Donahey in the Cleveland Plain Dealer

EUROPEAN POLITICS

GRAND STAND

GENOA

JUST A GRAND STANDER

From Julius J. H. Hayn, Buffalo, N. Y.

THE LIFE OF THE PARTY

From Newton Bradford, Columbus, Ohio

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finds in Riley's verse perhaps more frequently than any other sentiment, and this verse will remain his monument long after much verse that is subtle and intellectually more mature will have been generally forgotten. In this sense Riley erected his own monument; but his neighbors have now built to his memory a monument of their own, and it is in the same vein as his verse. It is a hospital for the care of stricken children.

At the exercises at this hospital, in Indianapolis, Secretary James J. Davis, of the Department of Labor, paid a tribute to Riley in which he recognized this gift of the Indiana poet. "If the very sight of a child, if the fancies, the joys, the little griefs of a child touch us all so deeply," said Secretary Davis, "how much more touching are the fancies and joys and griefs of a child who is broken and bent and crippled! Nothing ever moved Riley to finer strains of poetry than bright, happy childhood, but nothing ever more stirred the depths of his being than the sight of childhood blighted with pain and distress." Secretary Davis mentioned the incident, which was one of Riley's earliest recollections, in which Riley saw to it that a lame schoolfellow always had the first ride in the swing under the locust trees at recess. Perhaps it is not mere coincidence that Riley's State, according to Secretary Davis, is leading in the effort to aid crippled children. Close after Indiana come New York, and Ohio, and Michigan, and Virginia, Massachusetts, Montana, Missouri, Illinois, and the rest. "In New York City alone," said Mr. Davis, "there are 36,000 cripples. A census of the Nation's cripples has never been undertaken-we have shrunk from the painful task. But let us hope that the percentage in New York is unusual, and that the country as a whole has taken no such toll of human bodies." According to Secretary Davis, there is not a State in the land that does not, through public or private means, pay heed to the needs of crippled children.

Riley's verses on "The Happy Little Cripple" contain in very simple and perhaps, to some, sentimental language a sound philosophy; for in those verses Riley represents the cripple as wondering how his aunt could possibly be happy in a heaven where she did not have a chance to take care of him, for in heaven "they's nary angel 'bout the place with curv'ture of the spine." It is certainly true that the crippled children who are cared for in this hospital will do as much for the people of Indianapolis as the people of Indianapolis will do for them. In spite of wars and strikes and crime waves, this truth has been a dominant one in modern times.

Certainly such a hospital as the Riley Children's Memorial Hospital is as distinctive of the civilization of to-day as the amphitheaters and forums were of that of Rome.

HOME STUDY IN SING SING

U

NIVERSITY Work among the inmates of a State's prison is a novelty; it is also an undertaking of fine intention and aspiration. Columbia University in its courses at Sing Sing is trying to bridge the gulf between aspiration and failure, ambition and despair. It started when Mr. Spencer Miller. Jr., visited the great San Quentin Prison in California and found there a genuine interest in education as a constructive element in rehabilitation. Mr. Miller later became an assistant warden at Sing Sing, and has done a great deal to carry out the idea. Elementary instruction already existed; Mr. Miller undertook to do something for the men who entered prison with a certain amount of education and needed something more. His argument was that if the modern prison idea is to make a man capable of resuming his citizenship, there could be no means more effective than education.

In the head of the Columbia Home Study Department, Mr. Levering Tyson, sympathy and co-operation were found, for he remembered that long before a Sing Sing prisoner had written to him asking for a course in Spanish, to be paid for after his discharge. This was not possible at that time. Now a scholarship fund for such purposes is in existence and an inmate is eligible for full scholarship for a year if he is approved by the Sing Sing Mutual Welfare League, the head teacher, and the warden.

Under this plan thirty-five such scholarships were established, but this proved pitifully inadequate, for eighty applications were received from the men, and many of them still await the generous impulse of those who may be interested.

What kind of courses do Sing Sing prisoners want? In reply, we are told that some of the courses asked for but not given for lack of funds are interior decoration, automobile construction, commercial art, traffic management, and certain musical courses. Among the courses now given are English composition, advertising and selling, Spanish, agriculture, foreign exchange, newspaper writing, photoplay composition, accounting, fire insurance, American history, philosophy.

One interesting example of the work is that of a prisoner who has had a play accepted by a Broadway producer. More general results have been increase in courtesy and friendliness on the part of the prisoners to their teachers and the

growth of a spirit of mutual service among the prisoners themselves.

