PAYING FOR WATERWAY

DEVELOPMENT

Last week The Outlook commented editorially on the imperative need for a National policy of waterway development. It heartily indorsed the recommendation that waterway development should be intrusted to an Executive branch of the Government and that it be carried on as the Reclamation Service is being carried on, with consideration only for National public policy and not for special interests, sectional pride, or the political fortunes of individual legislators. If such a plan is to be adopted and our waterways are to be comprehensively developed, the work must be paid for. In the past the Federal Government has met the expense of waterway development from its regular current income, and so long as this is possible without injustice to other important functions of the National Government the method should be continued. with the rapid increase in the necessary expenditures of the National Government, which is not kept pace with by the increase in receipts, it is difficult to see how adequate provision can be made from current revenue for waterway improvement.

But

Several proposals are made for the issuances of bonds for waterway development under an Executive Commission. One of them, for instance, proposes that a bond issue be provided for, amounting to half a billion dollars, $50,000,000 to be issued each year for ten years. The proceeds of the sale of these bonds would constitute a permanent fund for the National improvement of rivers and harbors. Such a bond issue has one Federal precedent; the Panama Canal is being paid for in just this way. But the plan has many precedents in other directions. The State of New York has issued $101,000,000 worth of bonds for the enlargement of the Erie Canal; the State of Illinois has just authorized an issue of $20,000,000 worth of bonds for the partial construction of a fourteen-foot channel from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River at St. Louis. New York has also authorized the issue of $50,000,000 worth of bonds for the improvement of its highways. Municipal governments are continually issuing bonds for the development of parks, for the

extension and improvement of streets, and for the construction of docks, transit lines, and water-supply systems. In private business, especially, precedents abound. Railways, manufacturing and other industrial corporations are continually borrowing money for the construction of permanent improvements which will increase their assets. Few commercial enterprises would achieve commanding positions if they waited to accomplish permanent improvements until current income had provided the resources. Borrowing money for the right kind of expenditure is often better economy in the long run than spending only what the income of the moment would permit.

Let us take an example from every-day life. A man owns a house. Its roof leaks in several places, and there are a number of weak spots in the shingling. A builder is called in and estimates that the roof can be patched for a certain amount, and that it can be entirely reshingled for a considerably larger amount. The man finds that if he is to consider merely what he can afford from his income for the current year, he can only have the roof patched. But if he is wise he will consider carefully whether it is not better economy, better business policy, to borrow from the future and have a complete new roof.

Mr. Taft drew the parallel between private enterprise and public policy at Washington a few weeks ago. He said: "I think that men sometimes overdo the business of meeting what ought to be distributed expenses out of current income. I think there is good reason for issuing bonds for these improvements that are to be permanent, and not to spend current income for them. Sometimes it takes as much courage and involves as much real public interest to issue bonds for a purpose for which bonds ought to be used as it does to pay as we go."

It is an imperative duty of a people to preserve the natural resources of its country for the use of posterity. But the proposition has a converse which is worthy of serious consideration. Is it not equitable that coming generations should bear their share of the expense of the conservation of the resources which are to be their heritage?

It may be urged that precedents should

not be drawn from private business, for the reason that improved rivers and har bors will not be income-producing properties, and well-managed commercial institutions do not borrow money for im provements which will not yield a return. But waterway development will yield great returns in general prosperity and National commercial advantage-things which are as truly National assets as the stock of gold coin in the Treasury itself. In addition, it should be remembered that what ever increases commercial prosperity and the volume of business will increase the

actual income of the Government through taxation. Waterway development, if it is carried out on logical lines-as has not yet been done in this country-may be made to yield a direct income to the Treasury. The development of our rivers and harbors cannot be successfully carried on unless with it go the conservation and rational exploitation of the forest resources of the country. Waterways cannot be divorced from watersheds. Of what use is it to dredge a channel down the length of a navigable stream or to dredge out the harbor at its mouth if the slopes at the head of the stream and of its tributaries, denuded of their protective forests, are pouring into its waters thousands of tons of soil every year? Of what use is it to improve a waterway if, by the destruction of the forest trees and the no less important mass of leaves and roots and mulch beneath them, it is made subject to destructive floods at one time of the year and to no less crippling droughts at another? Forests, as has been conclusively shown by the experience of European countries and even by our own young but efficient Forest Service, can be made income-producing properties by treating the forest as a crop, and selling the mature timber yearly. Preserve the forests on the watersheds, as we improve the waterways, and we shall have the income to justify the bond issue. Another source of income, intimately related, is from the development of water power on the tributaries of navigable streams. The Federal Government has not yet undertaken to avail itself of these vast resources of power, even on the rivers already included within Government lands and National forests.

66

Le Jongleur de Notre Dame " is a free adaptation for the operatic stage of the story told in the thirteenth century by Gautier de Coinci, a monk of St. Médard, near Soissons, in France, once a royal abbey, and the goal of many pilgrimages. The manuscript of this legend is said, in the introduction to "The Tumbler of Our Lady and Other Miracles" (Duffield & Co.), to be a glorious specimen of the art of the illuminator in the thirteenth century. The cult of the Virgin was at that time in France the dominant religious movement, and accomplished in the end the humanization of the idea of God and the deification of woman, becoming a theme which painters and poets treated with the utmost freedom and the utmost reverence.

