go among over a thousand employees, he didn't seem particularly pleased."

Take another instance of an attempt to help. At the demand of its men a large factory installed a profit-sharing plan. Things went beautifully until the business slump arrived. The day came when a ten per cent loss was shown. That day the men struck for a return to their former wage scale.

That is the sort of thing that discourages benevolent-minded employers.

Then too there is the employer who says: "They let others fight while they held their nice, safe jobs at home. Then they held us up because they knew we had to produce the goods to help the others win their fight. They bought silk shirts and victrolas and automobiles, while the others risked their lives for a dollar a day. Now let them suffer a little."

These, indeed, are extreme instances of some of the present feeling. There are many large industries-and the larger the industry, the bigger the man, for it takes big men to run big businesses-that are really thinking in terms of improvement and progress.

JUST ONE REMEDY AFTER ANOTHER

The expedients attempted are manifold, and are in many cases destined to ultimate success. From such employers as these may be expected a lead that will gradually be followed by the lesser men, so that eventually the labor-capital condition may be put more securely upon a sound and practical basis. To illustrate:

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There is a movement to give the operative a share in the business by allowing him to buy stock at a considerable reduction upon its par value, settling upon This easy payment plan. method is generally held in high favor. But in certain cases it fails miserably, either because of the natural suspicion long dormant in the employee that any advance by capital is to be deeply suspected, or, rarely, because of a valid doubt as to the real worth of the securities offered.

There is the profit-sharing plan, as mentioned previously. But this idea is always susceptible to the objection previously used as an unhappy example. If the plant loses money, the employee loses money; and not many workmen are educated to that degree of philosophy.

A third expedient is to allow the operative a share in the actual control of the plant. In Italy such an opportunity is now officially offered by the Government: There are, naturally, obvious difficulties; to expect a good glass-blower to act sagaciously upon a delicate question of credit or to put the sales policy in the hands of the office stenographer is as injudicious as to anticipate that the advertising manager will prove a conspicuous success as fireman in the engine-room. Actual plant operation by the workmen had its dramatic test in North Italy not long ago; and the painful consequences to the workmen them

selves is answer enough to that ideal of the Utopians.

The fallacy involved in all these plans demonstrates that in an industry as well as in an army the need still persists for the single command. Industry demands efficiency, and efficiency still depends upon a single responsible leader. The difficulty is with the leader himself, after all; and it is by no upheaval of the whole economic system that we shall solve the labor problem.

So it is that those plants which have been most conspicuously successful have depended rather upon securing between the leader and his workmen a better and more thorough understanding. To this end have been established such institutions às departments of welfare and of industrial relations, athletic leagues, foremen's meetings, and so forth.

CHARLES LAMB'S SOLUTION

The whole idea involved is that there may be established between employer and employed a relationship somewhat approximating the personal good fellowship of the old days, when the owner of the barrel factory played checkers with his journeymen coopers in the country store and swapped tobacco with the mechanic whose task it was to coax the ancient steam-engine into daily animation. The old-time employer knew his men and their wives and their children; and the men had known the boss's wife when she was a long-legged twelveyear old and wore her tow hair in pigtails; and had seen the boss himself pulled out of the ice hole in the "crik” by their own foreman's father. What labor troubles there were in those days were settled face to face and man to

man.

It all goes back to the condition so well expressed by the genial author of the "Essays of Elia." Lamb, with his usual hop-skip-and-jump peculiarity of speech, once said: "I h-h-h-hate that man!"

"Why, Charles," objected a mutual acquaintance of Lamb and the man referred to, "you don't even know him."

"That's it," acquiesced the eccentric Charles, blandly; "if I k-k-k-knew him I c-c-c-couldn't hate him."

ADVERTISING TO THE WORKERS

It is to supply this lost relation between executive and employee that many industries have found the plant magazine, the house organ, most useful. The joy of seeing one's name in the paper is one of the most normal of human idiosyncrasies; and the delight in gossip and the opinions of the neighbors is by no means confined to the gentler sex. How else do the "Bingville Bugles" of ten thousand hamlets eke out an existence?

