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MONG elderly men still active in pursuing their vocations, a subscriber places in the foremost rank Mr. Barr Spangler, of Marietta, Pennsylvania. Mr. Spangler, our correspondent says, will be one hundred years old on December 4, 1921. "He attends his store and business every day except Sunday, and on Sunday walks to church with an elastic step that some men of sixty cannot equal. His wife is still living, and they will celebrate their diamond wedding February 2, 1922, if both survive till then."

Another young-old man still active in his profession is, a reader informs us, the Rev. H. G. Hill, of Maxton, North Carolina. "He will be ninety years of age on November 27. He is now as active in the ministry as any pastor anywhere. He preaches two and sometimes three times every Sunday, and attends every meeting of the board of regents of an orphanage one hundred and fifty miles distant and also of the trustees of a theological seminary in Richmond, Virginia. His congregation gives him annually a purse of a dollar for each of his years, and this year he will doubtless receive ninety dollars in gold for his official birthday gift. He has been preaching about seventy years."

A test made recently in Paris indicates that modern violins are fully equal to those produced by the old masters of violin-making. Twelve violins, six old and six modern, were played in a darkened hall by a player who picked them out by lot and played the same tune on each. The audience, not knowing what particular violin was played, voted by number as to which instrument they preferred, for tone and general musical quality. The modern instruments easily won, a famous Stradivarius being third.

At Château Thierry the bridge over the Marne, where the American machine gunners held back the enemy, is being restored by Americans, and on Armistice Day a stone was set up near the bridge with the inscription: "Here the invader was driven back." It was the first of 240 similar stones to be set up along the whole line, from Switzerland to the sea. On the sides of the stone, a despatch says, are carved a gas mask and a wine flask. The significance of the latter symbol is not explained.

The following note in the "Rural New Yorker" may be worth saving till next season by fruit lovers: To protect cherry trees from marauding birds, take a piece of black rubber hose about three feet long. On one end of this fasten two shiny boot buttons. Then weave the hose among the branches with the button end out, and you have a respectablelooking snake, which will effectually keep the birds away. It is said also to be useful in protecting strawberry beds.

Foreign fruit is supposed by some Americans to have a finer flavor than the home-grown sort. The same sentiment seems to be held abroad as regards

our apples, British connoisseurs preferring ours to their own. A daily paper says:

Included in the cargo of the Royal Mail liner Oropesa, which sails for Southampton this week, are several barrels of choice Newtown pippins consigned to a well-known London dealer, who supplies fruit to some of the most distinguished families recorded in Burke's Peerage. This famous apple is said to be much in vogue among fashionable English' folk, having for more than sixty years enjoyed the favor of royalty. The Newtown pippin received its formal introduction into high society in England in 1861, when Charles Francis Adams, then United States Minister at the Court of St. James's, presented to Queen Victoria a large barrel of the luscious fruit that had been grown in a Massachusetts orchard. Since that time a consignment has been forwarded every season to Windsor Castle.

Ordering a copy of Tennyson's poems, a customer wrote to a bookseller, as reported in the "Norwich Free Academy Journal," "Please do not send me one bound in calf, as I am a vegetarian."

A cotton-spinner, an English magazine says, after many fruitless attempts to get a manufacturer to settle his account, wrote him a letter couched in very strong terms. The pair met the following day, and the manufacturer protested against the language used in the note. "Every account I get," he explained, "is thrown into a basket, and once a month I dip my hand in and draw out four bills. Those four are paid. Now, if I get any more impudent letters from you, your bill won't even get into the bas ket!"

People who bemoan the fact that their motor car is not absolutely of the latest model may take comfort from the statement that in speed trials lately held in Denmark all records, it is reported, were broken by a car built in 1908. This was a Fiat racing car, "Mephistopheles," which was used to defeat a British challenger early in its history and has been in private service ever since. Its present owner bought it a few months ago, put it in good shape, and on the occasion referred to drove it himself at the rate of 1061⁄2 miles an hour in one event.

