ed were treated with cucumber peels such-like good things.

Besides just the three bare walls and or two common wooden benches re was nothing else on this stage. But re came from the manager frequent lanations to the audience in about the owing manner: Imagine that here ds a tree, that just now a railway

train is passing, that here roars a waterfall, and so on. I must point out again that the actors played so well that I forgot the total absence of scenery, and even the absolutely unfounded explanations of the "interpreter" did not strike me as particularly incongruous.

To finish up with, I would recommend you very much to pass at least one hour

or two in the roof-garden of the "12th story" on the Twerskaja. It is very nice and quiet there, especially with a bottle of champagne and a good beefsteak. You look at the great town from a towering height and can think undisturbed in this pleasant quietness about the human follies, before going home and to bed. Good-night! H

By E. E. MILLER

HEN Mr. Don C. Seitz essayed in a recent issue of The Outlook to tell just

e Kind of Co-operation That Will rd Farm Relief" he tackled quite a ect. Moreover, he suggested one line uite practical and very valuable coation.

Ir. Seitz, evidently, misunderstands idea back of the farmers' co-operamovement. Co-operating farmers not organized to prey upon consu, but to better marketing methods. wisest leaders of the movement look ard to a time when organized farmmay deal directly with organized es of consumers in the marketing of farm products at least. There is roposal to organize seven and a half on farm families into one body or ciation. That would be impossible. of these farmers are, and will re■, consumers of the products of other ps of farmers.

or is Mr. Seitz, it would seem, much er acquainted with the producing end griculture. He is right in thinking crop farming unsound; but agriculis not in trouble solely, or even ly, because of the one-crop farmer. best farming is based on the producof a good part of the family living he farm; that really comes before roduction of crops for market. Still, is justification for sectional diversion of agriculture as well as for inual diversification of crops. Certain ons are going to continue to make in lines of production their chief ern and to produce certain crops for In large quantities, while looking to farmers for their supply of certain farm products. Certain communieven, are going to find profit in speing along certain lines. The selfined and self-sufficient agriculture oneer days is not going to return. not desirable that it should. ain, it is not as easy as Mr. Seitz - to think to regulate or to foretell ltural production. It is not going

to be possible for his town Lions and Rotarians to apportion production out among the farmers of the town territory, and so make both themselves and the farmers happy by supplying themselves with good food and the farmers with cash markets. Something along this line might be done; but an agriculture based solely on local food demands is a delusion. The thing is not so simple as that, either as an economic proposition or as a physical possibility. The wheels of time are not likely to spin backward; time are not likely to spin backward; and a farmer thinking of this method of supplying a town's needs would first of all think of the weather and then he would smile.

But just the same, this idea of town and country co-operation is a big idea and full of possibilities. It is a fact that our country towns have not yet found themselves in relation to the farmer and to the country about them. Mr. Seitz sees, it would seem, what the typical town builder or town booster or town citizen has not yet seen-that the country town is in reality a part of the country about it; the social, educational, and business center of the tributary countryside; the heart through which the life-blood of the community activities must flow.

Every little town in all the land, it would seem at times, imagines itself a bit of the city set down by some accident in the fields. It thinks itself akin to the city; dreams, generally, of the time when it shall be a city itself. The country folks about it are of importance to it chiefly as customers. It needs them to sell things to, and beyond this has little concern with them. Often it feels itself outraged if they go elsewhere to buy, even though it may never have given a thought to helping them find a good market for what they grow.

Now, as a matter of fact, this country town has been established by the country, is nourished and kept alive by the country, exists simply to supply country needs and perform services for the country. Its kinship is with the countryside

about it, and not with the distant city. Its welfare is dependent on that of its trade territory; and to promote its own welfare it must help the farmer to sell as well as give him a place to buy, must think of getting money out to him as well as of getting money out of him.

Few townsmen realize this; just as few countrymen. It is the misfortune of both that they do not. It is the strong feature of Mr. Seitz's article that he does realize it. He is emphatically right in saying that the time has come for the town to begin talking to the farmer by the pocketbook line; and it needs to do this, not for the farmer's sake only, but as well for its own. For no town is going to prosper except by the prosperity of its trade territory, and only the highly industrialized town has any trade territory of an importance at all comparable to the country right about it.