A CORRECTION

N hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the House of Representatives,. C. V. Knightley, of Boston, testified that seventeen Assyrians, women and children, deported from Ellis Island, the immigrant station in New York Harbor, landed at Constantinople and were then massacred. These people, it was finally ascertained, as a result of an investigation by the American High Commission at Constantinople, were Armenians, the party consisting of seven men, nine women, and three children (making not seventeen, but twelve women and chil dren in all)-nineteen in the whole party. The Secretary of State, Mr. Hughes, has written to the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Davis, reporting the findings of the High Commission and saying that it appears that, "after leaving no avenue of useful investigation unexplored, the High Commission was unable to find the slightest evidence to substantiate the rumor." Similarly, a careful investiga. tion by the Y. W. C. A. also proves the rumor to have been substantially false. The Migration Secretary of the Y. W. C. A. at Constantinople personally interviewed four of those reported murdered -one of them being the mother in a family of five. Apparently there has been no sign that a single one of the nineteen was killed. In its issue of January 4, The Outlook, in commenting upon the hardships of deportation, referred to this rumor, not as a fact, but as a "story" which was "told of some Armenian women and children." We are giving a great deal more space to the correction than to the original report of the rumor, both because we de sire that justice be done to the Department of Labor, that is responsible for deportation, and because we are heartily glad that the story has been proved untrue.

LADY ASTOR

ADY ASTOR is one of the most ex

L'ordinary and at the same time

most engaging of the distinguished persons that have recently come from the other side of the Atlantic to visit this country. As a matter of fact, she is not a foreign visitor at all. She is an American girl returning to see the home folks. She was born and raised-to use the Southern phraseology-in Virginia. Nancy Langhorne was the scion of an aristocratic but land-poor family. She had beauty, education, a quick mind, a warm heart, and a fine spirit-a heritage that is better than millions of dollars so far as happiness and effectiveness

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re

in life are concerned. About the time she was emerging from girlhood an American millionaire, William Waldorf Astor, emigrated to England and finally became a peer of the realm. His son married Nancy Langhorne, was elected to the House of Commons, and, finally, on his father's death, inherited his father's peerage and is now Viscount Astor. Thus it happens that the American girl from Virginia is Viscountess Astor.

When Lord Astor inherited his father's title, he was, under the British Constitution, transferred from the House of Commons to the House of Lords and his seat in the Commons was vacant. His wife, who believed in woman suf-E frage and was active in the suffrage movement in England before the war, determined to offer herself as a candidate. She made a splendid campaign in and about Plymouth, which constituency, after a triumphal election, she now represents in the House of Commons. Her husband, Lord Astor, has publicly said that it is not surprising that she should have been elected nor is it especially to her credit; what is surprising and much to her credit, he believes, is that she has made a success as a member of the House of Commons. Her common sense, her good humor, her human sympathy, and her brilliant, sparkling, and spontaneous style of speaking have given her real influence in Parliament.

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She has come to America especially to attend the Convention of the National League of Women Voters, which has just concluded its sessions in Baltimore, and she has captivated everybody she has come in contact with since she arrived in this country about two weeks ago.

Personality is a most elusive and difficult thing to describe. It is far easier for Conan Doyle to explain or to photograph ectoplasm, a stuff of which he says spirits are made, than it is for a writer to express in printed words the effect of a flashing glance, or a rippling smile, or a spontaneous gesture, or the engaging hesitation of an instant while a speaker is eagerly choosing a word with which more effectively to take the already capitulating fortress, of the hearer's mind. So it is not easy to describe Lady Astor's distinctive personality. One of the most effective slang phrases of the day is "have a heart." She manifestly has a heart. Indeed, at the dinner which was given in her honor on April 20. by the English Speaking Union, in New York, she said: "I didn't quite know whether New York audiences would be as kind as Plymouth audiences. I see that they are much the same. They forgive shortcomings in the way of scholarly or oratorical attainments when they see that you are speak

(C) Harris & Ewing

ing from your heart. I usually do speak from my heart, for I have tried my head and found it wanting."

