going to be the mothers of the next generation? Cast your eye over the picture of women out in the fresh air. In your factories she often does some single movement of the hand or arm year in year out often with street or cabaret her only playground when the weary day's work is done, whereas out in the open she is doing a hundred odd jobs, feeding the cattle, tending to the various needs of the farm, helping with the crop, haying and harvest. Which of these women do you think is going to make the best mother, and the children of which mother do you think will have the best chance and start in life? Surely, if there ever was one employment in the world that gives a woman a chance for health and vigor it is work on the land.

I think the question of food touches the whole question of the industrial world. I had charge of the work of volunteer food supplies for the civilian population in the unconquered corner of Belgium for the first year and a half of the war. In the devastated districts—how I wish you could see it-the beautiful forests and trees have gone, the earth is torn up by these great shell-holes, many of them 30 or 60 feet deep. The fertile soil was the wealth of Belgium, and as you know, the fertile soil only goes to a depth of from one to four feet in Europe. Therefore, when you get down 30 or 40 feet, and throw up the rocks and sand from the bottom, you can understand it may be many long years before you can bring back the original fertility of that country. As you begin to pass through the villages, you may pass five or ten or fifteen villages, and not find a piece of wall standing. And, what of the people? Many of them of course fled to England and southern France, but not all, especially those who lived in the agricultural centers. Those little homesteads belonged to them, they had come down to them from father to son, and when the military authorities wanted to evacuate them they said, “No, we are not afraid of the Hun or of the shot and shell; let us stay by these little homesteads that we may have something left for the boy when he comes marching home." So, notwithstanding shot and shell they stayed, and when their little homes were knocked down they took pick and shovel and dug down 30 or 40 feet into the ground, and in those dark and unventilated dugouts many thousands of the civilian population in the devastated areas of

northern France and Belgium have been living for four weary years, waiting for America and the Allies to win them back their country. Passing on to the roads that lead from Germany back into the devastated areas, into France, Belgium, Serbia, and Poland and Roumania, the roads are lined with hundreds of thousands of women and children trooping back, half clothed, half naked, hungry, from slavery in Germany, but back where-home, and what is home? Just a little pile of brick, just a little torn-up patch, and they are going back to that to face the winter. You say, "What is France doing, what is England doing, in not opening hospitable arms to them?" Surely, there is all the hospitality in the world for them, but four years they have been away from home, and it is home they want, just home. They want to get at the work of rebuilding those walls, and tilling the soil. These are the people that are pleading today for food- cheap food, and turn your eyes from that picture, just one moment, to the picture of life right here in New York city, and ask yourselves is it right? No longer can we really talk of our being separate nations, Americans, Frenchmen, or Italians. The world has changed too much for that. This great aeroplane service that will bring London within 24 hours. journey from New York city, and Rome within 48 hours for 30 to 50 passengers at a time, the great invention of wireless telegraphy, all these marvels, will bring us so close together that we cannot talk of "foreign" countries any more-we are neighboring allies, friends! Because there is a little patch of 3000 miles of water between us, does that make our responsibilities for their sufferings any less? Let us take a peep into Russia. In central and northern Russia the conditions are so appalling, and we can do so little, that right through this winter millions are going to die, and we cannot even save them. And after the declaration of peace Mr. Hoover will come with new problems that he will put before you for food distribution and production. I earnestly beg of you to throw your whole support back of your government, because in the feeding of Europe when peace is settled and the trade routes and shipping open again to the entire world is the one chance to bring order out of chaos, and to make the world happy and prosperous again.