The picture of Theodore Roosevelt which appeared on the cover of The Outlook for October 19 was taken by Mr. T. W. Ingersoll, of Buffalo, Minnesota, in 1883, when Mr. Roosevelt was living in the "Bad Lands" of North Dakota, and was originally copyrighted by Mr. Ingersoll. Through an oversight, Mr. Ingersoll's name was omitted under the photograph reproduced. We hasten to make this correction, and the more gladly because the picture is an excellent one. Photographers who se cured good photographs of Mr. Roosevelt in his early life are to be regarded in the light of public benefactors, and their names should go down in history as such. Mr. Ingersoll's is one of these.

WAGES IN THE PACKING INDUSTRY

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NE of the most remarkable demonstrations that it is practicable for employees and employers to work together, not as antagonists or enemies, but as friendly partners, comes from the packing industry in Chicago. The leading firms in the meat-packing industry are Armour & Co., Swift & Co., Wilson & Co., Morris & Co., and the Cudahy Packing Company. These firms are known as the "Big Five." Together they employ in Chicago and in their other plants in various parts of the country about 125,000 men and women. Twenty-six thousand of the employees of Armour & Co. on November 8 agreed at a meeting in Chicago with the executives of the company to a wage reduction. The offiIcials of the company met with representatives of the employees in accordance with the shop committee plan, and the books and financial statements of the company were plainly and frankly shown to and discussed with the representatives of the employees. The officials of the company have announced that the men voluntarily recognized that a wage reduction was necessary. Later the employees of Swift & Co., Wilson & Co., and the Cudahy Packing Company similarly assented to a wage reduction. Morris & Co. have not introduced into their business the shop committee plan, but will naturally follow the reductions

DECEMBER 7, 1921

ers shall also have representatives and that not only the conditions of labor shall be discussed at these council meetings but that the men shall be made completely familiar with the financial condition of the industry, including both profits and losses and cost of manufacture, exactly as the depositors of a wellconducted bank or the policy-holders of a great mutual life insurance company are made familiar in every particular with the financial situation of the corporations in which they are interested. Mr. Rogers has long claimed that when this is done the American workman will be reasonable and just about the matter of wages.

The action of the employees of Armour & Co. seems to confirm this judgment. It is too much to expect that it will work smoothly at first. There will be differences of opinion. There will be men in the employers' group as well as in the employees' group who are hotheaded and cantankerous and who will be influenced by their prejudices as well as by their reasoning faculties. This is the history of all human relationships. But the meeting in Chicago of the packers and their men is a step in the right direction, and we hope it will be followed up.

THE GARMENT MAKERS' STRIKE IN NEW YORK

HERE are hopeful indications that the difficulties between the manufacturers of women's garments and the workers in New York City may be settled on a reasonable basis. It has been proposed by the employers to put the matter in the hands of Secretary Davis, of the Department of Labor, and Secretary Hoover, of the Department of Commerce. Meanwhile a number of the manufacturers have made terms individually with their employees and the total number of strikers has been cut down very considerably from the sixty thousand who originally went out.

As the discussion over this formidable industrial quarrel develops it has turned more and more on the principle of abiding by contracts. In not a few instances in recent industrial troubles the unions have been severely blamed for not abiding by contracts entered into by them. In this case, however, the charge is reversed. The leaders of the strike assert that the employers' association have four times broken definite agreements with the workers. The head of the strikers, Mr. Schlesinger, declares

that the one point really in issue is whether employers are at liberty to break contracts from time to time. The present strike, he declares, is not so much on the question of piece work versus week work as on what he terms the principle of "holding each party to an industrial contract to the full and honest observance of the covenant solemnly entered into."

A novelty in strike warfare, so far as we know, is the effort of the unions to obtain from the courts an injunction against the manufacturers forbidding them to violate the conditions of their contract by establishing a piece-work system. Injunctions against unions have often been asked for, but an injunction against an employers' lockout is unusual, if not unique.

When once the question of existing contracts is settled, the disagreement as to the two plans of work may be met by concessions or securities given by the two parties to treat one another fairly under whichever plan is adopted. Logically, the piece-work system is the best, industrially speaking, but in this particular industry employees believe that it has evils and that in the past it has been so closely connected with the sweatshop system that it is not desirable.