In the plant paper appear notices of all the activities, all the little landmarks, that go to make up the life of the worker: engagements, birthday parties, weddings, christenings, picnics, deaths, and births; descriptions of the use of the products manufactured; short articles on health, thrift, efficiency; lit

tle stories about the history of our own country, showing what it means to be an American. All these have their place in a well-edited plant paper. Something over four hundred of the leading manu facturers of the United States now utilize such publications.

In many cases these little magazines spring up spontaneously, as an indi vidual effort of some ambitious under executive. And, naturally arousing pop ular interest, the time comes when the little sheet attracts the attention of the president. "Why can't we use this to tell them about our business? We ad vertise to the public, who must buy what we have to sell; why not advertise to the worker, who must produce what the public buys?”

And again, in times of commercial tensity the progressive executive may say: "Suppose we show our workers frankly and honestly what we are up against." So gradually the magazine becomes a real force for holding to gether, stimulating pride, increasing loyalty of the plant operatives. That man is no radical who can point to a display of goods in a Main Street win dow and say, "We made that!"

‘TREAT THEM RIGHT”

Emphasis is laid upon the plant magazine idea because it is the single agency through which the executive comes directly into touch with every worker in his employ. There are, too, many other factors most important in any attempt to raise the standard of conditions in manufacturing. The spirited rivalry that marks athletic contests between rival plants and the spirit that results are certainly excellent things for the solidarity of the organization. Rest rooms and hospital facilities, careful supervision of working quarters—all of these are practically indispensable to the maintenance of an efficient operating force. Lunch-rooms, when properly conducted and made pleasant for the workers-emphasis is necessary here be cause in many lunch-rooms the cattleherding principle seems to be still in vogue are of material value.

All of these innovations, however, go back directly to the old fundamental of the relationship between employer and employed.

"Treat them right and they will treat you right," is a pretty sound formula, after all. It works. That is the proof.

In Buffalo, for instance, is a large plant with a thousand men on its payroll. There came a time recently when the work could no longer be done profitably at the old wage scale. There was plenty of work to be done; but to do it there must be a cut in wages. The head of that plant called his foremen together and explained clearly the situation. "Either," he said, "we have work at a slightly lower wage, or we have no work at all. Put it up to the men."

The foremen put it up to their workers. The workers sent in a committee of their own to the president. After an hour the committee nodded: "All right;

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OR more than an hour I had been seated in the delightful sunshine of the Southern woods. My back was against an ancient live-oak; indeed, I was retired among the huge convolutions of the old monarch's high-heaved roots. I had seen some interesting things in wild life: a half-dozen gray Or squirrels disporting themselves among the dead leaves on the ground; a covey heof.quail trooping out of the woods toward a broomsedge; and one lone wild gobbler, beginning to roam in that purtire poseful and significant manner which 1 shows that he feels the coming urge of spring. Suddenly, off to my left, there t was a flash of black-and-white falling; then came a heavy thud, which was followed by the sound of slow scuffling. I quickly went over toward the scene of this encounter of the wild, and was rewarded by a strange sight. A kingsnake which had been basking in the mellow sunlight on a horizontal live-oak limb some ten feet above the ground had dropped from that height upon a glass snake, which, as I came up, was in the snake-killer's fatal toils. It was assuredly a strange scene in nature in these lone and silent woods to have a grim little tragedy like that enacted. But the maneuver was characteristically clever on the part of the king-snake, or what we call the "thunderbolt," which on this occasion justified his latter appellation.

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TRAIL

On another day, near the same spot, I saw a great king-snake pursuing another reptile; I did not catch sight of the victim, but I felt sorry for him; for never have I seen a pursuer appear more in earnest or more certain of accomplishing his design. With a lithe, rocking motion, and with his head and fore body held high off the ground, the beautiful harrier moved swiftly through the woods, threading the secret pathways with eerie assurance and with all the speed and alertness of the most crafty of hunters. The end of this chase I did not witness; but on another occasion I witnessed the behavior of a king-snake when his prey was taken from him; and the reader can judge from that incident, now described, that the thunderbolt can hardly be robbed of his kill.

A party of us had been deer hunting in October, the worst month for snakes in the pinelands of Carolina.

