British miners' unions to carry out their policies been one of the chief causes of ruining the chance for a decent living of the very men whom it strove to protect? Has not limitation of output so weakened the industry in its ability to compete as to threaten its ability to employ all the workers at any wage? Has not the fact that the American unions were not strong enough to weaken similarly the American coal industry been a great advantage to the American coal-miner by giving him seven million tons of coal to mine for export?

This is not an argument for the abolition of the unions but an argument for the definite practice of a policy of stimulating production. Mr. Gompers some months ago announced such a policy for the A. F. of L. in these words:

In order to obtain increased operating efficiency I should call in the union heads just as I should call in an industrial engineer, but even more frequently and on a more intimate basis. This would prevent dissatisfaction among my men by making wages always the last reduction instead of the first. I should know as an employer that high wages do not mean increased cost of production but, on the contrary, are the greatest possible incentive toward the invention of better machinery and tools in order that the worker's power may be extended to an almost indefinite degree. I should know that cheap men do not mean a cheap output. Wherever the human element is cheap you will find the methods and means of production in the most backward condition. I should pay high wages and I should endeavor by every possible means to eliminate the wastes from my plant, and to gain the maximum of efficiency without. brutal driving.

There is an impression that the unions are against machinery, are against the better ways of doing business, are against scientific management, and in favor of stringing out every job to the greatest possible extent. That, it is true, was the attitude of the old country. It is not the attitude of the American Labor movement.

The unions at the time opposed the introduction of machinery because both the workers and the employers saw labor-saving machines not as aids to production but as substitutes for men. I am in favor of every possible mechanical device that can substitute for human labor, but if the employer looks at the machine solely as an instrument to take employment from men, he is bound to fail just as are the workers who oppose the machinery because apparently it is going to cost them their jobs. That is the short-sighted view. The workers can break. the machines, and they can destroy the blue-prints but the idea remains, and if it is a good idea it will be put into force. Otherwise we bar the economic progress of the world and encourage instead of prevent waste.

The unions of the A. F. of L. have not made as much progress in action as Mr. Gompers has in theory, but none the less, their leadership is better than that abroad.

If the workers and the employers both strive for production, there will be profits to divide. If then the employers do not divide fairly, there is room for a fighting union to try to force them to do so. But when there are no profits, as is the case with the British coal-mines and with the American and Canadian railroads, labor is forced either to change its policy toward greater production or else advocate the nationalization of the industry in order that the losses may be paid out of taxation.

A

An Oil Rush to the Canadian Arctic WELL advertised rush has started to a new oil field in the Mackenzie River country in Canada, close to the Arctic Circle, and seems likely to have many characteristics and result in many experiences similar to those of the gold rush to the Klondike in 1898 and 1899. But this latest oil rush has characteristics unique in the history of such stampedes. For one thing, airplanes are playing a part in it and modern tractors are being used to haul flat boats over the portages that are necessary in the two thousand mile journey by river from the railway at Peace River Landing, Alberta.

The immediate cause of this rush was the "discovery" of oil last summer by the Imperial Oil Company of Canada, a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. During the last two summers this company has had geologists and drillers searching for the source of the natural oil springs noted by Sir Alexander Mackenzie nearly a century and a half ago, when he discovered the river which bears his name. Last August a Last August a "gusher" was brought in by these hardy Argonauts forty miles south of Fort Norman on the river, about 450 miles from its mouth at the Arctic Ocean and only 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle. A new oil field had been discovered to help meet the world's growing demand for petroleum products.

That a Standard Oil Company went in search of this oil is a good indication that some way will be found to get it out, provided the size of the field justifies the expenditure necessary to build a pipe line or establish other means of transporting it. Herein is an im

duty of the United States to welcome only those whom it believes capable of fulfiling acceptably the duties of its citizenship.

There is a very wide-spread feeling that our processes of assimilation were not adequate to -the immigration that came in and that even if we lag a little in the rush of developing the country it were better to stand this rather than continue to fail in the assimilation process. It is not likely that the 3 per cent. law would remain unchanged indefinitely, but for the time being it seems a sensible and effective plan to meet a present and pressing situation.

