International

office, that they may assist me. I have faith that God will direct the destinies of our Nation. X

"It is my intention to remain here until I can secure the correct form of oath of office, which will be administered to me by my father, who is a notary public, if that will meet with the necessary requirements. I expect to leave for Washington to-day."

The correspondents glanced hastily through the document. The unprecedented feature was the announcement that the President was to take the oath of office from his father, a mere notary public. I asked the President: "Has it not been invariably the custom that a President should be sworn in by a Justice of the United States Supreme Court?"

The President replied: "Maybe. But it is good law, in my judgment, that a President can be sworn in by anybody who has authority to administer an oath, even if that body happens to be his father."

It is understood that prior to taking the oath the President received an opinion from a very high judicial authority that he was right. This judgment was afterward confirmed by Chief Justice William H. Taft, of the United States Supreme Court.

With the understanding that we should return for the swearing in, if we could, we parted with the new

President. As we started out of the room where we had been chatting with him a gang of men was installing a telephone in the adjoining one. It was the first ever put up in the old farmhouse. The President had been using an antiquated one at the general store across the street until a few days before. Then it went out of commission.

As we departed from the Coolidge homestead we took the precaution to ask a mutual friend to phone us the moment the President had taken the oath. He fulfilled our request promptly later.

Into the old motor car we piled about 2:30 A.M. We prayed that we might find at the bottom of the mountain our telegraph and telephone operators on the qui vive. At the hotel, which we reached at exactly 3 A.M., Hagerty jumped out, yelling: A.M., Hagerty jumped out, yelling: "Rush over to the station. See if the telegraph operator is on the job. I will risk it by telephone for a while."

typewriter a story of the night and morning's incidents. What I wrote I could not recall until I reached New York that night and saw the special in the paper. Directing the operator to hold the keys open until my return, no matter when, I ran back to the hotel and rejoined my comrades. They had telephoned their New York and Boston offices. They were awaiting me to go back to the "Notch" and witness the swearing in. We reached there too late. The oath had been taken. Coolidge was actually President. He had been sworn in at exactly 3:37 A.M. daylight saving time, under addi- . tional dramatic circumstances. They were described to us by our friend who had so kindly flashed the event.

Clustered about the President were these witnesses: Representative Porter H. Dale, of Vermont, who had just resigned to become a candidate for United States Senator; President L. L. Lane, of the Railway Mail Association; Joseph H. Fountain, editor of the Springfield (Vermont) "Reporter;" Edwin C. Geisser, the President's assistant secretary; Joseph McInierney, the President's chauffeur; and Mrs. Coolidge. These grouped themselves about the old table, on which still burned the smoky kerosene lamp. The old family Bible was alongside it. Father Coolidge took up his station on one side of the table. The President with Mrs. Coolidge faced him.

Elder Coolidge asked his son to raise his right hand. The President obeyed. Elder Coolidge then read the following oath, the form of which had been phoned from Washington but a few minutes before:

"I, Calvin Coolidge, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The President with deep emotion repeated each word of the oath after his father. Then came a pause. Suddenly the President, his hand still uplifted, exclaimed:

"So help me God."

and his wife constantly. They patiently endured the ordeal.

The start for the Rutland station was made just after 7 A.M. One of the correspondents' cars collided with a herd of cattle. A cow turned broadside and bumped up against the motor. The cow went down, got up, and ran away. The motor was a wreck. substitute had to be procured.

P

A

ERHAPS the greatest problem

that confronts the grain grower

in the United States to-day is overproduction. He is in the position in which the great manufacturers would be if their factories were automatically being operated full time and could not be closed down when demand slackened. And, conversely, if the manufacturers always had a full-time, full-capacity output facing the market, except when there happened to be a reduction as a result of a breakdown of the machinery, they would be in the position that the American farmer finds himself year after year and generation after generation. Perhaps it should be said that this discussion includes grain crops only. There are some very serious retail marketing problems connected with vegetable and fruit crops.

The farms of the United States are being operated full capacity, relieved only by a little rotation of crops. The only thing that saves the farmers of the country from being overwhelmed by their own crops is that nature occasionally intervenes, and a short crop follows, either in this or some other important producing country.

The farmer cannot regulate production, as the manufacturer does, because of weather uncertainties and insect pests; but he can regulate the acreage sown. The manufacturer does not hesitate to reduce his output to eighty per cent, sixty per cent, or even to thirty per cent of capacity in times of slow demand. The farmer, however, does not feel that he can let part of his land lie idle. Doubtless also he fears that if he reduces the area in any grain the price may be high. So he takes a chance, sows the usual acreage, or increases it, thereby speculating on the possibility that the price may be high; and so he helps to keep the price low.