As we

gathered in the road after a drive, one of our number bore over his shoulder a long pine pole, and upon the pole a

"FROM THE BORDERS OF A LAGOON I LOVE TO WATCH THE MILITARY MANEUVERS OF FROGS AND THEIR ARCH ENEMIES, THE SNAKES"

strange burden. Wrapped in final and in fatal battle were a rattler and a king-snake. They were of about the same proportions; the killer was slightly longer, and the rattler slightly bulkier in the body. This was a timber rattlesnake, and not a lordly diamondback. When this sinister burden was deposited in the road, we separated the snakes with poles; and a difficult feat it was to drag them apart. One man of the group suggested that we have a race; and to this we agreed. We lifted the rattler across the roadside ditch and gave him a quiet chance to crawl away. Indeed, we were obliged to give him almost a half-hour before we were sure

that he had made any kind of getaway. At the end of that time we set the thunderbolt down on the trail of the rattler. I shall never forget with what intelligent alacrity the king-snake followed the slot. We followed also; but we had some difficulty in so doing. About two hundred yards from the road we came upon the combatants. Once more they were locked in grim and gorgeous battle. It appeared to me that they had exactly the same "hold" on each other as they had had when first found. This second encounter we did not try, to terminate. And it could have but one end, for the king-snake is complete master of the rattler. However, I

doubt if any king-snake could handle one of the huge old diamond-backs that it has been my dubious privilege to encounter-regal serpents, not only of dreadful venomous power, but also of superbly formidable muscular development.

During my plantation life I have not had many meetings with the true diamond-back; nor, indeed, with his humbler relative, the timber rattler. But such encounters as have been mine have impressed me greatly. These reptiles I respect highly, and I have the natural and common dread of them. It is, however, a remarkable thing that so few persons are actually struck by the rattler; and of those struck, the majority recover. But let it not be thought that the rattlesnake's venom may not prove fatal (as a New England schoolteacher lately contended with me). I was asked to show a single instance in which the rattler had killed a man. It happens that for many years I have carefully collected data on this somewhat gruesome matter; and I can report several authentic instances. I can in each instance give names, dates, and exact circumstances of the tragedy. I will comment on two only. The first occurred near Arden, North Carolina, in the summer of 1894. I was within a mile of the scene of the accident. Two mountain children were picking blackberries along an old fence-row. The elder, some yards from the younger, heard the latter talking to something. Then suddenly there was a cry. the elder child reached the younger, the rattler had struck it twice upon the nec (the most dangerous place). The child soon lapsed into unconsciousness, and never recovered. The snake in this instance was not killed; but it was undoubtedly a regular mountain timber rattler.

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The second case I do not give without hesitation, yet it is well for every man or woman who ventures into snake country to be aware of the possible peril. Only by that caution which comes from being intelligently informed can danger be avoided. Less than a year ago, on a plantation not far south of Savannah, Georgia, two brothers were inspecting

some pine timber on one of the wilder parts of their estate. Both of them were standing on a huge fallen log, which rested in a bed of ferns, huckleberry bushes, gallberries, and the like. They were talking in that absorbed fashion which is the result of the mind's being busy with appraisal when one of them stepped down from the log into the underbrush. He was instantly struck, and with no warning, by a huge diamond-back. The wound was directly in the femoral artery; and so instantaneous was the effect of the venom that the victim fell to the ground. He swooned, and within four hours he had passed away, without ever having re

gained consciousness. The snake, a most formidable chimera, was killed. This is a terrible example of what may happen if a man carelessly steps on what the Seminole Indians used to call "the Great King."

But rattlesnakes, especially the monster diamond-backs, are not anywhere very common; the Southwest contains more than any other region. And from about the latitude of Savannah northward reptiles hibernate from November to March, which are the very months when sportsmen are most likely to be abroad in snaky haunts.

Now, if the reader will permit me, I shall descend from the dreadful to the amusing-or shall rise, perhaps. For it

is a fact that there are certain features about snake life which render it humorous, at least from the human standpoint. I shall immediately illustrate my meaning.