Lady Astor denies that she has come over here on a mission. "Can't a person come home," she inquired with a smile, "without being suspected of ulterior motives?" Uttering this defense with that little whimsical turn of voice and expression of countenance with which Theodore Roosevelt used to employ humor to point a moral, she denied that she is a personage and asserted that she is "but a symbol-a sort of a connecting link between all English-speaking peoples, a frail link, perhaps, but a link that is stronger than it looks." In her various speeches and interviews she has laid great stress-from "the motherwoman's point of view"-upon the necessity for the abolition of war and for an association of nations based upon human sympathy and human co-operation.

She has not criticised or advised the American people in the slightest degree, but she has made some allusions in a semi-humorous vein which are penetrating and significant. For example, when asked of her opinion of prohibition she replied: "All I can say with conviction is that I have never met the man or woman who has been made more unselfish or better by drink, but I have seen hundreds ruined by it." Asked regarding her views of the Irish question, her answer was: "The Irish question? There will be no trouble in Ireland if they will only look forward instead of back. I have no patience with anything based on ancient prejudices and ancient wrong. I have a great admiration for the Irish; I am part Irish myself; but

they will lose sympathy throughout the world if they do not stop fighting among themselves and start looking forward." She deplores the attacks of a peculiar personal nature made on Great Britain in the United States Senate. Personalities in politics she evidently thinks unsportsmanlike. "You know," she said, "if a member of Parliament made attacks of this kind in the House of Commons on the United States, it would not be tolerated by his. féllow-members. 'It is not cricket!' they would exclaim." But the reader must not get the impression that vivacity and ever-buoyant good spirits are the sole characteristics of this charming Anglo-American or Americo-Englishwoman. She has her serious moments, in which she gives expression to the fundamental truths of her political philosophy in a language of common sense that every one can understand. Perhaps her political philosophy cannot be summed up better than she has done it in the following passage of her address to the New York League of Woman Voters, which was delivered in the Town Hall of New York City on the very evening of her arrival from her transatlantic voyage:

can

I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world except a woman-governed world-but I see the combination of the two going forward and making civilization more worthy of the name of civilization based on Christianity, not force,-a civilization based on justice and mercy. I feel men have a greater sense of justice and we of mercy. They must borrow our mercy and we must use their justice. We are new brooms; let us see that we sweep the right rooms.

Personally, I feel that every woman

should take an active part in local politics. I don't mean by that that every woman should go in for a political career-that, of course, is absurd-but you can take an active part in local government without going in for a political career. You can be certain when casting your vote you are casting it for what seems nearest right-for what seems more likely to help the majority and not bolster up an organized minority. There is a lot to be done in local politics, and it is a fine apprenticeship to central government. Local politics are very practical, and I think that, although practical, they are too near to be attractive. The things that are far away are more apt to catch our eye than the ones which are just under our noses; then, too, they are less disagreeable.

Political development is like all other developments. We must begin with ourselves, our own consciences, and clean out our own hearts before we take on the job of putting others straight. So with politics; if we women put our hands to local politics, we begin the foundations. After all, central governments only echo local

ones.

After hearing Lady Astor's opinions on current and critical political questions and after reading the accounts of her success as a Member of Parliament, we wonder if the old aphorism, "Virginia is the mother of Presidents," may not have to be changed to-Virginia is the father of stateswomen!

INCORPORATE THE LABOR UNIONS

N another page a labor leader, Mr. Ellis Searles, protests that the demand for the incorporation of labor unions comes primarily from "the union busters" of the country. With this we totally disagree. We also disagree with his statement that if the unions were incorporated and held legally accountable for the fulfillment of their contracts they would be "subject to the whim of hostile courts." This is also Mr. Gompers's publicly stated view. If the courts of the United States are hostile to labor, which we by no means believe, the quickest way to eradicate that hostility is to take the unions out of a special and favored class of the public over which the courts have no control.

With Mr. Searles's assertion that labor is not a commodity we are in entire sympathy. Commodity is a thing; service is rendered by a person. If a man comes to your house to sell you melons, and you know how to judge melons, the character of the man does not concern you. If a man applies to you for a position as gardener and he and you are going to work together in growing melons, it is of great importance that

I

WHAT AN
IMMIGRANT

IN THE.
CABINET
THINKS OF
IMMIGRATION

T has been said that America is no longer a land of opportunity. It has been said that we have crystallized into a classdivided nation. The only trouble with these statements is that they are not true.

One of the proofs that they are not so occupies a place in the Cabinet of President Harding-James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor.

Secretary Davis was born in Wales. He came to this country as a boy, and worked, when a young man, as an iron puddler. At twenty-one he was president of his local branch of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers of America.