The following, relative to the acreage and the price of corn, is from an editorial in a prominent farm paper:

If the farmers of the United States plant less than their usual acreage of corn this spring, and if the weather is somewhat unfavorable, we shall prob

BY ROLLIN E. SMITH

ably see a really sensational advance. The things that are handicapping the powerful interests who seem to want to put corn prices higher are the stocks, which are above normal, and the possibility that the farmers may have been led by the recent strengthening of corn prices to plant more than their customary acreage.

Two points in the foregoing are of particular interest, namely, that unfavorable weather is looked forward to almost hopefully as a factor in curtailing production, and, second, that a strengthening of corn prices may have led farmers to plant more than their customary acreage.

The whole story of the psychology of overproduction and resulting unsatisfactory prices is thus told in one short sentence. Not satisfied with moderate crops and good prices, the farmers of the country are almost with certainty induced by a period of high prices to increase their acreage. Yet high prices after the farmer has marketed eighty per cent to ninety per cent of his crop may be largely artificial, and they will certainly prove elusive if taken as a guide to acreage for the next crop.

THE EXPORTABLE SURPLUS AND THE

MARKET

"If the United States raises one bushel of wheat for export, that one bushel will make the price for the entire crop."

The foregoing statement was recently made to the writer by the manager of a large export house. He had had twenty years of experience in the grain business in this country and Europe. In making the statement quoted above the exporter was of course speaking figuratively, and did not expect to be taken literally. Yet it is generally accepted as a fact that the exportable surplus makes the price for the entire crop. The writer does not concur in this view, nor has he ever known of any one trying to prove it. But the statement that the exportable surplus makes the price for the entire crop is made with a glibness that seems to presuppose a demonstràble problem in mathematics.

While it is true that the exportable surplus has a price effect, most of such effect is due to speculation based upon the surplus. If the exportable surplus of wheat is 150,000,000 bushels, for example, speculators will during the early crop-moving season sell short as much more in the futures market. Therefore, in addition to the weight of the crop movement and the accompanying hedging sales, the market is burdened with this enormous pressure of speculative short selling. And then when the price sags day after day and week after week, and finally declines to level at which European importers step in and buy millions of bushels, it is said the price is on an export basis and the surplus is making the price.

Yet here are the facts in the case: Professional speculators force the price down until the farmers' wheat is on the bargain counter for European buyers. This scene is enacted several times every year when this country produces a large exportable surplus. This is the true picture of the manner in which the surplus makes the price for the entire crop.

Yet European buyers, watching the activities of big speculators, wait for just such bargain counter opportunities.

The remedy is clear, but the difficulty is in applying it. The remedy is up to the wheat growers. It is, in brief, to reduce the wheat acreage until we become an importing country instead of an exporting. If we had to import an average of 50,000,000 to 60,000,000 bushels annually, professional speculators would not find it so attractive to sell the market short. Another remedy is to put a curb upon short selling.

ECONOMICALLY UNSOUND TO EXPORT
RAW MATERIAL

It is economically unsound for the United States to export raw materials. To do so on a considerable scale reduces agriculture and some other industries to a competitive basis with all the cheap labor and cheap lands of the world that are engaged in the production of the same materials. Wheat

has felt the effects of such competition for many years, and cotton is feeling it more and more seriously as the world's cotton crop increases.

Believing it true that the surplus makes the price, the American farmer nevertheless continues to grow a considerable exportable surplus of wheat year after year, notwithstanding low prices and unprofitable average yields per acre. Yet he must acknowledge that when he grows a surplus he is entering into competition with the wheat growers of Australia, Argentina, Rumania, Bulgaria, and, before the war, with Russia (what will happen to the American wheat grower when and if Russia comes back?). The American farmer stakes his highpriced land and labor against the cheap lands and labor of those countries. The result is dissatisfaction; and one reaction has been that demands are being made that the price of wheat be artificially maintained at a high level and that the Government enter the market and carry the load when commercial channels do not function satisfactorily. This is not the logical remedy, and could have but one outcome-failure, heavy loss to the Government, and demoralization of the commercial grain trade.

The only logical and complete defense against a surplus is to eliminate the surplus! Even an efficient cooperative marketing system cannot offset the ill effects of a big exportable surplus.