One day I was fishing in a big ricefield canal, which is no mean place for large-mouth bass. I had a Negro with me. Getting a somewhat sluggish strike, I tried to hook the fish, but instead, my line became fastened about a submerged snag. The Negro offered to loose it for me. He made his way down the bank; he stepped into the edge of the water, holding my line gingerly in his hand. Drawing it taut so that the direction of it into the water would locate the old snag for him, he reached down with the other hand into the depths of the muddy water. Meanwhile I waited somewhat

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negligently, expecting nothing interestfing. Suddenly the Negro cried out wildly; and he had the best reason in the world so to cry. He had managed to pull the line loose, but as it came free there emerged from the water, fast hooked, a huge rusty cottonmouth moccasin; and it swiftly wrapped itself, tail first, about the man's bare arm. For a moment we should have been in the novies. I was on the bank, holding the line sufficiently taut to keep the snake 1 from striking the Negro, but not at all crazy about having the moccasin suddenly released and thrown into my shirt-front. But in a moment it was over, and the man was freed. Yet it took the two of us some time to get rid of our dangerous prey. I may add that in Southern rivers, in reserves, in riceditches and canals, moccasins abound. Several times, in high water, I have had the cottonmouth drop into my boat from overhanging aquatic bushes, on which this snake loves to bask.

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Not once, but several times, I have come upon one snake in the grimly amusing task of swallowing another snake. The contest enters the championship class when the sizes of the two reptiles approach equality. I remember he seeing a moccasin trying to "get away" his with a common water-snake that was almost his own length. When I found e them, they had entered a difficult stage of the business. Taking proper precau tions, I pulled them apart, but it was not an easy thing to do. One serpent appeared to me to be feeling about as badly abused as the other; but what surprised me was the fact that the watersnake was not yet dead. Nor did he die then. I killed the cottonmouth, which is a deadly brute; but the other snake I let go. It is harmless, though many observers take it to be a true moccasin.

When Solomon-or perhaps it was David-mentioned the way of the serpent upon the sand as passing strange, he might have made the matter more concrete had he said the way of the water-snake with the bullfrog. The enmity between these two is a ludicrous thing. The mature bullfrog is a pompous, vain, bumptious fellow; and he is a prodigious coward. From the borders of a lagoon I love to watch the military maneuvers of frogs and their archenemies, the snakes. The largest frogs are, I think, safe from attack; but their safety does not seem to reassure them. The most prodigiously impressive and manly bellowing will cease; the frog will shrink and cower, he will ease himself off, or he will make the leap of his life if a water-snake comes his way. I do not blame the frog. But I do find amusement in his Falstaffian ways. I remember coming one day on the margin of a rice field upon a sight so strange that I found myself wondering if I were really awake. A tremendous water-snake had caught a medium-sized fro, but he had not by any means subdued him. The snake had the frog by the front of the head (just as I have seen a snake take a nine-inch brook

trout); but the frog was using his legs to good advantage. I studied the expression on the face of the reptile; it was crafty yet disturbed, malicious, grim, catlike. There was a lively tussle, sure enough; and throughout the whole performance the bullfrog kept "bulling" in a painfully muffled fashion. I suppose this was one of the very oddest nature sounds ever heard by me: a bullfrog's lament down the very throat of his would-be murderer. But I had come in time to act as the victim's deliverer.

One of the most curious little reptiles I know is the hog-nosed rattler, a diminutive reptile, but a genuine rattlesnake. It seldom exceeds a foot or two in length, is exceedingly active, spiteful, and irritable, and is withal a malicious youngster. In disposition it is far removed from the big rattlers, and I never knew of its bite being fatal. Another curiosity is the coral snake; an anomaly in nature. It is almost as spectacular in coloring as the Gila monster, and it has not a single resemblance to any other venomous reptile. It is slender, shapely, round, and has a small head, weak jaws, and a very small mouth. But it is a true venom-carrier. not seen many coral snakes; and of those I have observed, most had been plowed up in fields bordering woodlands, for it spends a good deal of its time underground or under shelter. pose that this habit is largely a matter of precaution, for his gorgeous bands of black and red must make him a brilliant

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target for enemies. This snake is a strange creature; it appears half asleep most of the time, and has never appeared to me to have any definite personality, with which, for example, the blacksnake is well supplied.

