on fur, and the main reason of its early growth was the river, the mighty Father of Waters, and its main confluent, the Missouri, which joins the main stream a few miles above the spot where Laclede blazed the trees for his fur-trading post. On fur and by the river's help the city of St. Louis matured, until in 1820 the value of its annual barter had reached nearly two and a half million dollars. About that time the first steamboat landed at the levee. Forty years later, at the time of the Civil War, that same muddy river-bank, paved with Belgian blocks and buttressed with pontoon warehouses that rose and fell with the stream, was lined for a mile with white stern-wheelers, sometimes two and three deep, that carried an enormous traffic between St. Louis and the widely scattered ports-St. Paul, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Kansas City-of the Mississippi Valley waterways. In this enormous system of navigable rivers St. Louis was, and is now, the focal point. In terms of river navigation, interrelating nominally twenty States in the Union, it is the natural center of the tremendous bulk freights originating in those States of measureless raw produce. Before the railroads spread their octopus tentacles over the valley and strangled its inland waterways the port value of St. Louis continued to be one of the major causes of the city's growth. The Civil War marked the breaking of the river monopoly. Perhaps the great World War began the breaking of the rail monopoly; freight rates and ever-increasing congestion are helping to break it as the necessities of economical quantity distribution are bringing into serious consideration every available means of cheap transport. There's the river. The river has always been there, but for nearly fifty years big business hasn't been able to see it through the cobwebs of steel rails, clouds of switch-engine steam, and the barriers of box cars; hasn't been able to hear it for the blowing of whistles, the ringing of bells, and the roar of stock dividends on the market. One of the signs of St. Louis's growth is the resurgence of a living interest in its former river empire, and one of the most hopeful proofs of its common sense is the growing conviction that, not by cutthroat competition between river and rail, but by co-ordinating the two naturally interrelated systems of transportation, are the common carriers to be most permanently supported and the public best served. The railroads have done well by St. Louis. Twenty-six of them run into its terminals and and shuttle their freight around on its belt line. If you should eliminate the river traceries and other detail and color from a map of the United States, these railway systems with their interlocking filaments would make a huge spider's web with St. Louis the center of their radiations. Just as it grew steadily by the river, so more than fifty years ago the city began to grow more rapidly by rail. In 1917, when St. Louis, a community of strong Teutonic cleavage, nevertheless contributed its full quota of men and money to make the The city was named for Louis IV, King of France. The statue of the patron "saint " standing before the Art Museum, on Art Hill in Forest Park world unsafe for Germans, the annual trade of the fur outpost had grown beyond a billion dollars. Never once in all the hundred and fifty years of its growth had St. Louis boomed. Only very recently, catching the contagion of American municipal boosting, has the solid old city begun to sell the rest of the United States, and so much of the rest of the world as lies within earshot, on itself. The corporate limits of the municipality cover 61 square miles. Those limits have not been extended since 1876, nor has there been during these fifty years of growth any annexation of territory or population. Inside its own limits the population of St. Louis amounts now to about three-quarters of a million, and the convention conjurers boost it to the full million by hauling in the surrounding suburban corporations which make up what every ambitious municipality, from Miami to Seattle, calls its "metropolitan area." There are two cities of St. Louis, just as there are two distinct Kansas Cities. In both instances of geographical confusion the joint communities, arbitrarily separated by State boundaries, are in economic fact more closely related and interdependent than neighboring cities in the same State. East St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, is joined to the Missouri city by four visible bridges and by a number of invisible ties. One of the best examples of the character of the older city's building comes from a contrast with East St. Louis. While the former continued normally to grow, the latter proceeded abnormally to boom "by leaps and bounds." While East St. Louis "developed" to the tune of a ten per cent annual increase of people, West St. Louis jogged along at a two per cent annual gait. In one period of ten years the Illinois town made a gain of over 108 per cent; during the same period the Missouri town's growth was less than twenty per cent. On the right bank of the stream there has always been as much life, more liberty, and far more provision for the pursuit of happiness. But on the left bank it was possible to make more money more quickly because