The whole history of the industrial troubles in the garment industry in New York has been an effort to make production satisfactory without oppressing the workers or allowing the workers to injure their employers by slackness and "soldiering on the job." It was in this industry that the first application of the protocol idea .took place, and the arguments of Mr. Brandeis, now Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Miss Josephine Goldmark, Mr. Henry Moskowitz, and others formed a remarkable chapter in labor annals.

A CHRISTMAS FIGHT FOR LIVES IFE and health have no more desperate enemy than the great white plague. For years the American Red Cross and the National Tuberculosis Association have combined at holiday time to provide the means for extending the campaign against this common enemy. The Christmas Seal has proved a most efficient weapon. The Red Cross, to which the use of this seal belongs, transfers the authority to use it to the National Tuberculosis Association as the best and simplest way of bringing the matter to the attention of the people at large. The response has been generous

in past years, and increasingly so. Very few people indeed, we imagine, will refuse to aid the cause by the purchase of at least a dollar's worth of the seals.

The Outlook has always felt a special interest in the use of the Christmas Seals for benevolent purposes because the idea was, so far as we know, first suggested in its columns by one of its contributors, Emily Bissell, and brought into extensive use by another contributor, Jacob A. Riis.

It may be asked whether the effect of this war waged against insidious disease has had recognizable effects. The answer given by the National Tuberculosis Association is that since 1904, when that Association was founded, the death rate from tuberculosis in the registered districts (about four-fifths of the entire country) decreased up to 1919 from 2,012 in the million to 1,256 in the million.

This indicates that there has been a saving of about 750 human lives yearly in each million of the population, or 75,000 yearly in a population of one hun. dred million. Figures are sometimes more impressive than arguments, and this, we think, is one of those cases. There are illustrations on pages 568 and 569 of this issue which speak as loudly as these figures of a need that must be met.

Not hundreds of thousands of dollars, but millions, are needed this year to make the campaign still more effective and to extend its lines of battle. That the American people will contribute in small sums a munificent total is certain. It has done so in the past, and it will continue to do so. A spur to generosity is not needed. This is a reminder that no individual should overlook or forget this annual expression of Christmas love and help.

PIGSKINS AND IVORIES

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HANKSGIVING DAY and the Saturday which followed practically closed the football season in the East. first day had a double significance to those who dwell above the shores of Lake Cayuga (altogether too far above them, as any one will testify who has climbed up the long hill to the Cornell campus on a slippery winter day), for on that occasion the Ithacan university trounced its ancient and honorable foe, the University of Pennsylvania, by the unprecedented score of 41-0. The children of Israel entering upon the promised land doubtless felt no more joy than the adherents of Cornell over their wellearned-if long postponed-victory. Perhaps from now on the battles between the two universities may result in an evener division of the spoils.

The most important game on the Saiurday following Thanksgiving was the annual controversy between West Point and Annapolis. In a hard-fought battle

waged with the traditional vigor of the two service elevens the Navy won by a score of 7-0. The game was played in a drizzling rain.

In another field of sport there has been a defeat as striking as the overwhelming rout of Pennsylvania by Cornell. In the championship billiard tournament at Chicago Willie Hoppe, who for more than a decade has held undisputed leadership among professional players of 18:2 balk line, went down to defeat before young Jake Schaefer, the son of "Wizard" Schaefer, the former title-holder. In a round robin series of games between the foremost players of the world Schaefer and Hoppe led the field. When Schaefer and Hoppe met, the former had one defeat scored against him, the latter a clean slate. Schaefer then proceeded to defeat Hoppe overwhelmingly, thereby tying for first place. In the play-off Schaefer again beat his celebrated opponent.

That Hoppe has at last lost his title is no disgrace. The astonishing thing is that any man could have held the title so long in a field in which there is such aggressive competition. Modern billiards require the highest type of physical and mental co-ordination. Hoppe's record is a striking commentary on the value of clean living. It is entirely possible of course that he may regain the title, but the mental hazard of his opponents in facing this long undefeated champion will be materially lessened.