There are many means by which the town can help the country about itand incidentally itself-to prosper. The means Mr. Seitz suggests is one of them. Without going into Utopia at all, it would be quite practical for the business men of a town and the farmers who trade in that town to meet together and work out a more or less full program of agricultural production. Due thought should be given in this program to the feeding, so far as practical or economical, of the town from the fields around it. Then it would be up to the town to work out a system of distributing this home supply at a reasonable cost, and also a system of securing, or of reaching, a market for the farmers' surplus or special sale crops. Many a community could save itself a lot of money this way. Many a community, too, could make for itself a lot of money if the town part of the community would but reasonably concern itself with the marketing of the products of the country part of the community. It is of really much more concern to a town that the farmers about it sell their cotton, or their hogs, or their potatoes to the best advantage than that they

all forswear the mail-order catalogue. Town-and-country co-operation is not the only sort of co-operation the farmer

W

HERE does the wind come from?

When there arises in the land a man-or a woman-who can answer that question to the satisfaction of an insatiable boy or girl-of six, that man or woman probably will have the capacity to acquire sufficient information, through arduous and persistent study, to answer, at the end of a few years, another question, the following, to wit:

How does revenue get into the United States Treasury?

Until there arises that wizard or witch, which is likely to be never, those who have any curiosity on the subject must be content, perforce, with the assurance that money to the amount of three and a half billion dollars does actually find its way into the Treasury and out again every year. They may be told that a billion and a half of it, speaking roughly, but no more roughly than necessary, comes from income tax, something over nine hundred million dollars of it from miscellaneous taxes, and about six hundred million dollars of it from customs duties. If curiosity demands unreasonably, after receiving this store of information, the how of the thing, he who undertakes to answer must stall and stammer, even as when the small boy asks the where of the wind, and make an explanation which, like a puddle in the road, looks deep because it is muddy.

The fact is that this writer is at this moment pioneering on this subject, breaking a jungle trail that no other pen has ever trod. (Trod is the word; Pegasus is wingless.) It is astonishing that this is true. The genius of "Sartor Resartus" could not have been half so amazed when he found that nothing of a scientific character had been written on the subject of clothes. But so it is. Nobody, so far as diligent search reveals, has written in all the endless volumes on taxation anything at all on how tax money actually finds its way from the person who pays it into the Treasury, from which it goes out to meet the running expenses of the Federal Government.

THE Treasury of the United States

receives, at least by a fiscal formality, all money paid to the Government and pays out all the money that the Government spends. The fact should be borne in mind, while this exposition gathers momentum, that we are not talking about the Treasury Department. The Treasury is only a small part of the Treasury Department, but it is the small part that handles the revenues. At its head is the Treasurer of the United States. You may not have heard of him. His name is Frank White, and he handles more money than any other man in the world. He is the Nation's banker. He has his vaults, his cash drawers, his cashier, his tellers. And he issues a daily

The total ordinary expenditures the same day were $7,879,314.37.1 means that on that particular day Government of the United States sp about $3,750,000 more than it took And something like that is true on business days of the year. Still, Government not only escapes ba ruptcy, but manages to keep, most of time, a fairly substantial surplus. is possible because of the fact that f few days four times a year the rece outrun the expenditures so far figures fail to give a fair idea of the cess. Those are the periods when come-tax payments come in-ar March 15, June 15, September 15, December 15.

What are customs receipts? They among other things, the money Wilkins Micawber V-assuming that descendants of Mr. Micawber are sheep-ranching in Australia-paid to Collector of Customs at the Port of

boats. Every person dealing in opium or coca leaves must register with the Collector and pay a special tax.

No

Or all taxes, however, are paid monthly or annually to the Collector. Stamp taxes constitute a large source of revenue. Tax stamps must be placed on such things as bonds of indebtedness, conveyances of property, passage tickets, power of attorney.

Stamps are, with one exception, printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at the direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and are furnished to the Postmaster-General and Collectors without prepayment. Postmasters, designated depositories of the United States, and Collectors keep supplies for sale. The exception is tobacco stamps printed on tinfoil wrappers. This is done under contract, the contractor receiving his remuneration from the purchasers of the stamps.

Now what does the Collector of Internal Revenue do, at the close of the day, with all the checks, cash, post office money-orders, drafts, and the like that he has received?