of the proximity of the largest bituminous coal fields in America and what used to be called the "arbitrary" additional freight rate imposed by the railroads for hauling that coal over the bridges into Missouri. Hence the pyramids of people. A lot of industrial plants, that might otherwise have established themselves in West St. Louis, found they could save something like twenty cents a ton on fuel by settling down in East St. Louis. Shoe manufacturers located in St. Louis built new factories across the river, and a former president of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce was the head of a big steel company whose works contributed heavily to the soft-coal pall hanging over East St. Louis. These gentlemen and others like them swelled their dividends in Illinois, but they kept their offices, played their golf, educated their children, and went to church in old St. Louis, the center of the colorful commonwealth that Winston Churchill put into his novels of the "Crisis" and "The Inside of the Cup." Growth hasn't been enough for St. Louis. It has started in to build bigness for its own sake. The booming of East St. Louis, just across the river, and ad mittedly dependent upon the older borough in many respects, irked progressive spirits west of the river. They went to work to get that obnoxious "arbitrary" toll taken off the three bridges that did not belong, as the fourth bridge did, to the city, but made extra money for the railroads. They touched the rock of civic pride, and it issued forth $87,000,000 for municipal improvements. They capitalized the universal topic B by organizing an annual "Pageant of Fashion" and "Style Show," and they put their loyal shoulders under the amendment known as "Proposition Number 7," whereby the city and the county of St. Louis are merged for higher population figures "so as to take its proper place among the large cities of the country," and shoved it into the State Constitution. They discovered and sold the idea of direct foreign trade for the valley through the Mississippi jetties into the Gulf of Mexico, and vociferously they joined the heroic rank of "billion-dollar insurance cities." They sent out "good will tourists" to shake the multiple hand of Missouri and announced "the greatest building program in the city's history." The Federal Reserve Bank, the Bell Telephone, the Union Market, the Shell Company, General Motors, and the Western Union are some of the private corporations which have concretely substantiated the last announcement by a combined investment of forty million dollars in big buildings. Then some bright person came along and started the service of package freight-car deliveries out of St. Louis, and another publicserviceable citizen saw the theatrical possibilities of a long hillside sloping up from the wooded banks of the little River des Peres in Forest Park. More than 1,200 cars, loaded with package freight for delivery almost as fast as express, are said to leave St. Louis every night, and every clear evening during the season ten thousand St. Louisians fill the "biggest open-air theater in the world" to hear some hundreds of their fellowcitizens sing for the fun of singing. Undeniably St. Louis is building bigness now with the best of the booming cities. Let St. Louis tell you about it in the patois of the boosters, which breathes only the alpine air of superlatives. This, you must understand, is no one-industry community, like motorized Detroit, oily Shreveport, or the mining camp of Butte. "Approximately 3,500 industries" employ "approximately 175,000 people," they say, and these are some of the things they have done to St. Louis: It is the leading market in the world in hardware, boots and shoes, sugarmill machinery, woodenware, steel Navigation of the new-type, oil-burning, self-propelling freight barges capable of handling large tows furnaces, piston rings, barbers' supplies, raw furs, horses and mules, stoves and ranges, and hardwood and pine. It has the largest individual manufacturing plants in the world making shoes, drugs, lead, macaroni, brick, street cars, buggies, tobacco, lightning rods, terra cotta, stoves and ranges, ice-cream cones, and wax novelties. St. Louis is the largest market in the United States for millinery, lumber, wool, hats, coffins, bags, sashes and doors, trunks, hides, drugs, chemicals, saddlery and harness, carpets and curtains, and open-hearth steel castings. It has the largest individual manufacturing plant in the United States for the manufacture of cotton and duck, flue cleaners, crushers and pulverizers and hydrogen peroxide. The piston-rings item, however, seems to have been an understatement, for another, more authoritative, "greater St. Louis" publication clearly proves that the local production of this essential to civilization is "the biggest in the universe." Supreme in barbers' supplies, mules, macaroni, ice-cream cones, and coffins, St. Louis continues to dominate with its basso profundo the middle-continental chorus. But when, if ever, the tumult and the shouting die, perhaps you can distinguish the voices of those three hundred citizens singing without pay on the bank of the River des Peres. And whenever the boosters get out of breath, you will hear old St. Louis, entirely "surrounded by the United States," growing