Our Needs with Respect to an Army

T

HE war demonstrated certain things about our Army:

1. Under a skeletonized peace strength system we have no units properly equipped to fight-witness the period necessary for training the 1st Division for active combat; 2. To raise a large army, conscription is the only fair and effective method;

3. A large army can be raised and trained very quickly if the officers and equipment are ready;

4. To equip a large army quickly a plan for the mobilization of industry to war affairs must be prepared beforehand.

Since the Civil War our Army has engaged in the Indian Campaigns, the Spanish War, the Relief of Peking, the Peace Expedition into Mexico, and the World War. In all of these but the World War well-equipped expeditionary forces were all that were required. For anything in the future of similar character four divisions of infantry (80,000 men) with the proper other arms would in all probability be sufficient, but we should have at least four divisions at full strength and in perfect condition ready at all times. If we should get into another large war we should have to rely on conscription as we did in the World War to provide the men. At present there is no law granting to the President the power to apply conscription in case of war. There certainly should be such a law on the statute books so that the War Department might know its provisions and have plans ready for carrying them out.

Before the United States entered the World War the Council of National Defense drew up a plan for a census of all plants capable of war work and a system for keeping these plants

informed and prepared for what they would have to do in case of war. This plan called for very little expense. Had it been in operation. it would have saved millions of dollars and months of delay. Some such plan should be inaugurated now.

We can have a small but highly trained and completely ready force for expeditionary work, and the plans for the mobilization of men and industry for a national war for very little if any more than the cost of the system of skeleton units which are not immediately ready for any service and no provision at all for a great struggle.

The Secretary of War has announced that, General Pershing is to be the head of an "expeditionary" staff ready for instant action. For possible small expeditions this would imply at least the four prepared full strength divisions mentioned. For the possibility of a larger war it would imply that a plan for the mobilization of men and material will be on the statute books, for not even General Pershing can make preparations to lead an army unless he knows what resources he can count on and that can only be fixed in advance by law.

The President is committed to a voluntary training policy similar to that which Mr. Garrison suggested when he was Secretary of War. How much value this will be to the national defence depends upon how many young men volunteer for the training. The theory that the support of the country by taxes is compulsory but that the defence thereof is optional, is hardly tenable, but nevertheless if some young men realize the obligation to prepare for the possible necessity of fighting for their country it will be that much gain.

T

The Farmer's Choice

HERE has been a continuous agitation for many years in the United States to arrest the drift of population from the country to the city and to reinstate the good old days when the bulk of the population lived on the land. The slogan "back to the farm" has been a part of almost every campaign for the betterment of the country for the last twenty years.

Good roads have been built, the rural schools improved, the farmer has been taught better methods, has been urged to buy more machinery, and has been comforted by the telephone and the automobile, while his

wife has been given the blessings of running water. Yet despite all these the drift from farm to town still goes on.

It is usually considered that the farmer boy leaves the farm despite the improvements offered him there. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is because of them. In the good old days when the farmer had no modern implements to work with he could not raise any great surplus beyond the wants of his family and himself. Seventy or eighty per cent. of the population had to stay on the farm to raise the food and clothing for themselves and the other twenty or thirty per cent.

If anything like that proportion were on the farms now and properly equipped, they would produce two or three times as much as the market demands. At present every time one boy goes back to the land two others have got to go to town to make a market for the farm boy's products.

In France, where the production per man on the land is low, the bulk of the population is still on the land. In the United States, where the per capita production of the farmer is high, the bulk of the population is in the towns and cities, and the more American farmers produce per capita the larger proportion of our population will go into the cities. into the cities. In one sense the farmer may look upon every man who leaves the land as vanishing as a competitor to appear in town as a customer.

It is at least a tenable theory that the competition of industry for labor has been the chief cause of making the American farmer one of the best producers per capita in the world. He has had, it is true, the advantages of constantly using new and fertile land and he has often abused that advantage. But he has also had the advantage of constantly improved methods of getting more results per hour of work, and he has made good use of these advantages. If labor had been continuously plentiful and cheap, he would not have been forced to try so hard to get so much done with little labor. But as the competition of industry forced him to get on with little labor he had to devise ways and means to make farm labor effective.