Such are a few glimpses of these children of nature that are classified as sinister, and for which the human race certainly has an ancient antipathy-an aversion which probably is not all on one side. And besides man the reptile world has many dread enemies. In the region of which I write the snakes are preyed upon by eagles and hawks, they are destroyed in wholesale fashion by forest fires, particularly when they are hibernating in old logs and stumps, and they are devoured by hogs. To rid a pasture or a tract of new ground of snakes just turn in a drove of hogs. An old razorback considers a diamond-back rattler a choice delicacy. Deer also kill snakes, especially rattlesnakes, by springing upon them. And even a small harmless snake is hardly safe from the average man, whose revulsion at seeing it is such that he does not know how or care whether to distinguish between the evil and the good.

As a race, I think, most reptiles are disappearing; and perhaps it is to be expected, for at least to me they appear to be survivors from the lost ages of the flying lizards and the monstrous amphibians which once made the world no place upon which man could with decency dwell,

"F

THE ARGONAUTS

Some came for lungs, and some for jobs,
And some for booze at Big-Mouth Bob's,
Some to punch cattle, some to shoot,
Some for a vision, some for loot;
Some for views and some for vice;
Some for faro, some for dice;

Some for the joy of a galloping hoof,
Some for the prairie's spacious roof,
Some to forget a face, a fan,
Some to plumb the heart of man;
Some to preach and some to blow,
Some to grab and some to grow,
Some in anger, some in pride,
Some to taste, before they died,
Life served hot and a la cartee-
And some to dodge a necktie-party.1

THE VISIONARY

No, he was not like other men.

He fought at Acre (what's the date?),
Died, and somehow got born again
Seven hundred years too late.

It wasn't that he hitched his wagon
To stars too wild to heed his will-
He was just old Sir Smite-the-Dragon
Pretending he was J. J. Hill.

And always when the talk was cattle
And rates and prices, selling, buying,

I reckon he was dreaming battle
And, somewhere, grandly dying.

THE BAD LANDS

DAWN

Young Dutch Van Zander, drunkard to the skin, Flung wide the door and let the world come inThe world, with daybreak on a thousand buttes— "Say, is this heaven, Bill? Or is it gin?"

THE TEXAS COWBOY

I'll never come North again.

My home is the sunny South,

Where it's never mo' than forty below
An' the beans don't freeze in your mouth.

An' the snow ain't like white smoke,

An' the groun' ain't like white iron; An' the wind don't stray from Baffin's Bay To join you on retirin'.

THE BAD WINTER

I may not see a hundred

Before I see the Styx,

But, coal or ember, I'll remember
Eighteen eighty-six.

The stiff heaps in the coulee,

The dead eyes in the camp,

And the wind about, blowing fortunes out
As a woman blows out a lamp.

THE EX-COWPUNCHER Somewhere on some faded page

I read about a Golden Age,

But gods and Caledonian hunts
Were nothing to what I knew once.
Here on these hills was hunting!
Antelope sprang and wary deer.

Here

Were drops afire from dragons' veins!
Here there was challenge, here defying,
Here was true living, here great dying,
Stormy winds and stormy souls,
Earthly wills with starry goals,

THE QUARREL

Bill's head was full o' fire

An' his gizzard full o' rum,

An' the things he said wuz rich an' red

An' rattled as they come.

Dave wuz on his stummick,

Readin' the news at his ease-like,

When Bill comes, brave, sayin' what he'll do to Dave In words what could walk away, cheese-like.

Ol' Bill's fist wuz man-size

Sure as any alive

But Dave, never squintin', turns over the printin' An' there wuz his Forty-five.

Bill he chokes an' swallers,

But Dave he's gentle an' mild,

An' they talks together o' cows an' the weather An' allows they is re-con-ciled.

1A cuphemistic term for hanging.

Centaurs charging through the night!

Here there were feasts of song and story
And words of love and dreams of glory!
Here there were friends! Ah, night will fall
And clouds or the stars will cover all;

But I, when I go as a ghost again

To the gaunt, grim buttes, to the friendly plain,

I know that for all that time can do

To scatter the faithful, estrange the true-
Quietly, in the lavender sage,

Will be waiting the friends of my golden age.

THE "BUSTED" TOWN

Some towns go out in a night

And some are swept bare in a day, But our town like a phantom island Just faded away.

Some towns die, and are dead.

But ours, though it perished, breathes; And in old men and in young dreamers Still glows and seethes.