WHEAT A CHEAP-LAND CROP Wheat is distinctly a cheap-land crop. To grow it on high-priced land is to bring dissatisfaction to the entire farming community of the important wheat-producing States. It may be set down as a fact that wheat cannot profitably be grown on land that costs over $80 an acre, or perhaps $60. Now here is the proposition: No land is worth over $60 to $80 an acre for wheat growing. Therefore, if Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri are wheat States, then their wheat lands are worth only $60 to $80. But, conversely, if their lands are worth $150 to $250, and even $350 an acre, they are not wheat lands, and the farmers who grow wheat on them, except on a grist-mill basis, are perpetuating an agricultural folly that should have been checked thirty years ago.

IOWA THE WORST OFFENDER

In the matter of growing wheat on high-priced lands Iowa is perhaps the worst offender in this uneconomic practice. Prices of Iowa farm lands in very recent years soared to the greatest inflation level ever recorded in any considerable region, and yet wheat continued to be grown. During the 1909-13 period the average annual production in Iowa was 12,000,000

bushels. But in 1919 the wheat crop of the State was 21,000,000 bushels.

WISCONSIN ABANDONED WHEAT

Iowa might profitably follow the course of wheat production in Wisconsin. The latter State in its early agricultural history, like every Western State, turned to wheat. From 1866 to 1869 Wisconsin produced 20,000,000 to 24,000,000 bushels, and the crop was above 20,000,000 until 1884. A steady decline followed, with diversified farming and dairying succeeding wheat, until the average production dropped to 3,000,000 bushels in the 1909-13 period. There has been a steady increase in corn production in Wisconsin. In the 1909-13 period Wisconsin produced an annual average corn crop of 56,000,000 bushels; but our interest does not stop with the growing of the crop. Almost the entire crop was consumed within the State! Only three per cent of the corn was shipped out of the counties in which it was grown. This means just one thing, namely, that the farmers of Wisconsin produced their own raw material from which to turn out their finished product-hogs and beef and dairy products. To be sure, this could not universally be done, for it would result in as great a surplus in those products as there now is in corn.

Minnesota, second only to North Dakota as a grower of spring wheat, was an important producer in its early history. But the southern part of that State passed its profitable wheatgrowing era fifteen to twenty years ago, and the southern counties have practically given up wheat. Continuous "cropping" to wheat and insufficient attention to seed improvement combined with black rust to reduce southern Minnesota's prestige as a grower of choice spring wheat. Corn and dairying have changed, and should still further change, farming in that region. When the writer was a boy in southern Minnesota, corn was an uncertain crop; for no corn had then been developed for a ninety-day growing season. Yet Minnesota has produced over 110,000,000 bushels of corn yearly for three seasons in succession, namely, in 1918, 1919, and 1920, and was the twelfth State in total production, with an average of 72,000,000 bushels, in the 1909-13 period. In the 1909-13 period an average of fourteen per cent of the crop was shipped out of the counties in which grown; yet most of this was consumed in other parts of the State.

THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD OF OVER-
PRODUCTION

The real fountain-head of overproduction of wheat is in the Central West and farther east. With the exception of Michigan, those great soft red winter wheat States-namely,

Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania-have maintained their large areas devoted to wheat with remarkable pertinacity, considering that farm land values were rapidly increasing and many years of discouragingly low wheat prices obtained.

It must be obvious to any one who gives the matter any thought that wheat can be grown at a profit in the States mentioned only in very exceptional years. Why, then, do the farmers of those States continue to grow wheat? A department of any manufacturing or commercial business that could not show a profit-or, rather, which showed a loss season after season-would be lopped off. No business concern would long maintain a department that persistently lost

money.

The only reasons that the farmers of those States can advance as an explanation of their continuing to grow wheat on a commercial scale seem to be these: (1) Wheat requires less attention than any other crop except of course oats, rye, and barley; (2) the farmers would not know what to do with their land if they did not sow it to wheat; and (3) they do not know what it costs to raise wheat. Furthermore, wheat is an early crop and returns ready money in July or August. But back of these factors is a foolish pride in owning and cultivating large farms.

Just as long as this results in wheat being grown in a large way on the high-priced lands of the States mentioned, wheat growing will be unprofitable in every State.

Smaller farms and intensive cultivation by families that regard farming as a small trade seems the only and inevitable remedy for the ills that now have agriculture in their grip.

