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outcome of the Carranza experiment. There are some of us who go to sleep every night with the premonition of another explosion. Here's hoping that we are wrong.

I have always felt that Mr. Wilson had rather the better of it in the debates against the Progressives over trust regulation in 1912. And I must have been unprejudiced in the matter, because I remember I was very much nettled about it. And it was not because at bottom Mr. Wilson was any nearer right about it than the actual Progressive position. The fact is, the trust regulation programme was the one part of the Progressive platform about which the Progressives themselves during the campaign were at odds with one another.

The President contended at the time that the hope, of the country in its relation to large business organization lay in seeking to regulate competition rather than in seeking to regulate monopoly. And this view has been written into the Clayton and the Federal Trade Commission Acts of Congress. And the President holds now that, in the case of Germany, for example, the attempt to build up Government-aided monopolies and to regulate monopoly is a part of the whole frightful tendency of the mighty twentiethcentury industrial and political monarchy which that country has built up. The President thinks that we should strive to get the efficiency of Germany without the monarchical tendencies against freedom which have gone with it in Germany. Just as we must seek to democratize our military preparedness, so we must seek to democratize our industrial preparedness, that we may lay hold of the good and shun the evil of the German system.

There has been some quiet but very effective work done by the Federal Trade Commission under the eye of the President, of which the country as yet knows very little. The purpose of the Commission has been not to harass but to help. It has proceeded upon the theory that the period of propagandism has expired and the period of construction has begun; that the commissioners are the traffic policemen of inter-State commerce who are trying to establish the rules of the road in order that commerce may flow fairly and freely.

Let me give one of many concrete illustrations of the manner in which the Commission is regulating competition by giving quick relief and adapting the remedy expeditiously to the disease. A little sugar refining com

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pany was recently suffering from unfair method at the hands of a great sugar concern. The big concern was sending into the little concern's territory an inferior grade of sugar and cleverly branding it in such a way as to lead customers as well as the trade to believe that it was a fine granulated article, whereas it was an 66 off" sugar,

in the production of which an expensive part of the refining process was omitted. The little company had to meet the lower price with its honestly branded product. It was being forced rapidly to the wall. It filed a complaint with the Commission that it had already lost forty or fifty thousand dollars, that it could not stand the pressure if it had to wait for litigation. The Commission went at once into the case and thought there was reasonable cause for complaint. It sent word directly to the managing officials of the big concern. It did not hale them into court. It asked them if they had anything to say. If they had, the Commission would be glad to hear them. The big concern had something to say. And this was it: "Neither as to this complainant nor any other complainant shall we be guilty of such practice again." It was all over in a few weeks. The little concern was saved from bankruptcy and the big concern from disgrace and the error of its ways.

Here is another important feature. A great many persons go to the Commission and say: "You have within your jurisdiction the Clayton Act, which prevents price discrimination, tying contracts, interlocking stockholdings and directorships. Here is a form of contract we propose to use. Is this a violation of the law?" If the case is clear, if it is legal, the Commission say so. If it is not legal, the Commission say so. They also say: "This is simply an opinion, a conference ruling, a private judgment. If anybody is injured and a complaint is filed, we will take the matter up de novo and hear from all sides. Otherwise, what we have told you will stand as a precedent." That is, the Trade Commission is following exactly in line with the Inter-State Commerce Commission and its practice since 1907. The Inter-State Commerce Commission has issued approximately four hundred conference rulings which are no more than expressions of private judgment, but which relieve possibilities of doubt. And the method has been tremendously successful and is universally approved.

And the Commission is accumulating a vast amount of opinion from the different

corporations of the country, the size, the degree of integration, the percentage of success and failure in the industry, the total output, the consumption for a given period-the barometer in that particular industry. The trouble with small business concerns is that they go blindly. They do not know how much to produce, how much the market will absorb. And they have no means of knowing. And unless there is some Governmental agency to give them the information they need, they are driven to combination in order that they may be able voluntarily and wisely to restrict their output and prevent the large percentage of unnecessary failures in the industry.

And just this week there comes out a valuable investigation of the Commission of an intensive economic character, a report on the cost of transporting oil in pipe lines in the mid-continent field which produces sixty to eighty per cent of the total oil of the country.