AFTERMATH OF THE TENNIS SEASON

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THE tennis season of 1921 has passed into history, but the conclusion of one painful incident has just been recorded.

It will be remembered that Suzanne Lenglen, the brilliant champion of Europe, came to America to play in the National Women's Tournament and also to give exhibition games for the benefit of the Fund for Devastated France. Her introduction to America was not a happy one, for in the face of a threatened defeat she pleaded illness and left the courts. Captain Albert R. de Joannis, the Vice-President of the French Tennis Federation, who came to America to handle Mlle. Lenglen's tour, has now resigned his office and membership in that organization because the Federation has seen fit to publish a censorious statement concerning the directors of the United States Lawn Tennis Federation, charging them with unjustified commentaries upon the sporting spirit of Mlle. Lenglen. In resigning, M. de Joannis said:

Mlle. Lenglen was perfectly fit when she met Mrs. Molla Bjurstedt Mallory at Forest Hills. Mlle. Lenglen was defeated by a player who on

that date showed a better brand of tennis.

I shook hands with Mlle. Lenglen before she entered the court. Her hand was cool and her pulse normal. She was confident. She only commenced coughing after having lost games. I blame her for absolutely refusing to continue when I could have obtained a recess of half an hour, perhaps an hour, through the sporting spirit of the tennis officials and the large crowd.

Suzanne's attacks against the United States Lawn Tennis officials and the public are absolutely unwarranted. She was received like a little queen and treated with the utmost courtesy. Her every whim and mood was satisfied.

She knows how to win, but she does not know how to lose gracefully. She placed the personality of Suzanne before the good name of the sporting world of her country, and could not face defeat.

M. de Joannis pointed out that Carpentier was still regarded as a hero in America because he went down fighting, and that Mlle. Lenglen, contrary to the spirit of France, resigned rather than face defeat.

With this comment by Mlle. Lenglen's manager the incident may well be closed. It seemed to The Outlook at the time of the unfortunate affair that the offcials of our tennis association handled the difficult problem with an extraordinary amount of forbearance, graciousness, and tact. The American press as a whole treated the incident with simi lar generosity. The present action of the French Tennis Federation could not have occurred in a country which possessed a full understanding of the British and American definition of the word sport. The action of M. de Joannis indicates that there is no need to fear that this lack of understanding will be permanent.

MILE BOUTROUX is dead, seventy years old. For thirty-six years he had been Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne in the University of Paris, in succession to Paul Janet.

Those Americans who heard Boutrour eleven years ago at Harvard or, some years later, at the dedication of the Princeton Graduate School, will remember the nobility of his utterances. Whether as educator or philosopher, what he had to say justly commanded world attention.

As an educator Boutroux performed a notable service as a president of the Fondation Thiers, a charity founded by the creator of the Third French Republic to help scholars towards original reesarch. The Fondation has its own house in Paris, not far from the Bois de Boulogne. The pensioners remain three years. The production of many well-equipped men of learning as well as a group of erudite works on

otherwise unstudied themes is due to Boutroux's direction.

Boutroux believed that the spirit of teaching should animate the spirit of philosophy and vice versa. "Children," he used to say, "often look upon school teaching as something abstract and artificial, bearing no relation to realities." Hence he would remind teachers that school exercises "do not constitute artificial generalities for the memory or imagination, practiced with a view to examinations;" on the contrary, "they are made up of the best and purest elements that men have yet discovered, for the purpose of raising to its highest point the dignity and power, beauty and greatness, of human life."

As a philosopher he was a foremost champion both of the freedom of the will as against determinism and of spirit as against matter. He was thus the intellectual father of Henri Bergson, his pupil. Boutroux's philosophical system was derived, not from abstract reasoning, but from an examination of every branch of human knowledge. His system rests on the principle that the laws of nature afford scope for the free activity of rational beings. Boutroux did more than any one, probably, to make our William James known in Francechiefly by writing an Introduction to the French translation of "Varieties of Religious Experience" by the American philosopher, and also by an ample chapter on James in one of the best-known Boutroux books, "Science et Religion," and finally by a volume on James.