All of these are bundled up, taken to a designated bank, which is usually a member of the Federal Reserve System, and deposited to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States. A report is made to the Accounts and Collections Unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the total received for each class of tax.

W

HILE internal revenues bulk mighty large in comparison with customs receipts these latter years, the fact remains that the Customs Service has a history much longer and more consistent than has the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Indeed, the latter is an upstart by comparison. In the fiscal history of the Government customs receipts run steadily and progressively on, from a bare four million dollars in 1791 to more than half a billion dollars in 1925. During the greater part of that time they provided the bulk of the revenue for running the Government.

Income and profits taxes, now the largest single source of revenue, were unheard of until 1863. After 1874 they were practically out of existence again until adoption of the Income Tax Amendment a few years ago. There have usually been some miscellaneous internal revenue receipts, but they were completely off the books from 1848 to 1863, during which time customs receipts bore the whole burden of the Government except for such driblets as came in from the sale of public lands.

despite the fact that it has been the one source of revenue that has never failed the Government, the Customs Service has been a sort of homeless waif. If you look for it in Washington, you are likely to search half a day. You will find it at last up two flights of wooden stairs in a temporary shack on the Mall. I, who thought that I knew something about Washington, got lost looking for it and had to telephone for more specific directions. And it is just as hard to find in the records. It has one lone, lorn paragraph in the 544-page Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1925. Secretary Mellon, however, is now trying to

Secretary of the Treasury A. W. Mellon

seeks a home for an old orphan

do something for it. He has had a bill introduced in Congress for the creation. of a Bureau of Customs with a Director in charge. Perhaps he is tired of having Perhaps he is tired of having it among the junk in one corner of his own office.

In some of the port cities, however, notably that of New York, the Customs Service is a sizable institution. More than 8,000 men and women are engaged in collection of customs duties. Sixty per cent of the collections are made at New York, though there are forty-eight customs districts and about 300 ports of customs districts and about 300 ports of entry. Queer as it may seem, many of these latter are cities that have not enough water for a duck to swim on. Goods go by rail and in bond from the seaboard to these inland ports in order to avoid delay to importers.

Two officials, primarily, have to do with the collection of customs duties, the Collector of Customs and the Surveyor of the Port. The Surveyor is, in effect, His examiners appraise

imported goods and determine accordi to value the amount of duty. Impor are held in appraisers' stores until this done. The importer makes payment the Collector of Customs, who depos the money in a designated bank to t credit of the United States Treasurer.

Most of the revenue derived from cu toms is collected in that way, though tremendous lot of work is necessary making other customs collections. Pa sengers' baggage constitutes an imp tant source of customs revenue, and o not always easy to tap. Men hide d monds between the taps of their sh heels. Women wind laces and sil around their bodies. They sew N York tags in Paris gowns. The frau are usually detected at the dock and t duty collected, but sometimes the che ers "get away with it" or think th do. They usually find later that th have to pay, not only the duty, but penalty. The Customs Service is 1 tient. It has its foreign agents. Th primary duty is to determine the va of goods at the source; but they mana also to check up on most purchases dutiable goods by Americans. The fa are sent to the customs officials at ho and the cheater is usually caught ab the time he is beginning to enjoy smuggled luxury. These articlescially classified as "not declared duty" are subject to seizure and come the property of the United Sta Unless the smuggler is willing to pay only the duty but a penalty equal to value of the articles, they are sold a the proceeds deposited to the credit the Treasurer of the United States.

There is still another source of o toms revenue that touches a great ma more people than these two combin Every letter-carrier, rural and urban a collector of customs-on dutiable a

cles sent by parcels post. The poud are turned over by the post office to customs officials in the port of en nearest destination. A statement is tached showing the amount of duty. 1 letter-carrier collects the money, turn over to his postmaster, who transmits to the Collector of Customs, who dep its it to the credit of the Treasurer.

THUS does Uncle Sam's banker rece

his deposits. How he cashes che and for whom is another story. I s undertake to tell it in a week or t There is still another story, and a one, in how the Treasury Departm supervises the monetary and bank systems, how it prints the paper mo and coins the metals, how it conser the National credit and guards the fin cial resources of the Nation. Perhap can tell that some time, too.