Here are thousands of miles of pipe lines which were made common carriers in 1906 by the Hepburn Act, but which have never been properly regulated, because nobody has known anything about them. Now the Inter-State Commerce Commission will have some light. And the Trade Commission has found out, after making liberal allowance for items of depreciation, cost, and reasonable profit, that these pipe lines are charging three times as much as they should, and that they make a minimum requirement of twenty-five thousand barrels a day before they will take on a customer. And the little fellows are squeezed out. They cannot afford to build their own pipe lines, and they cannot afford to patronize the far more expensive railway transportation. This is not the report of yellow journalism. It does not seek the front page. It is couched in conservative language. But the facts are startling.

This again is a continuation of the splendid work of Garfield, and Herbert Knox Smith, and Conant, under President Roosevelt. There is a continuity of efficiency and progress. But the drift in the Wilson Administration is powerful and thoroughgoing. For example, it has been determined that there is vast waste in the lumber and soft coal industries. Twenty-six per cent of the timber is left to decay under the unregulated cutthroat competition which prevails. When overproduction comes, and the price of lumber goes down, the producers take the timber easiest

And

to get and the coal easiest to mine. what is left behind is so left as to be practically worthless. And there are many failures, and many plants are shut down for a good portion of the year. And the facts are driving the Wilson Administration rapidly towards the regulation of monopoly or to Government ownership in the case of the great primary resources. In spite of all the fine theories about the regulation of competition as a panacea, in spite of the "New Freedom," the great lumbermen agree, in conference with representatives of the Administration, that even a rigid fixing of prices would help their industry. Not far away from Gary and Perkins in the case of the primary resources ! But the Wilson Administration holds that where men have taken these primary resources upon fair terms, and have used their ingenuity, and have contributed something to society in work upon them, these men are entitled to freedom. The chasm is narrowing, and it may soon become evident that the Progressives and the Democrats are only complements of one another in the matter of trust regulation, and that experience will bring both into economic harmony. As, indeed, sooner or later, it will bring all parties except the Socialists.

It

The economics of the Wilson Administration is broadening as it garners the experience of the world. It would be willing to modify the Sherman Act in accordance with the Australian policy or the Canadian policy. It would grasp the spirit, but would disengage American industry from the binding fetters of the legal letter, of the Sherman Act. would make the test of whether a combination is lawful to be its economic effect upon the public interest, and not those legal words of delusion and folly known as "restraint of trade." As the President has frequently said, his view is not necessarily antithetical to big units in industry. It is a question of degree. It is a question of conserving the efficiencies of large-scale production, and at the same time conserving individual and social freedom. Outside the public utilities and the primary resources, if you choke freedom, you have monopoly, which is another name for industrial monarchy. And universal regulated monopoly leads inevitably to State Socialism, which will destroy both democracy and freedom.

I have found a great difference of opinion as to the kind of party leader that the President has been. It seems to me that he has

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been generally very astute and efficient. Mr. Wilson has made in other years close study of responsible Anglo-Saxon leadership, and his purpose has been never to get far from the model of the British Prime Minister, who leads by force of the majority opinion of his associates. So in every important matter the President has dealt with Congress. We must remember also that he had nothing whatever to do with making the party organization which faced him in the country and in Congress. Mr. Bryan and his lieutenants were the makers of a large section of the so-called progressive Democracy which swooped down upon Washington in 1913. And there were spots in it that were far from progressive. It is not easy to forget Mr. Taggart, Mr. Murphy, and others of their sort. Neither the honest but often irresponsible Bryan influence nor the coarser element of the party machine has been easy to control. And the criticism of the President is with respect to his handling of both elements. Bryan, it is said, has carried morsels to "deserving Democrats " until, with a few notable exceptions, the foreign service has severely suffered in prestige at home and abroad. And the great and necessary work of breaking down the power and the intrigue of the baser portions of the Democratic machine in New York, in Indiana, in Pennsylvania, has not gone forward. Rather has Bryan himself in Pennsylvania, and the President himself in New York and Indiana, given clear evidence of a purpose to placate to the full the old order, which in other days both have derided and defied.

The path of the President, as he has sought to accomplish his purposes, has been thorny and difficult. The path of any President of the United States is thorny and difficult if he seeks to accomplish great good for the country. And even a near approach to ideal perfection is not to be expected of any man. The President is naturally a strong party adherent, and under his Administration there has been up to the present time a strong revival of partisanism. He is a political pragmatist at home, just as he has been a diplomatic pragmatist abroad. He has needed the Bryan men and the Taggart men in Congress to fulfill his plans for the country.