As a matter of fact, despite the drift away from the farms there has been no decrease in the farming population. There are as many farmers in the United States as there ever were -more than ever before in fact. It is only the proportion of farmers to the other parts of the

population that has shrunk, and this phenomenon, whether it be good or bad, is the inevitable result of the improved labor-saving methods and appliances by which the modern American farmer works as well as the attraction of the high wages of organized industry.

The apprehension with which the relative shrinkage of our farming population to the whole has been viewed by many people is based upon two conceptions. The first is that the small landowner, being an independent producer, most nearly fits the picture of an ideal citizen of this Republic and consequently any even relative shrinkage in his numbers and influence is a detriment to the body politic. The second conception is based upon the belief that this country should run no risk of having to depend on any outside sources for food. The country instinctively feels that it should be independent of the rest of the world in all the essential raw products, both agricultural and industrial.

If we are content to merely make sure of raising our own food, we can accomplish that, although at considerable expense to the general population, by putting on a sufficient tariff to practically stop food imports. That would tend to curtail the foreign markets for our produce, leave no room for farmer's activities beyond supplying the domestic market.

The other alternative is to continue to improve our methods of production and to begin to improve our costs of handling, marketing, and shipping so that the American farmer can not only raise food here below the price at which any other people can deliver it here, but also that he can raise it and ship it on a favorable competitive basis to the markets of the world. The only way to increase the proportion of our agricultural population is to have an agricultural industry that is exporting more and more each year.

As a part of such a programme the farm organizations are now urging lower rail rates and so eminent an authority as Mr. Hoover agrees that they are necessary, not only to admit of our exporting but even to prevent foreign staples from coming here in large quantities. As soon as lower rates can be granted with safety to the railroads they should be granted. The true path to greatness is not to shrink behind protection into production for domestic purposes only, but to make the best effort of which we are capable to increase our agricultural exports.

M

ORE and more frequently the Investment Editor is being asked if he approves of the purchase of securities on the instalment plan. He does, provided they are good securities and purchased through reliable houses. If purchased through unreliable houses the investor may lose money even though the securities be good. So the first consideration is the character of the house.

These frequent inquiries regarding the partial payment method of buying stocks and bonds come largely from those who made their first investments in Liberty Bonds that way during the war. These people have been surprised to see how much they saved and invested during the war. They now want to do the same thing again.

Unfortunately for them a good many of the houses that are now advertising to sell securities on the partial payment plan are not reliable houses. This plan affords an easy way to operate a "bucket-shop"-that is to take orders and not execute them; or if they are executed, to immediately sell the securities for a dummy account. There is reason to believe that several houses are carrying on the partial payment business in this way. They are betting against their customers that they will be able to buy the securities in the market at lower prices than their customers are paying for them before they have to make delivery of them to their customers. Meanwhile these houses charge the customer interest on his unpaid balance although they have employed none of their capital in the operation at all. That is what makes this business so profitable to such houses and explains why so many of them of doubtful reputation have gone into it. It is true that some of them have considerable capital back of them and are able to make good on their deliveries even though the market goes against them. But the danger to the investor is that such houses influence him to buy securities which they believe are

going down or which are of such speculative character that they fluctuate widely in the market.

There is a partial payment house in Chicago dealing largely in New York Stock Exchange securities, which loads the customer with a fee that adds 4 per cent. to the market value of the securities. With this large profit, this house is able to employ accomplished advertising writers and to do extensive advertising wherever its advertising account is acceptable. It is reported to be doing a large business, which is another evidence of the growing desire on the part of the public to purchase securities on the instalment plan. It recommends stocks that are highly speculative and not suitable for purchase as investments under any consideration, certainly not on the instalment plan. At the head of the house is a man who was previously engaged in the getrich-quick promotion field.

Reputable houses which have gone out after partial payment business in the past and have handled it on a basis which they considered fair to the investor, or in accordance with the rules of the New York Stock Exchange governing this class of business, have made little or no profit on it. The detail work in connection with the instalment accounts has absorbed all the commission. But to-day more and more investment houses are seeing the need of this kind of service for our new investors, and the reliable channels through which good securities can be bought in this way are steadily growing in number. This is one of the important developments in the investment business. There are to-day not only reputable houses that will sell securities on the instalment plan if a customer asks them to do somost of them will do that-but there are reliable houses handling practically every class of investment security that are now making a feature of this method of selling and are inviting investors to buy that way.

The importance of this can hardly be over