there occurred a Cabinet crisis, precipitated by the irrepressible Stjepan Radič, the Croat leader, who emerged from imprisonment because of political offenses to step into Ministerial rank. This was doubtless brought about, with malice prepense, by the astute old Pasič, long the great political power in Serbia. The motive of his admittance of Radič into the Cabinet was probably to give the Croat leader enough rope to hang himself, meanwhile pacifying the restless second partner in the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes." The present Uzunovič, or any other Cabinet, lasts only as long as Pasič needs breathing space. N EARLY half the Jugoslavians are "Orthodox" Catholics, over a third Roman Catholics; and about a tenth Mussulmans. Protestants number less than two per cent, and Jews, it is said, but half of one per cent-some change from Poland! The variety of religions seems the more remarkable when one considers that, after having crossed the Carpathians to occupy their present territories, these Slav tribes had, after various acknowledgments of Byzantine or Bavarian or other supremacy, a number of centuries of independent life. Indeed, under Czar Stepan Duchan they rose to be the most powerful of the Balkan na peared; indeed, one informant asserted that in a certain region the peasant wealth would average no less than $20,000 a house. The peasants have a reputation for hospitality. Recently, on a motor trip, two American friends with their wives found themselves very far from an inn and unable to proceed. Not only did they discover good lodging at the nearest farm, but also an unsuspected richness in food and drink, all lavishly pressed upon them. The next morning they essayed to pay for what they had received. "Not a bit of it!" exclaimed the head of the house. "Do not thus affront our willing hospitality." Our compatriots eased their consciences, however, by sending back from Belgrade a sufficient number of choice cigars-a commodity certainly scarce in the country districts. In a city once occupied by the Turks I rather expected to discover some trace of Orientalism. But the only suggestion of it during our sojourn was in a coachman's salaam or bow. Nor had I overpaid him. "The Balkan! You will not see it this side of Agram." So said our first fellowvoyagers, Jugoslavs. But Belgrade gave little evidence of it, save in the still generally wretchedly paved streets. We do not happen to be there on market day, so do not see as much live stock as an with our export hither-of petroleum and motors; cloths and chemical products come largely from Germany. Commercial relations, however, with all countries are bound to grow in extent and variety. Here is a land about the size of France or Italy with a third of the population of either. Wheat and corn grow amazingly in the Danube and Save lowlands. In mines there are gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, bauxite, and coal-both black and brown-mines, on an average, as rich as any in Europe. The Romans had many thousands of men at work in them; one sees their traces to-day. After that rule mine exploitation fell off, and quite disappeared after the fatal Turkish conquest. It is now coming back somewhat. But there is not enough necessary capital for the country's proper agricultural and mineral development. The lack of capital seems the more surprising when one notes the many bank buildings in this city. The main room of one of them was as fine as anything I have seen in our own country. Still more surprising are the statements as to the large deposits. The palatial character of the bank buildings and of such hotels as the Excelsior and the Palace contrasts curiously with some small, old-fashioned edifices alongside. tions. Alas, that they had to fall under ticipated in the thoroughfares. Recently THE Serb account, as I have heard it, Turkish domination and misrule for four hundred years and more! Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century did Slav migrations cease from this cause and Jugoslavia regain her self-respect. To go from Agram to Belgrade is to exchange the hills for a perfectly flat country. No fences, no hedges. As far as the eye can reach, the rich earth is all under cultivation, a contrast to other Jugoslav regions like Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Montenegro, where there is not enough cultivable land to supply the people's wants. Taken as a whole, the Jugoslavian population is predominantly agricultural. As in Czechoslovakia, the women one sees at the stations wear big handkerchiefs tied tightly over their heads, their gowns and shawls being black and their aprons dark blue. None of the women is handsome and some are hardly good looking, a difference from fascinating Slav faces we saw later, just as this ugly costume contrasts with the rich provincial Sunday and holiday peasant dress. The men, on the other hand, in their loose jackets and tight trousers tucked into boots, or wearing shoes with turnedup ends, were, in general, fine looking, well set up, and muscular. They were, I was told, much richer than they ap a French girl I know came here with her parents to meet the family of her Serb