The "Tumbler," in this old story, had become weary of nis profession as an acrobat, performing at fairs, before gatherings of rustics, and on all festive occasions. "Of a truth, he had lived only to tumble, to turn somersaults, to spring and to dance." He knew leaping and jumping in all their forms, but the "Paternoster," the "Canticles," and the "Ave Maria were quite beyond his knowledge. He entered a monastic order at the famous monastery

of Clairvaux; dumb by reason of his ignorance, and glad to be shielded by the silence imposed upon the monks. He saw the priests at the altars, the deacons at the gospels, and the subdeacons at the epistles; the acolytes ringing the bells for the vigils, reciting verses, the young priests at the psalter: every man having some office and function, and not one of these functions within his reach; so, with great lamentation and weeping, he prostrated himself before the altar over which was the image of the Holy Virgin, praying for guidance. In this state of mind he heard a monk tell this story of the Christ-child and its mother:

Mary with the infant Jesus, by mountains and plains, fled. . . . But the winded ass could do no more; and not far away, on the side of the hill, suddenly appeared the bloody cavaliers of the King, the child-killer. "Oh, my son, where hide thy weakness?"

A rose was in flower on the roadside: "Rose, beautiful rose, be good to my child that he may hide; open big your calicesave my Jesus from death.”

But for fear of spoiling the crimson of her dress, the proud one replied, "I will not

open."

A sage plant flowered on the way: Sage, my little sage, open thy leaves to my child."

And the good floweret opened so wide her leaf that in the bottom of this cradle the child slept.

And the Virgin, blessed among all women, blessed the humble sage among all the flowers!

And while he listened, like an inspiration, he said to himself that after his own manner he would serve the Virgin; while others performed service with song, he would perform it with tumbling. He took off his habit, and, girding his tunic about him, turned all the somersaults, high and low, backwards and forwards, that he had learned; "and he bowed to the image, and worshiped it, for he paid homage to it as much as he was able." Then he said to the image, "Lady, this is an honest performance. I do this, not for mine own sake, . . . but for yours, and above all, for the sake of your Son. . . . Do not despise that which I am acquainted with, for, without ado, I will essay me to serve you in good faith, if so be that God will aid me. How to sing, or how to read to you, that I know

not, but truly I would make choice for you of all my best tricks in great number. Now may I be like a kid which frisks and gambols before its mother. Lady, who are never stern to those who serve you aright, such as I am, I am yours."

All this the poor tumbler kept to himself, serving God by serving the Virgin at his own time and in his own way, offering such poor gifts as were his. But presently the monks, curious to know what the tumbler did in his hours of devotion, watched him, and were filled with indignation at what they saw before the altar. One night as they watched behind a column, as the libretto tells it, and were about to rush upon him and punish him for sacrilege, a strange light began to shine from the altar, a smile gathered on the mouth of the Virgin, the eyelids were raised, the white hand was extended, the beautiful head bent low, and there were heard the voices of the hosts of angels singing," Glory in the highest; peace on earth, good will to men!" And in the glory of that vision, with celestial voices sounding in the crypt, the monks on their knees reciting litanies, and the Virgin slowly mounting to heaven surrounded by the host of shining angels, the poor tumbler, in an ecstasy, passed into Paradise.

The story within this beautiful story tells itself so plainly that it needs no interpretation.

SLAUGHTER ON THE

HIGHWAYS

In the days before the Civil War, when Americans boasted loudly about the freest country in the world, and the only country in which there was real equality between man and man, European travelers and students of American conditions were puzzled to reconcile these statements with the fact that Americans were holding four million men and women as slaves. The successors of those European travelers and students must be equally puzzled today when they hear so much about the respect paid to the individual man and woman, without regard to previous condition of birth, race, or education, the sancity which attaches to the person under our free government, and at the same

time read the accounts of the frightful mortality, not only on railways, but in the streets of our cities and along the country roads from reckless automobilists. As a matter of fact, the regard for human life in the United States is a matter of public declaration but not of private practice. In Europe, under various forms of government, all involving more or less class rule, the men and women who walk, and who are, of course, the great democracy of the world, practically have no rights which people in carriages or automobiles are bound to respect. If they are run down and injured, they alone are responsible, because they have no business to be in the way of people in vehicles. In this country, which calls itself a democracy, the same state of affairs exists: the pedestrian must look out for himself, and the chances of his safety appear to be rapidly lessening. In practice, at least, he has no right of way. He exists simply on sufferance; so long as he does not obtrude himself on any highway, or interfere with the flight of a motor-car, he may be able to avoid accident and probably death; but if, by any mischance or lack of agility, he happens to be in the way of a vehicle running from thirty to sixty miles an hour, he and his family must accept the death penalty with resignation. There is absolutely no remedy for them.