Education and philosophy, declared Boutroux, should serve ethics, religious ethics, Christian ethics. In discussing Christian ethics the French philosopher declared that the main principle of the teaching of Jesus was his conception of God as a Father. Again, "One point strikes us all: the insistence with which Jesus put his disciples on their guard against the formalistic conception of a religious life." And again, "The spirituality of the Christian life is not abstract and negative; it is concrete and living."

AGITATION IN PORTO RICO

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HE hostility toward Governor Reily in Porto Rico seems to be in part due to ebullition of the always present political heat between the opposing parties on the island and partly to a lack of tactfulness on the part of the Governor. Reports indicate that in his disapproval of the movement for absolute independence of the island, a disapproval in which he was thoroughly justified, he unnecessarily offended that section of the people which holds to an idea as impractical in Porto Rico as it is in Ireland.

The Unionist party in Porto Rico is

strongly in the majority both in the Senate and in the lower house, but the Unionist party itself is divided on the question of the future of the island; a radical wing of the party is urging independence, and this radical wing has temporarily committed the whole party to a position disapproved of by a very considerable number of its members. Be-. fore Governor Reily took office, we are told by a correspondent who knows Porto Rico perhaps better than any other American, he was attacked by the hotheads of this faction. The hostility was increased by the Governor's inaugural speech, which declared that he could not "tolerate" the opinions of the Independendista party, a declaration not calculated to soothe his opponents. Не also declared later that he would not appoint any person to office who held the policy he disapproved, and made himself unpopular by the removal of judges and others from office apparently on political ground. The total result has been such personal hostility that the Governor declared that his life was in danger, and there have been some demonstrations of violence. That the agitation will result in revolution is improbable. We judge that our correspondent to whom we referred above is right in saying that Governor Reily "is doing the right thing in a wrong way," and "has made a poor situation into a very bad one."

The Porto Ricans believe that the United States should declare a distinct policy as to the future of the island. One party in the island, the Republicans, believe that Porto Rico should be made a State of the United States and that this should be done at the first possible minute. Of the other courses possible, the return to a military and imperialistic régime would certainly be contrary to American ideas. But the granting of autonomy to Porto Rico might be

brought about without establishing inde pendence or abandoning the island to its Own devices or granting Statehood. The last would obviously be unwise al present, for it would admit eight or ten Representatives and two Senators to a share in legislation for the United States, about whose needs they could know hardly anything. Why not establish such self-government as exists now in Canada, with the supreme authority vested in the United States? This plan would make the Porto Ricans re sponsible for their own political and economic conditions and would amount to a reasonable degree of Home Rule, with opportunity for growth in selfgovernment and the support of the American Government where that sup port is needed.

THE ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS

INCE receiving Mr. Ernest Abbott's

Scorrespondence from the Armament

Conference, which appears elsewhere in this issue under the title "The Goblins Will Get You," he sends us just as we go to press the following telegram, which is self-explanatory:

An Association of Nations is not under consideration at the Armament Conference. The subject was raised simply by inquiries addressed to President Harding by the newspaper correspondents. There is no intention to place it on the Conference pro gramme. That would be too precipitate. But the subject may be taken up after the Conference finishes the topics on its agenda. In fact, the President will be disappointed if something is not done to that end Such an Association is not intended as a rival to the League of Nations; in fact, it would have no relation to it. The thought is simply to put into form the principle of reaching an understanding around a conference table as the Armament Conference is now doing. You may rely on these statements.

PROMOTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE

T is a satisfaction to note that of the latest diplomatic appointees, the more important have had previous experience abroad. One is John W. Riddle, of Connecticut, a former Ambassador to Russia, who goes as Ambassador to Argentina. Another is Lewis Einstein, of New York, former Minister to Costa Rica; previously he passed six years as secretary in various posts abroad; he goes as Minister to Czechoslovakia. Still another is Charles S. Wilson, of Maine, who for twenty years has been secretary at various posts abroad; he goes as Minister to Bulgaria.

Among the other appointees is Rabbi Saul Kornfeld, of Ohio, who has long been interested in civic affairs; he goes as Minister to Persia. This is the first time, so far as we know, that a rabbi