fiancé. The French father warned his daughter that she would find pigs running about the streets. She did. "But such darling pigs!" she exclaimed to us on her return. "What would you?" added the father. "Could love do more?" INS NSTEAD of the forbidding-looking folk one sees in some Balkan pictures, we met fine folk and friendliness everywhere. No matter if we could not speak six words of Serb and were trying to explain our wants in the first language, German, the natives learn after their own, we had only smiles and amicable nods from shop-girl, bank clerk, and traffic cop. Now, of all smiles, the Italian is certainly the most bewitching. But it seems to lack the ballast, so to speak, of the Jugoslav, even if the Serb mouth, often apparently having been cut with a chisel, has not the mobile beauty of the Italian. The King is a superb example of this national type. Jugoslavia is perhaps the richest untapped country in Europe. It increasingly exports raw materials-farm products and live stock, timber and minerals. American interest is chiefly concerned. of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's murder runs thus: With the members of the Imperial house he was not a popular prince. They were offended by his morganatic marriage and by his nobly independent course in scorning its proposed annulment and in standing by his wife, whom he had succeeded in having raised to the title of Duchess. He was an intelligent man; he had no illiberal views regarding the rights of the Slav minorities in the Empire. Yet, even so, they looked upon him with suspicion, for, as Crown Prince he was bound to support a Teutonic hegemony. Unhappily, he arrived at Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, with a pronouncement confirmatory of that hegemony, and on the very day when the many Serbs in the province were sadly solemnizing the anniversary of the Battle of Kossovo (1389), the overthrow of the Serb by the conquering Turk. The spectacle on such an occasion, as the Archduke must have known, of the scion of another conquering power would inflame some excitable and irresponsible person to violence. Yet the Crown Prince intrepidly dared to go to Sarajevo and to take his wife with him. The result was the proximate cause of the World War. Belgrade. I The capital he holds belongs to the consumer, and should be charged off" and returned in price reductions 66 Na volume just issued from the Country Life Press Henry Ford, collaborating with Samuel Crowther, reveals with remarkable frankness and convincing comment his theory of economics in its relations to industry. He calls his volume "To-Day and ToMorrow." Properly enough, "To-Day" takes up most of the space. The book booms with optimism. "We are being born into Opportunity," it heralds. Perhaps! The easy inference is that anybody can make 2,000,000 flivvers a year. But behind all this is to be found a revelation of Ford economic theories as they work out in practice that carries an important lesson to the country at large. MR. FORD is about the only manu facturer or concern who has not "capitalized" the earning power of his plant up to the last stage of tenuity. On the contrary: "We have built nothing for the sake of building. We have bought nothing for the sake of buying. We make nothing for the sake of making." Further: "No step has been taken excepting in the interest of the public and the wage-earners." The former has been blessed by a constant lowering of costs; the latter, by a rise in wages that now means a minimum of $6 per day, though many of the 200,000 directly employed earn much more. "Cutting wages does not reduce costs-it increases them," is Mr. Ford's dictum. The effect of raising wages in his case has been proved by practical demonstration in price reductions: "The only way to get a low-cost product is to pay a high price for a high grade of human service, and to see to it through management that you get that service." Yet he disclaims close supervision. There are few foremen. The work starts in the drafting-room. The blue print governs. The parts must fit; also, their cost must keep coming down. It looks simple when you read it. Wages being above those of any union scale affecting automobile building, there are no labor disputes, no hindrances. All work is work, and men are agreeable to turn their hands to anything. On the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton Railroad there is no caste. Men scrub, fix the track, or sell tickets for the same wage, and follow all By DON C. SEITZ the diverse occupations, as needed. They have ceased to be meticulous, with amazing results in increasing earning power. The road makes much money, and could earn much more if permitted to do so by the rules of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, which forbids cutting rates in the interest of bigger business. Mr. Ford has made it his specialty to revive dead properties. The Kentucky coal mines he bought were bankrupt, to pay money to us, is entitled to benefit by its confidence. by its confidence. We have no right to charge the public with interest on its own money." This is the key-note of the difference between Ford and most industrialists, who