We recently wrote Secretary Davis, asking him for a photograph of himself as a boy, and he replied: "Unfortunately, during the early days of my life in America our family had very little money to spend for such luxuries as photographs and portraits."

We wanted that picture to go with an article which the Secretary has written for us on the problem of the immigrant. No one is better equipped than Secretary Davis to appreciate what the immigrant Owes America and what America owes the immigrant. The article will appear in an early issue of The Outlook.

you should know his character and that he should know yours. If a man sells you a commodity, the relation between you and him is that of seller and purchaser. If a man sells you his labor, the relation between you and him is that of co-operators in a common enterprise. At the root of much of our present industrial disturbances is the fact that both employer and employee treat labor as a commodity. The result is that the laborer is often indifferent to his employer's interest and the employer is often indifferent to the interests of labor.

But it is also true that men may contract to furnish service and that they may be held accountable for not furnishing what they agree to. A surgeon contracts to perform an operation and to attend the patient after the operation and dress the wound. If in the middle of the operation he should cease work or strike in order to get a larger fee than he agreed upon beforehand, he could be criminally punished for malpractice

that is, for not furnishing the service which he had agreed to furnish. Society recognizes this principle in some forms of employment. Mutiny at sea is a crime. Mutiny is simply a strike against performing a service which the sailors had agreed to perform in signing the ship's articles. If Mr. Searles were on a transatlantic liner and suddenly the engineers, the firemen, and quartermasters declined to do their work and the vessel was in danger of shipwreck or the boilers threatened to explode, would he not be among the first to insist upon the forcible completion of the seamen's contract and their punishment when they reached port for breaking the contract?

Mr. Searles makes many bald assertions which cannot be sustained by the facts. He says, for example, that the prime purpose of corporations is to evade responsibility. He either ignores or is ignorant of the elementary principles of corporation law. Corporations are suable and can sue. If they are fined, the stockholders share the loss pro rata. In some cases, as, for example, in National banking corporations, the directors of the corporation are doubly liable for the fulfillment of contracts. Mr. Searles says that there are all kinds of associations in commerce which If are not incorporated. he means that those associations are not amenable to regulation by law he is of course mistaken. The courts, on the complaint of the Federal Trade Commission, have just dissolved one such association-the association formed for mutual benefit by the dealers in hardwood lumber. It is true that associations for mutual benefit which do not make legal agreements only have to comply with certain special regulations for such mutual benefit associations. But the labor unions are associations formed, not merely for mutual benefit, but to enter into contractual obligations. They either ought not to enter into these obligations or, if they do, ought to be so constituted that they can fulfill their contracts.

The trouble with the labor unions today is that they want to eat their cake and keep it. They want to hold employers to contracts, but they do not want to be held themselves. Mr. Gompers has recently admitted upon the witnessstand that the trouble with many unions is that they are in the hands of unscrupulous and petty leaders. His remedy for this condition is patience, with the hope that the long processes of education will make bad men good, although with delightful inconsistency he does not rely on such processes in dealing with bad employers. The really effective way to make unscrupulous and irresponsible men careful-whether they are employers or labor leaders--is to

impose responsibilities upon them and hold them accountable.

Nor do we think that the advantages of the incorporation of labor unions would be wholly one-sided. The very tone and tenor of Mr. Searles's article indicate what we believe to be the factthat to-day labor unions and labor-union leaders are looked upon with distrust. suspicion, irritation, and sometimes anger by the public at large because of their sabotage, their violence, and their unwillingness to abide by their own word. If they were incorporated, that very fact would give them the social standing which they now feel they lack. The phrase, "dignity of labor," is a much abused and misused one. If, however, labor unions are to have the social dignity which Mr. Searles subconsciously feels they lack and which we believe it would be socially desirable for them to possess, one of the quickest -ways in which they could achieve this dignity would be to incorporate themselves, become responsible entities, and take their place with other citizens who regard the courts and judicial procedure, not as hostile engines of a despotic government, but as the best device which democracy has discovered for the settlement of human disputes. When Mr. Searles speaks of judicial procedure as "the whim of hostile courts," does he not come dangerously near to allying himself and the cause which he has at heart with the attitude towards society which is entertained by the thug, the pickpocket, and the swindler? Labor leaders of the intellectual ability of Mr. Searles and Mr. Gompers are doing their cause as well as their country disservice in attacking the courts. If there is injustice in American courts, what labor leaders should do is to join with their other fellow-citizens, who have placed their property and treasuries under the direction and protection of judicial procedure, in reforming court abuses rather than to ally themselves with lawbreakers as enemies of the courts.