calmly up and onward at the center of many things and thoughts American. S By SYDNEY FRISSELL A story of farmers who decided that hanging together was better UDDENLY I came upon it, just as he had written it, "on the lefthand side of the road, five miles out of the village in a big pine grove." A light in the left wing of the schoolhouse caught my eye, and I hurried in, out of the cold and darkness. Jim Carew, the faithful chairman of the tobacco planters local, and the spirit of Thanksgiving were there before me. In the corners of the room stood sheaves of ripe corn, with pumpkins at their base; on the walls red and yellow leaves camouflaged the blackboards and charts; on the table stood the rarest of the gifts -a golden pumpkin skillfully cut into the shape of a basket and piled high with red apples. With the fire well kindled and all trash removed, the chairman surveyed the room and appeared well pleased with the manifestation of the approaching holiday. Greeting me, he said: "It was nice in the teacher to fix up for this meeting. She believes in this thing, and wants to help us." I was glad when he said, "She always comes to our meetings," for the charm which had transfigured the bleak school-room and her efforts to put Thanksgiving in the hearts of a discouraged people had interested me and roused my curiosity as to this teacher of the pine-woods school. Huge windows were on three sides of the school-room, and, with neither shades nor curtains, the blackness of the night seemed just over our shoulders, while all within was warm and bright with the trophies of the harvest awaiting the arrival of the harvesters. Brown in the Herald Tribune The old farmhand Copyright, 1925, New From Robert V. Carr, WHEN DID HE GET BROWN Glasgow tells in her last book, "Barren The chairman got out his program, excused himself, and went to work. It was easy to see that this was a labor of love on his part. His hands were rough and awkward and his pencil was a stub, but a look at his lean, tanned face and earnest eyes made me wish that our country had a million of his kind. Twice a month he called his faithful few together, endeavoring to build up and hold interest in a movement of the tobacco farmers to catch up with the methods of modern business by marketing their As I watched my friend, the chairman, tobacco gradually through an associaI was certain that grim knowledge of tion, instead of rushing it to the markets these facts had driven this man here toin competition with one another. In this same section of Virginia, Ellen night in the hope of gaining some perma Always asking the two questions, "How much will you give me for my tobacco?" and "How much will you take for your goods?" and with no voice in either transaction, the same farmers who have conquered the broom-sedge and built up their worn-out soil still struggle desperately to wrest a living from their lands. ཡ་ POLITICAL FARMER I MAY NOT NEED HIM nent foothold upon the soil that he loved. He had summoned a few courageous spirits.who hoped by their meeting to aid the united effort of neighbor farmers in the tobacco country to gain some some share in the profits which come out voice as to the value of their labor and of their tobacco. A SHUFFLING at the door marked the Then arrival of the first comers. more shuffling and more shuffling amid the expiring gasps of Ford cars brought to a sudden stop, and the room was a quarter full. The teacher, a woman of thirty, with a strong, sweet face and graceful bearing, came in with several of her pupils and mixed among the crowd, bringing smiles to faces and making general conversation easy. Four women besides the teacher were present-one a young bride, I judged from her clothes and plentiful blushes that contrasted with the tired faces and worn dresses of the other three. Six young girls and boys were on hand, ready, as I learned later, to help with the entertainment. Among the dozen men in the room I noticed that the old 605 est had drawn together in a close circle and were talking seriously and in low tones of tobacco prices and the crop conditions. Considerable chaffing and laughter at the expense of the new bridegroom engaged a younger group, while the women, entirely separate, kept up a rapid fire of neighborhood gossip. A half-hour passed, and no one else came. The chairman and the teacher exchanged disappointed glances as he went forward to his little table. The meeting was opened with prayer; not a fulsome plea for everything, but a simple prayer of thanksgiving, with a petition for strength and knowledge to use the talents the Lord had given those who were gathered in his name. Then the teacher came forward and introduced a quartette of young boys and girls, who sang song after song, among them the "Thanksgiving Hymn:" The God of the harvest praise, Next came the slenderest and fairest of the lads, and I wondered how long the land could hold him when I noted the easy grace and diction with which he recited We plow the fields and scatter By God's almighty hand. The warmth to swell the grain, And soft refreshng rains. Others felt as I did, for there was pride in the seamed faces of the men as they closely followed his lines. I felt it was only a question of time when the city would draw him away from the farm. Boldly stepping to the front, the next