capitalize everything that can be called an asset, plus "loading" earning power. Not many get as rich by this process as Mr. Ford seems to have done by his. their miners in poverty; the iron mines SATU and the lumber mills were in the same state. Now flourishing towns have replaced squalid clusters of huts. Twothirds of the men own cars-not all Fords. Close utilization of products and high.wages have done this. Coal valued at $5 per ton. becomes worth $12 by the time the retorts at the Fordson plant are through with it. So also the timber is used-to the last scrap. A new method of heckling flax mechanically has developed a market for 45,000 acres of that textile plant in the neighborhood of Detroit. Plate glass is no longer poured from cumbrous pots, but flows forth from furnaces in unending ribbons. Waste wood becomes artificial board. The refuse from the flax stuffs cushions. Tasks are "set" for production, so bottom costs are reached. Mr. Ford recites cutting the price in two for an item bought elsewhere. The manufacturer squirmed, but conceded the new figure and made more money than ever! Under this system, Mr. Ford estimates that, adding his own pay-rolls to those of the people who supply him with things not self-produced, his enterprise distributes one thousand million dollars in wages per year. He thus believes he has established a rotating fund that flows back through his factory, leaving an increment behind, from which he takes only a "neglible" part. The rest goes into improvements or lower prices. There is no capital account and he is not charging his customers interest on the vast investment. They have already paid all they owe him. "We do not regard the public's money returned to the business as an investment upon which interest should be charged. That money is the public's money, and the public, having confidence in our product ATURATION? No danger, it would appear. If every Ford owner will buy a new car every six years, the full tide of output will continue, with much of the wide world still carless. One other economic value greatly wasted is time. Men do not stoop to pick up things in the Ford shops. They do not fuss with dull tools; new ones are ever at hand. He treats his transportation in the same way. The wastage of railroads by slow transport is something colossal. Henry will have none of it. His ships stay in harbor hours-not days. His engines are always moving; his freight cars never loaf on sidings. The time wastage is nowhere greater than on the farm. His small-part and tool factories on the little water powers of the river Rouge take up the slack time of farmers. Men do their farming now in a month and have bigger crops. They get as much time off as they need. It steadily grows less, but the farms are doing better. His own farm pays the $6 standard wages for eight hours, but neither the soil, cows, nor pigs are permitted to loaf. Besides, they are kept clean. The cows are washed daily. Cleanliness is a Ford rule everywhere. His own great farm is cultivated and cropped in fifteen days by men who earn $6 per day. Sixty tractors plow its broad acres and "keep the land in a high state of productivity." One would think this speeding up would over-produce. It does not. "There is plenty of work to be done," says this practical Aladdin. "No one has any conception of the amount of work that can be done in this country if prices are kept down and wages up!" This slogan ought to be greeted with enthusiasm everywhere, outside of pawnshops! T A Contrast in Section-Gang Mobility The motor car of to-day and the hand car of yesterday Modernity from a Car Window By CHARLES FITZHUGH TALMAN HE middle-aged man of to-day observation platforms, barber shops, has witnessed half the total and diners. Dazzling progress, indeed! evolution of the American steam though much remains to be done to railroad. When he travels over the iron make travel as safe as it is comfortable;, highway, he cannot fail to be impressed and, even in the matter of comfort, we by the improvements it has undergone must still perform acrobatic feats of within the span of his own recollection. dressing and undressing when we take a In most cases, however, his impressions nocturnal journey, unless we are of the do not do justice to the facts. He is few who can afford a compartment. likely to give an undue share of attention to changes that affect directly and obviously the personal comfort of the traveler. He embarks at a sumptuous terminal station, which affords a striking contrast to the dingy, draughty "depot" of long ago. He settles himself complacently in his spacious armchair aboard the Limited, and his mind reverts to the rudimentary passenger trains of the 'seventies or early 'eighties, innocent of steam heat, electric light, and vestibules, Get a railroad man to talk about railroad improvements, and it is likely that he will not mention passenger accommodations at all. He will dwell rather upon things of which the traveler gets glimpses through the car window; things that not only facilitate the stupendous business of transportation, but also lighten and lend dignity to the tasks of a vast army of railroad workers. The picture at the