blankbacher re

ceived a letter from the "stuffed shirt" thanking him for his courtesy in coming to his office rather than calling the meeting elsewhere, and also expressing appreciation of the concise manner in which the matter had been presented by Blankbacher, to the saving of time for all concerned-in other words, a very thoughtful, though wholly unnecessary, letter.

Shortly afterwards I met Blankbacher. He said: "Dot man, he is a fine fella. Fine fella." All his life he's going to have a warm spot in his heart for that lawyer simply because of a very short, but obviously sincere, letter, which didn't have to be written at all; and he'll send all his clients, and he has a lot of them, who find themselves in anything like that kind of a predicament, to that man's office. Also it was just as much a habit on the part of the writer to despatch such a note-he wanted to, felt like it-as it was to put on his hat when he left his office. Those things take half a minute to do, and, even viewed from a selfish angle, mathe matically, a certain percentage of them are bound to, and do, bear fruit.

But the matter is deeper, a good deal. than that. I don't care who you are or what your occupation, you come in contact with people day in and day out

that's practically your whole life. All right. You will be successful in these contacts just so far as you can forget yourself and be those people, one after the other, as far as getting their point of view is concerned. If you're dealing with a plumber, be a plumber yourself for the time being, exclude every other thing from your mind but that man's problem, his point of view, his angleif you want to help him-and the same all along the line. Lay your own affairs aside and put every ounce of energy you have at their disposal, and make them feel it, whether you are a doctor, salesman, lawyer, or what not; and there is only one way to make them feel itmean it. You can't bluff. The dullest customer, the sickest patient, the stupidest client, knows in an instant, and instinctively, whether you have his interests at heart or whether you haven't.

The little things are all-fired important. The "big" man never misses a trick. A kind word, an unnecessary act, has never hurt anybody since the beginning of time, and, sooner or later, they come home to roost. Go out of your way to do things for people, whether you have to or not. Jump in with both feet.

Roosevelt put the secret of his amazing success in a sentence. He said, "I put myself in the way of things happening, and they happened." I should say they did!

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