performer, a nine-year-old girl, with flaming cheeks flanked by brown pigtails, breathlessly made her contribution: Air a-gittin' cool and coolah, Frost a-comin' in de night, After this youthful performer had switched herself back to her seat with a flourish, came an annual event, a violin solo from Luther Garner, a noted fiddler of the countryside. This time the appropriate solo was "Turkey in the Straw," and brought down the house with applause. THE chairman rose, cleared his throat, looked long and hard at his people, and asked the question, "Folks, can you stand it if I talk to you again to-night?" Silently I pulled out my note-book, for I not only could stand it but wanted to pass it on, and I give his strange Thanksgiving message: "We're here to-night for our Thanksgiving meeting. The time has come for us to remember and give thanks to the Lord for the way in which he has blessed us. "What with the drought and hardly any hay in our barns, what with almost no corn in our cribs and the sorriest crop of tobacco you and I have seen for years, I reckon some are here to-night whose hearts are not so brimful of Thanksgiving as they might be. "But thanks be to the Lord, who giveth us the victory, we are able to say to-night, not 'What will you give us for our crop?' not 'What will you pay us for our year's work?' but 'Here is a fair price we are asking for our tobacco.' "You know that when we first signed our contract every one said, 'Oh, well, farmers will never stick together!' But for the three years that thousands of us have stuck together so far, by marketing tobacco through our own association instead of dumping it against one another we have built a wall that protects our homes against the prices that kept us in debt for so many years. "During three years we have held the price of our tobacco to double what we could get before the war. In those three years, when all that we have bought was twice as high as it used to be, we have seen our corn and our wheat and hogs go back to the same old prices. "We know now that it pays to organize. We shall have only ourselves to blame if we ever give away our year's work again for prices that mean bare living expenses or debts from losses, while we help the big tobacco companies to pay millions upon millions of dollars in profits and taxes. Don't blame them because they have been organized. They have more sense than we farmers, who have been helplessly beating down one another's profits. Let us blame ourselves and mend our ways. "Friends, it has been a bitter lesson, but I am thankful to-night for one thing -that we have learned that we must organize if we can ever hope to be better than the poor tenants of the people to whom we have left the job of naming the price of our labor and even the way in which your children and my children shall live. Friends, when you let the other fellow name the price of your year's labor, don't blame him if he names himself prosperous and names you a peasant. "That word peasant is a strange word here in Virginia, and something that you and I have scarce heard tell about except in those foreign parts where we sent our boys across to fight for democracy; but since they came back it looks like it has been unsafer for democracy among us farmers than ever before. "This fight here at home has set you and me to reading and thinking like we never did before, and let me tell you that unless we farmers organize to-day like Americans in every other industry, our children who do not leave the farms will become more like peasants than any offspring of the Americans who won and built this country have a right to be. "So I ask, Where are we heading? And are you doing your part? "The President of the United States, our Congress and Senate, our Government and State, have all told us that our plan of co-operation in marketing is right. They have given us their approval, and even the laws to protect our marketing contracts. "But, friends, when the speculators come to you with their money and tell you that you can't afford to wait for the pool to sell your crops, remember that they will gain that money back a hundredfold when the wealth from these poor fields of ours goes out of our country to New York and England, and pays those other folks who have had the sense to organize our business for their profit. "If your backs are not too bent by useless labor, if your eyes are not too dimmed by seeking some sign of hope for your children's future, stand by your own organization. "The time has come when we must decide whether we will sign another contract to market our tobacco crop together for another five years, or go back to our old ways. "Our leaders and management have made mistakes a-plenty, but they have been honest. They have been loyal to your interests, and I ask you to consider to-night whether you will serve those who share your interests or those who are interested in your share of the profit. "We have known the slavery of debt, but now, after wandering in the wilderness for so many years, we have won a foothold on economic freedom by our own efforts. "Let us decide to-night whether we Virginia tobacco farmers, who started the first industry in America but are the last Americans to organize it, shall gain our freedom to earn a decent living or determine once and for all to let the |