On Sunday, not long ago, in the immediate neighborhood of New York City, three men were killed, three more sent to various hospitals or to their homes in a dying condition, and twenty were more or less seriously injured. Two men were walking along an old post road in one of the most picturesque sections of Westchester County, which was the scene of incessant fighting during the period when the American colonists were struggling to secure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." At some hour after dark the two men were struck and killed by motor-cars, the occupants of which did not report the accident, but sped on to their journey's end in safety, and are somewhere to-day, though guilty of manslaughter, pursuing their usual vocations. The autopsy revealed that the men had not only been killed, probably at the first blow, but that subsequently they had been run over by heavy vehicles, and one

motorist remembered "having bumped over something" during the night at the point where the bodies were subsequently found. If six men had died and twenty had been taken into hospitals with yellow fever or cholera on that particular Sunday, New York would have been aroused. Measures for the public safety would have been taken, and every precaution that money and intelligence, backed by a powerful public opinion, could enforce would have been put into operation. But the death of six people by violence-for that is what it amounts to-and the maiming of twenty others are allowed to pass as every-day incidents in the life of a great city. Some day this state of affairs will cease, as some day the outrageous violation of privacy by the sensational newspapers will be brought to a definite end. But the man who cares for the higher civilization of America, and attaches some value to the lives of the common people who have to use the highways, sometimes wonders how long this reign of death will continue.

THE SPECTATOR

To

The Spectator has had reason of late to recall an evening spent at the home of a distinguished editor and lifetime newspaper man, on which occasion the Spectator desired the gentleman's authority as to the correct use of certain words, the pronunciation of others, and as to whether some peculiarly constructed sentences could be called good English or not. the astonishment as well as the enlightenment of the Spectator, the scholarly man replied: "Why not be your own authority? You have as much right to coin words as any one else and to pronounce them as you please; close your dictionary, spell the words as best suits you, and make your own language." Some weeks later the Spectator read an editorial in this editor's paper, the substance of which was that each section of the country had its own peculiarities of language, and to the Nation at large it was an advantage rather than a detriment that these variations of speech should exist. Let the people of Maine, he said in substance, stick to their own provincialisms; let the people of New Jersey cling to their

twang of pronunciation, and let those of the Middle West and beyond the Rockies hold to their freedom of speech, that variety may exist and each people's special localisms not be obliterated.

All this has been brought back to the Spectator's mind while journeying across the continent and taking note of the expressions and variations of speech existing in each locality. Now he can ask for a "sack" when in reality he wishes for a paper bag, and can call for a “bucket when a pail is desired. The Spectator has also learned to speak of “ arroyos when describing certain features of California scenery; he can, in fact, accommodate himself to the language of those about him and has even learned to adopt

The Spectator was at Glacier Point in Yosemite Valley, having achieved that high position in life through the agency of a donkey and a guide. Another and higher point could be gained by taking a side trip from the hotel, but this the Spectator refused to take, waiting, and resting meanwhile, for the party which went on and up. And this is what he heard from a lady of middle age on her return: "Yes, I had to go, as my husband said he would pack me up there if I did not."

The Spectator pondered long and earnestly as to the meaning of that word "pack" in the place where it was used, and it was not until he had heard it used many times in conversation, at a later date, that he understood it meant the same as carry."

"That's plain," the Spectator thought; "the man meant that he'd carry his wife if she did not go willingly, but why couldn't he have said so?"

It is a well-known fact that the Pacific Coast is a sort of rendezvous-a meetingplace of people from all the States of the

Union, as well as from foreign countries. The Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, and Mexican serve or cater to the needs of the Yankee, the Hoosier, or the Missourian, so what wonder that the Spectator should find here expressions of a varied character? When repeating them as choice specimens of English, he is told, "That is used very commonly in Pennsylvania," or "Every one from Michigan understands what that means," or "The cowboys from Montana started that phrase." The Spectator was requested one day, by a neighbor dining at the same table, to "pass the spread," and seemed decidedly ungracious in his inability to grant so simple a request, but how should the Spectator know that honey was desired? The gentleman asking for the "spread" was from Indiana, and explained that anything in the nature of honey or jelly could be thus designated, adding, "My mother always kept four kinds of spread on her table," and the Spectator forthwith added a new word to his vocabulary. The Spectator has heard a revolver called a "gun" and has been told that any form of firearm carried by a cowboy, whether fastened in his belt or slung over his shoulder, is a gun. "Quite some time is another curious phrase heard by the Spectator for the first time, and the conductor on the trolley-car has asked, "Do you want to off at the next corner?" According to the opinion of the Spectator's editorial friend, the conductor had a perfect right to eliminate his verb, but the Spectator was dull of understanding and was a second or two in comprehending.

"Get to go" is another common expression in this land of mixed speech, used not only by the uneducated but by those who consider it perfectly proper. The Spectator said to a teacher of the ninth grade, "Were you able to attend the Teachers' Convention at Los Angeles ?" "No," was the reply, "I made all my plans to be there, but didn't get to go. Teachers as well as pupils maintain that "alright" is a legitimate word, though the Spectator argues that the two words should be used; and perhaps, by common consent, it will in time have its place in the dictionary along with "already." These are not the same kind of mistakes