I would rather have a sure and independent existence on two acres of land, minus the frills that are called luxuries, but which are really superfluities, than be in debt and under constant financial strain and mental worry striving against adverse conditions on a 640-acre farm. Likewise, I would rather own and operate a small repair shop than be an unsuccessful automobile manufacturer.

It seems to me that more two-acre farms and small repair shops, and fewer big farms and manufactories, are the remedy for a large percentage of the existing discontent and lack of

success.

I have never observed that the wrens which twitter in the corner of my front porch ever attempt to soar to the clouds like eagles. Yet they thrive and appear contented, and they rear families of other little wrens. May their number increase, for they serve a useful purpose! But an eagle is useless except to pose on a silver coin-or is he on our gold coins also?

barrassment for the master by the over-independent manner in which they interpret his ideas.

We speak of his theories, of the road he follows to bring them into the daylight and spread them.

"The starting-point," he says to me, "is found in Charcot's lessons at the Salpêtrière."

Thereupon Freud shows me the celebrated engraving of Charcot, "The Lesson at the Hospital," on the walls of his study, occupying the place of honor. At the beginning of his career he studied under Charcot at Paris, commencing to study the mechanism of hysteria with him from a purely medical standpoint.

In him-and this is an essential point-the philosopher is combined with the doctor; or rather, he is first of all a doctor, and a philosopher afterwards. He is not content with understanding and explaining, but his first aim is to cure.

It is by studying sick persons that he is able to understand people who are healthy. The abnormal sheds light on the normal.

Starting from disease, Freud always has a tendency to return to it.

Thus the germ of his theories is found in the lessons of Charcot and of Bernheim, a professor at Nancy.

According to the definition of Freud himself, psychoanalysis is essentially

a method of treating certain nervous diseases. One of his colleagues in Vienna had the idea of hypnotizing a hysterical person by making him go back, from association to association, up to the source of apparently incoherent words which he had pronounced during his attacks. From that experiment the considerable part played by the unconscious mind was revealed to the young doctor.

However, he separated himself at an early hour from his masters, to found his own doctrine. He reproached them for not attacking the root of the evil, but only its effects. He was thus brought to state precisely and co-ordinate his theories more and

more.

One of the essential points of it was always the famous "psychical regression," the "talking cure," which consists in forcing the sick person to relate. his story and cure himself.

"It is by that," says Freud to me, "that I have been led to my theory of the unconscious mind. The more I followed up my observations, the more was I convinced of their richness, of the full extent of that unconscious mind. It is a vase filled to overflowing, in which it is proper to seek and find the source of our emotive life, not only in disease, but also in a state of health. All our 'repressed urges,' our lapses, our errors, our distrac

tions, our dreams, are connected with more or less repressed sentiments, sometimes innocent, sometimes of a rather improper nature."

"No one," I say to the doctorphilosopher, "excels more than you do in following them on the trail, in tracking them like the most skillful of detectives, and going back, from step to step, to their origin. This origin is hardly ever very pure. But it is surely not your fault!"

And I thought to myself, without daring to speak of it to my interlocutor, of the well-known French line which nine times out of ten would apply rather well to his theories, or rather to those who are the object of them: "Tout homme a dans son cœur un cochon qui sommeille!"

Afterwards Freud speaks to us of his pupils, who are scattered all over the vast world, in the New Continent as well as in the Old, of their works, of the Congress which reunites them periodically, of the "Review of Psychoanalysis," which they have founded.

"It is in France that I have the least number of followers," Freud remarks. "My theories have been least studied and made public in France."

"How do you explain this?" I ask. "I do not really know. I believe that there are many reasons for it. Perhaps politics have something to do with it."

"I can assure you that this is not the case," I say, energetically. "There is no country in the world where people are so ready as in France to welcome ideas from outside, no matter from where they come. Besides, your doctrines have been much talked of lately. A certain number of books and studies and articles have been devoted to them."

"I foresee another explanation," he adds. "As my theories, at least at the commencement, were connected with those of your great Charcot, the French have been less anxious to follow their development on foreign ground, in a foreign spirit and language. They were content with the development that these ideas had taken in your country."

Freud found this explanation forthwith, as if he were playing with it. I have the impression that he found it chiefly to please me; if he had only sought elsewhere, he would have found another-and very different, if not an opposite-explanation.

The extreme facility with which explanations and nascent hypotheses abound in him is most significant. It is even a mark of his nature. If it be a question of interpreting a lapse, above all, a dream, then his ingenuity has really no limits. The explanation of. some dreams must be read in the "Introduction to Psychoanalysis." It