But in nothing has his practical intelligence and astuteness seemed clearer to his supporters than in his refusing to line up with

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Garrison rather than with the majority of his associates in Congress. The continental army plan was on the rocks. It seemed to Washington to mean conscription before it could be put into successful operation. And in the temper of the country it appeared likely to require a trained continental army to go out and get the raw material for a continental army from among the farmers of Wisconsin and the Middle West. And the Bryan men in Congress would have none of it, anyway. And so the President chose the path of patient, practical fulfillment of the best he could obtain rather than the path of what he regarded as impractical idealism and disaster.

Mr. Barnes, of New York, is reported to be thinking that any good Republican can beat Mr. Wilson. The calm and final verdict of the National electorate may surprise Mr. Barnes. Even the trenchant critic'sm of Mr. Root's speech finally arouses something of the reaction of a sectional issue. The sources of the Ohio and the Mississippi are not stirred. And more and more the enormous difficulty and complexity of the problem of adequate preparedness which the country and the President have to face is giving denunciation pause, or at least is distributing the burden of reproach more equitably. Only recently I have seen an entirely friendly but serious article by one of his followers impugning the capacity of Mr. Roosevelt to compass the breadth and the height of the problem, and calling upon him to extend the range of his ideas with respect to the Nationalization of America. Will not the sober sense of the American people measure these unfair taunts of its great leaders by the vast magnitude of vision made necessary by the revelations of our time? And may it not be that the country will look with more kindly eye upon even the shortcomings of the Wilson Administration than Mr. Barnes and his associates are inclined to predict? Certain it is that the President represents a point of view in National and even in international affairs which has in the United States millions of supporters. Perhaps majority millions. At any rate, if the opponents of President Wilson believe that he is even likely to be defeated except by the strongest candidate who can be named against him, they are, in my judgment, hopelessly deluded.

Washington.

A

WHEEZY hurdy-gurdy ground and reground the aria of "Robert le Diable." To the clash of a large pair of cymbals in the hands of a puppet on the front of the vehicle closely crowded couples circled about the small inclosure with that same stolid seriousness with which they had danced eighteen months before to the same melody in the narrow streets of Antwerp. Youngsters from the toddling age up all waited gravely at each pause for Robert to "rediable." This evening dance was now a doubly important event in the refugee camp of Gouda, because it was the only recreation.

In these refugee camps are the majority of the seventy thousand Belgians who have been unable or who are unwilling to return to their own country. The truck-gardening region about Gouda has become a well-known refuge. Many found shelter in the elaborate hot-houses, others were received into the homes of the people, and many had to content themselves with barns and workshops until more adequate accommodations could be provided. A tin manufacturer of the town undertook the direction of the camp.

Water-troughs in the greenhouses were readily adapted into lavatories, and plant stands softened by straw sacking make excellent beds. Every family has the semblance of a chez-soi in a 6 x 8 cardboard inclosure.

One of the houses serves as a nursery- -a most important consideration in such a large Flemish household. Another is a long social room, where at night, over large cups of coffee-chicory, the game of dominoes, suddenly broken off in September, 1914, is resumed and the interim forgotten.

Ede is the model village, or rather villages, because this refugee community has been separated into four parts. Built by Belgian labor, with materials that are the generous gifts of Dutch, Danish, English, and American donors, the camp is so permanently constructed that after the war it can serve as an ideal Dutch industrial community. There is central heating, lighting, and a large mechanical laundry, the particular pride of the Flemish housewives who work there. Each village, however, has its own schools, churches, and

hospitals. The sandy heath has been reclaimed by the profuse planting of some hardy yellow flowering plant, so that now each dooryard has its own small garden.

One old lady welcomed us into her little 6 × 8 with all the grace of a hostess in a grand salon. In the course of our conversation, as she told of her flight from the little town of Contich, in the suburbs of Antwerp, she glanced from time to time at the cherished objects she had brought with her-a molting canary and a framed wreath of feather flowers. Though her family is scattered, she lives in daily expectation that she may go back.

In many of the camps Catholic sisters do much of the hospital work and care for the children. At Gouda some of the Ursulines took us with touching pride into their bare pine-wood chapel. When they heard that we were going to Belgium, they were eager that we tell the Order at Bruges what they were doing. The writer suggested a picture. Such naïve pleasure! They crowded primly before the camera, but-O vanitas femina-several stopped in the corridor to give an extra pat to their white cornets.