T

The Outlook does not wish to be classed with "the union busters" of the country. It desires to see the unions incorporated because it desires to see them dignified and strengthened so that collective bargaining can go hand in hand with social justice. If, however, the labor unions wish to place themselves or to have society place them outside of the pale of the courts, they will find that this is the surest way to shipwreck. History shows that no class, whether it be composed of the wealthy or of the so-called proletariat, can long exist in nations that Delieve in constitutional government with out being willing to submit to the rules and regulations of law which society at large has framed for its self-protection.

FAMILIAR SPIRITS

S

AUL, King of Israel, was but one of the long line of those who from prehistoric days have sought the aid of witches and mediums to raise the spirits of the dead. When Saul went, disguised, to consult the woman at Endor who had a familiar spirit, and fell "all along on the earth," overcome partly by his superstitious fear of the woman's message and partly by his faintness from hunger, he cut a ridiculous figure. His conduct in this, as in other instances, serves, not as an example to be followed, but as a warning. His effort to find in the supernatural a support for his wavering faith and his timid will resulted only in enfeebling his will and corrupting his faith.

What happened to Saul has happened to many thousands of others in the ages before him, and in the ages since, and in our own day. What is called Spiritualism is chiefly, if not wholly, an attempt to escape from the normal duties and responsibilities of life by recourse to counsel and direction from the dark. For one who has the purpose of seeking clues to new truths of science through so-called mediums by a cold and impartial examination of evidence, as the chemist or physicist seeks such clues in the undisturbed seclusion of his laboratory, there are hundreds who are seeking by such means either new sensations or some comfort and solace in sorrow, or some power which they can substitute for their own will and character in the control of conduct.

We publish on another page an article by Vilhjalmur Stefansson which gives an interesting portrait of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and incidentally an unconsciously self-painted portrait of the great Arctic explorer. We do not doubt either the intelligence or the sincerity of conviction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but we do not think that his message brings a new revelation of truth and power.

Against the application of scientific methods to the search for truth no one who loves truth would wish to place any obstruction. There may be differences of opinion as to the regions in which such search for truth are most promising; as to the methods applicable in particular cases; and as to the evidence necessary for the formulation of working hypotheses. These differences are common to all realms of science. With such we are not here concerned. It is not this aspect of so-called psychical phenomena that has aroused the public interest and has given audiences to such men as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What sends people to the lectures of Sir Oliver and Sir Arthur

and to the séances of mediums is not a scientific impulse; it is the great desire to communicate with the spirits of the departed whom they know, and from whom they want to get some word that will make life worth while.

Since the war, when the fact of death was impressed upon the minds of many hundreds of thousands by the dramatic experiences of battle and sudden calamity, this desire has been intensified. It is, in fact, not a scientific but a religious phenomenon. There is in the minds of these hundreds of thousands a sense of wrongness, and a consequent effort to make some connection with the Higher Powers. This, as William James has pointed out in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," is the essence of religion. There are, however, helpful religions and hurtful religions, true religions and false religions, religions that build up and strengthen character and religions that demoralize. No one can observe thoughtfully this phenomenon without wondering how far it is a symptom of spiritual and moral health, and how far it is a symptom of a breakdown in spirit, morals, or mind.

No amount of evidence that the spirit of man survives bodily death is of itself, or can be made to be, of service to a true and wholesome religion. It is not what a man believes, or even knows, about life in a future existence that constitutes faith; it is rather his attitude toward life and the kind of life that he lives resulting from that attitude. The only kind of eternal life that counts is eternal life here and now. Even the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which constitutes one of the articles of belief among his followers, did not of itself put life and heart into his disciples. It was the kind of life that Jesus lived and was able to impart to his disciples that was the source of their power and the substance of their faith; and it was not merely his bodily appearance after death that seemed significant to them, but rather the sense of his presence with them in spite of death. It was not the fact that he walked with them to Emmaus that made their hearts burn within them, but what he said to them on the way. If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will bring to the world a message of power and life, it will not matter much where he gets it. If he can secure such messages as a result of his experiences, no one will question their validity. But the mere fact that a man who has a reputation for knowing something about evidence and who has had some scientific training in medicine reports that he has seen spirits, and has obtained from them some description of the circumstances of life after death, has no bearing whatever upon that faith