Now, as to how England met the food shortage situation. In the early days of the war we waked up to realize that we were a tiny island, and our food supply was cut off. We only grew one quarter of what we consumed. We were not a crop-growing country, we were a stock-raising country, and our acreage is a little less than the acreage of the State of New York, and something had to be done. Ships were going to the bottom, loaded sometimes with millions of pounds of food. We immediately started to organize the women's labor. Then we had to face the proposition of the available housing facilities; for under the system of landlord and tenant farmer very little had been done for a great many years to put into effect anything like a decent housing proposition, and our people had lived in miserable little houses, and provision must be made for those who were going to be drafted in from the cities and homes of leisure. A plan was immediately evolved for providing for them in community camps. Camps were put about the country in any farming locality where labor was required, and then the girls went to live in these community centers. The farmer would send to the camp for labor, and each morning the army of girls would be distributed among the farms as needed. There was no cessation of labor, and the girls could be kept employed all the time, and the farmers could get the help that they needed when they needed it and not pay for it when they had no work. I think it has been largely that community spirit in our agricultural labor centers that made work on the farms so much more popular in England today than it was before the war. We had in the woman's land army in England some three hundred thousand women, besides a large number of women who lived in their own homes and gave part of their time to the work, and the result of the work of the women of Great Britain was to bring nearly a million and a half acres of land under cultivation that had never been under crop cultivation before, besides caring for the land already under production, and to raise the production from one-quarter of what we used to four-fifths of what we required for the coming year. The idea of co-operation has been the key to our success. The Government formed a big war agricultural committee in London, with war agricultural subcommittees in each county, and it was those little war agricul

tural county committees that really brought about the success of the work. On these committees were put bankers and business men who are largely today land owners in the country districts, the leading farmers and the women, and into their hands the development of the agricultural interests of their own counties was placed. In some cases the county or town or district board was given supreme powers, and they could compel the people to bring their land under cultivation. So, by bringing all these different forces together-finance, business organization, farm experience and labor, we arrived at a great result, and I feel that over here in America, if more thought could be given to the development of increased food production of the country along similar lines by bringing together the farmers, the business men and the women more closely, the result would be absolutely amazing. Do you realize how enormously it would help your country through this difficult period of reconstruction if every state could bring a vast number of new acres under cultivation as were brought under cultivation during the war in the little island of England. How it would help to create new wealth, new fields of labor, and by easing the food situation, greatly minimize the difficulties in the European situation!

I leave this question with you today. It means more to the world perhaps than it is possible to estimate, and we must carry on. The boys gave their lives on the battlefields to this great cause. Let us build up a world that will be worthy of the blood that was shed. Let us make it our determination that we will carry on until the trail of death and destruction is wiped off the face of the earth, and the earth lives and rests once more in peace and happiness.

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THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR DIS

I

ABLED INDUSTRIAL WORKERS

THOMAS B. LOVE

Assistant Secretary of the Treasury

SHALL not discuss the subject assigned me from the point

of view of the war or of demobilization, for I am convinced that the duties and responsibilities of the government to its industrial workers are the same in view of the existing conditions incident to the transition from war to peace that they have always been, and that they must always remain, while it may be true that the existing emergency conditions argue for a prompt and effective discharge by the government of its duty and its responsibility.

During the past year in which I have had supervision for the Secretary of the Treasury of the bureau of the Government which has represented the discharge by the Government of its responsibility for disabled soldiers and sailors, I have become more and more convinced that the responsibility of the government for disabled industrial workers was of the same general kind and degree, and that it was the duty and responsibility of the government to recognize its obligation to disabled industrial workers, and to recognize the real significance of the fact that in a sense they were performing necessary duties which involved the risk of life, duties necessary for the preservation of industry and society and the general welfare. In this sense they are soldiers, and there can be but little dissimiliarity in their relations to the general government.

The disability of the worker diminishes earning power and reduces output. It results in loss to the worker and his dependents, to the industry of which he is a part, and to society at large. It is the responsibility of the Government to do what it may consistently with the general welfare to prevent loss to the citizen, to industry, and to society; and if it cannot be prevented, so to order and adjust and distribute its direct and indirect incidence as to make possible its alleviation and repair.

The worker may be disabled from a variety of causes. His disability may result from injury or disease, and injury or disease may result either from causes incident to his industrial