The Friends Society has given cottages so constructed that after the war they can be transported to Belgium. These have been awarded to families who through their thrift have proved themselves particularly deserving. Many more of these houses are needed.

The fact that the people come, most of them, from the poorer parts of Flanders along the Scheldt, where illiteracy is greatest, makes the problem of education a considerable one. In addition to many elementary courses, classes have been organized in connection with the children's clinics in domestic hygiene and household economy. The novelty is such that it is impossible to accommodate all of the mothers who come.

An effort is made to keep men in their trades. Those who remain in the camps work in the wood-shops, at weaving, and at shoemaking. Of the first five men of whom I asked their former trade, two were dock-hands, one was a shoemaker, and two had none. Those who had a trade retain their deftness, those

Here and there in all of the camps sat groups of peasant women exchanging gossip, enjoying the sunlight, and making their native lace. At Gouda was a "Rockerfellow Saal" with a hundred Amercan sewing-machines. The workers there clothe the entire community.

In some of the camps we were struck by a poverty which excellent organization in others had managed to hide. At Nunspeet, near

the Zuider Zee, were over ten thousand of these refugees. Through necessity the camp had been hastily constructed. The dormitories, named after famous statesmen, where families, streets, and towns had tended to drift back into their old molds, were dark and overcrowded. There were few books, and the children at play had to content themselves with the muddy roads. The people seemed. despondent, and many would sit for hours silent and expressionless. The camera was a slight distraction. Fond mothers gathered excitedly as many of their scattered broods as they could crowd into the picture.

Some years ago a social worker in Liège exclaimed to me: "If only we could get the people out of this crowded factory environment for a time, we could do wonders. They are industrious, plodding, but they lack imagination. Give us an upheaval." His prayer has been answered, though hardly as he expected.

DUTCH INTERNMENT CAMPS

"We were lying in the fort. The first shell put out our lighting service. The second killed the colonel and about forty of the men. Our guns were loosened in the cement and could not get the range. We were so many rats in a trap. We started north from Antwerp on a Friday. They cut us off at Maldegem, and so here we are."

In one form or another this is the story of most of the fortress troops, and there are over thirty thousand Belgians interned in Holland. To speak of the people as apart from the soldiers would be to emphasize a non-existent distinction. A few months ago a staff officer gave an illustrated lecture on the military operations of those last days. Jan for the first time concluded that the Kaiser might have had some other preoccupation than exclusively Jan's particular fortress, or that it may not have been the Prussian Imperial Guard which overwhelmed his particular regiment.

We visited, among other of the camps, Zeist.

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A once haughty sergeant of grenadiers, now with his galons the color of French mustard and his sabots filled with straw, showed us about. There was not a complete uniform in the camp. Grenadiers, fantassins, chasseurs, all wore some distinguishing mark, but all lacked something. There was no martial air. These were simply a few thousand peasants and factory hands who found themselves suddenly on a battlefield with guns in their hands confronted by an overwhelming army. Hard, continuous fighting sent them finally across the frontier dazed and frightened. After such hardships they fell into a sort of lethargy. They found themselves indefinitely in enforced idleness. There was not work for every one, and many of those for whom it was provided seemed to have lost all taste for it.

They wandered about-to use the words of one of the directors-"like so many cattle." I have seen forty of them stand about a pigeon-hatch watching the bird walk in and out. A hundred men would idle about a game of bowls, and as many more would sit on their benches and doze. Others chafed at this idleness, They organized an orchestra, a theatrical club, choral societies. There were singers from the operas of Brussels and Paris. I recall a very successful production of "Faust" at Harderwijk where the scenery, the costumes, and even some of the instruments were home" made. Box seats were five cents. Others find their only distraction in whittling. Boards disappeared from the waste-baskets, glass from the windows, to be deftly converted into inlaid boxes, windmills, boats, and puppets. Soup-bones are as recherché as pearls from an oyster and are rapidly converted into paper-knives and napkin-rings. One soldier painted a masterly series of pieces for the altar, and another was completing some interesting studies for the

canteen.

It is only recently that the problem of education has been taken seriously in hand. With a donation from King Albert of $2,000, as much from the city of Brussels, and a few paltry donations, a beginning was made. Teachers, for the most part, were in the ambulance service, and as such were permitted to return to the front. In the camps there were many volunteers. Bank clerks undertook courses in elementary mathematics, French, and English. In one class in geometry there were some forty railway employees, with a former consulting engineer as their