top of this page tells a typical story of railroad progress. It seems but yesterday that the backbreaking hand-car was universal. Today it is rapidly disappearing before the advent of the motor car, of which there are several styles and sizes, ranging from the light "speeder," which a single man can easily lift on and off the rails, to the largest section cars, which run on "train orders," and to which one or more trailers may be attached for transporting ties and other materials. Many of these cars are so constructed that their motors can be used to drive tools for drilling rails and other work along the right of wayin competition with that other modern labor-saving adjunct of maintenance and construction operations, the portable aircompressor. No sight more eloquent of progress is to be had through the car window than the action of the automatic coupler. The Work of the Spreader Plow The steel hopper car, with sloping ends to facilitate the flow of its contents, discharges through gates at the bottom. Its size is impressive. As compared with the wooden coal cars of 1870, with an average capacity of 11 tons, these steel monsters carry from 50 to 100 and even 120 tons of coal. The portable car unloader is a species of conveyor designed for unloading coal or other materials from hopper cars directly into trucks or to storage pile. It will fill a five-ton truck in five minutes with the casual co-operation of one man Though banned by Act of Congress in 1893, the old "link-and-pin" coupler, with its terrific record of maimed arms and bodies, was not yet entirely obsolete at the beginning of the present century. Guiding the link into place by hand as two cars came together was the deadliest of the daily tasks once performed by trainmen and switch men. How would you like the job of shoveling three or four tons of coal an hour into the fiery maw of a locomotive on a torrid summer afternoon? From your comfortable chair on the Pullman you may still see firemen sweating at this task; but you will also note a good many sitting at ease in the cab, while a tireless mechanical stoker feeds the flames. Railroad modernity is a crowded picture. Some of its salient features are air-brakes, all-steel cars, colossal locomotives, automatic block signals, and electrified tunnels. Not less interesting are the manifold appliances that, while speeding traffic, conspicuously enhance the welfare of the men whose lives are spent in railroading. Novel luxuries provided for the transient inmates of perambulatory hotels are of quite subordinate importance. Photograph from International Motor Co. The Gasoline Rail Car The advent of the gasoline bus on "steam" railroads marks an epoch in railroading. Thus far the function of these vehicles is to replace the local train of one or two coaches and a locomotive for light passenger service, effecting a very marked reduction in both investment and operating expenses I By JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ N the summer of 1915, five years after Glacier National Park was established, a number of families of the Pikuni-or, as they are officially misnamed, the Blackfeet-set up their lodges on the shore of Two Medicine Lodges Lake, just outside the east line of the Park. From there, every morning, the old hunters rode out in quest of the few elk and deer remaining in the timbered foothills of their reservation, the while their women gathered great store of berries to dry for winter use. A few of the hunters were successful, and around the evening lodge fires we feasted upon fat roasted ribs; and then, when the big pipe was going the round of the circle, we talked of many things, often of encampments and adventures in this very place when buffalo meat was the staff of life and buffalo robes and buffalo leather were the clothing and the shelter of the people. But the talk was not always of the past. One night, when it turned to matters of the present day, my old friend Tail-Feathers-Coming-Overthe-Hill spoke bitterly of that which he named "the most recent wrong which the whites have put upon us." Said he: "It is true that nineteen winters ago we sold to the whites this backbone-of-the-world portion of our reservation. But did we at the same time sell to them the names that we and our fathers before us had given to these mountains, lakes, and streams? "No! We did not sell them! And now the whites have wiped them out, and upon the map of the country they have put their own names; foolish names of no meaning whatever! Our names were, in a way, the history of our people to far-back times. My friends, the whites' names should at once be wiped out, and our names restored to the map of the region, that our children who come after us may be ever reminded of the bravery, the dignity, the in every way fine character of their once powerful ancestors, and so be ever proud of the blood in their veins." "Ai! Ai! True! That should be done!" the old man's listeners exclaimed. Pointing to me, the old chief continued: "Right here is one of us who can do it. Apikuni, we name you for this important work." "Ai! Ai! You can do it, you must do it," chorused the little circle. "I shall be glad to do it, but not this |