It is a positive proof that the by the Forest Service has bee when we learn that even with t

force at command the damage.

been, as Mr. Graves tells us, to less than two per cent of area. Doubtless the calamity d two weeks has considerably inci percentage. Mr. Graves urges should be at least one guard twenty or twenty-five thousand points out that in Prussia, v forest service is perhaps at its is one guard for each seventeen acres.. Co-operation between National authorities, as well as action by each, seems obviously as a National problem, and or most vitally important in the wh subject of Conservation, the s improvement of the Nation's tw million acres of forest land m neglected. The situation in Mo greatly improved last week by he and in Idaho also the heroic effo esters, citizens, and United State reduced materially the spread of and in large measure brought th control. The newspapers have of touching and pitiful incidents ing and escape, and the wretch of communication and the great between the regions under fire ha terribly to the difficulty of dea the situation.

COMMON SENSE IN CIVIL SERVICE TESTS

Civil Service examinations have been a source of amuse

ment for spoils politicians and their followers. It is a somewhat new thing for Civil Service examinations to be a source of amusement for believers in Civil Service Reform. The following quotation from the Kansas City "Times" indicates that the principles of the merit system have become so well established that believers in the merit system can afford to laugh at some of the incidents in the course of its application. The Kansas City "Times is referring in the following passage to the examination held by a Civil Service Commission in Kansas City for the position of dog enumerator and impounder:

One horse and two goats were lawfully impounded and were not claimed by the owners.

1 year, had Civil Servyesterday. . Commisstablished lents. it

rst to the erator and amination

e several ere were

the highans it was ; obtained the merit that there es if they s had alhich they nmission, es of exninations.

A committee or tree such experts was called in for each group of examinations. Thus, for the positions in the City Counselor's office, the examination was conducted by a committee of three eminent lawyers; for the position of Street Cleaning Commissioner the examination was conducted by a committee consisting of a former Mayor of Kansas City, a member of the Charter Commission, and a member of a leading engineering firm; for the position of Superintendent of the Workhouse the examination was conducted by a committee consisting of a successful merchant and student of sociology, the head of the Jewish Educational Institute, and a former President of the City Club. This committee plan has been used in Chicago for choosing a Librarian of the Public Library; but in Kansas City it was adopted for the entire

service. The Commission, moreover, laid emphasis on examination for personality and experience. It did this by means of oral examinations to an extent not possible under other methods. The results have been highly satisfactory. Good men have been chosen, party lines have been wiped out, and the merit system established in the respect and confidence, not only of the people in general, but also of the office-holding class.

THE NEGRO IN BUSINESS LIFE

Over a thousand negro delegates from all parts of the country attended the eleventh annual meeting of the National Negro Business League, which began its session in New York City on August 17. Among them were bankers, farmers, editors, insurance men, dry goods merchants, doctors, ministers, and representatives of many other professions and industries. The sessions were enlivened by stories and incidents, were dignified by serious presentation of what has already been achieved by the race, and were inspired by hearty hope and purpose for the race's future. Dr. Booker Washington, with real tact and skill, and also with invariable good humor, brought out the best that the delegates had to give, and his own address abounded in stimulating influence. He urged his people not to make the mistake of dwelling overmuch on the things they have not, but rather to glory in the opportunities they possessed, and he declared that in this country "the negro enjoys freedom of opportunity to get education, freedom of religious worship, to a degree not afforded any similar group of our people in the world." Dr. Washington did not, however, neglect to hold up to shame the blot cast upon civilization by the continuance of lynching; he referred to the fact that within the present summer no less than twenty-six colored men have been wantenly murdered by mobs without wrongdoing on their part. He pleaded for equal and exact enforcement of the law, in the interest not alone of the colored race, but of all races. As an evidence of the prosperity of the negro race Dr. Washington stated that the negroes of the country are adding from twelve to fifteen million dollars a year to their holdings of land, and that he believed that they are now

worth in the aggregate not far from six hundred million dollars. When, he added, he spoke of this great advance to President Eliot, of Harvard, Dr. Eliot declared, "No race in the world has made such progress in the same time." On the last day of the Convention the delegates received ex-President Roosevelt with immense enthusiasm, and listened to the first general public address he had made since his return from Africa. This address was strong in appreciation of what the negro has done and in practical encouragement and advice. A few sentences may be here quoted to show the trend of Mr. Roosevelt's suggestion of the right line of conduct for the negro in America :

When your neighbor likes and respects you, you have won your battle. The white man of the North does his worst work in

interfering between the two peoples of the South, and his best work when he improves their relations. This League represents general constructive work for the race. teaches you not to whine and cry about privileges you do not happen to have, but to make the best of opportunities at your doors.

It

No good American can fail to subscribe to the motto," All men up and not some men down." If in any community the negro criminality, there is as much of menace to quarter is wretched and one of potential the white man in that condition as to the

black.

You colored men and women, set your faces like flint against those who would preach to you only the gospel of hate, envy, and bitterness. Realize that the only way to help your race is not by preaching vindictiveness and hatred, but by leading your people up to prosperity through good citizenship. An ounce of performance is worth a ton of complaint.

AND SMALLPOX

The title of this paragraph PENNSYLVANIA is not intended to be taken as the phrase of an alarmist. There is no epidemic of smallpox in Pennsylvania, but there is, we are informed by so high an authority as Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, an epidemic of prejudice against the only preventive which has ever been found effective in restraining the ravages of smallpox, a prejudice which is likely to have pretty serious consequences if it continues. In a letter referring to a recent article by Mr. Roosevelt in The Outlook regarding General Leonard Wood's services to the country, Dr. Weir Mitchell expresses his regret that the article could not have

contained " a full account of the extraordinary service which he [General Wood] rendered in dealing with disease in Cuba." Dr. Mitchell sends us a pamphlet which is issued by the Department of Health of the State of Pennsylvania that contains some striking statistics brought out by correspondence between General Wood and Dr. Mitchell with regard to smallpox in Cuba. These statistics, as Dr. Mitchell says, supply "a piece of incontestable evidence in favor of the absolute immunity furnished by the harmless process of vaccination." One of the advantages of General Wood's early medical training is that he can speak not only as a military man but as a medical expert, and it is his opinion that the efficacy of vaccination as a protection against smallpox was demonstrated in Cuba. In 1898 American troops were ordered into a part of the province of Santiago, in Cuba, where there was raging one of the most terrific epidemics of smallpox of modern times. The conservative estimate of the military authorities placed the number of cases at four thousand in a district two hundred miles long and about seventy-five miles wide, with the sufferers dying at the rate of thirty a day. The cause of this epidemic was that for thirty years the political unrest and the revolutionary warfare had put a stop to vaccination. The vaccinated troops that were sent into this district not only proved to be practically immune, but succeeded, by sanitary work in connection. with vaccination, in arresting and finally suppressing the epidemic. These facts, and many more, make the pamphlet not only of general interest, but of particular interest to those counties of Pennsylvania where the question of vaccination has become a political matter. The attempt of ignorant or prejudiced persons to interfere with vaccination on the part of Government Health Boards is, to use Dr. Mitchell's just language, an incredible thing; but what is there that does not get mixed up with politics?"

Reports received from RusCHOLERA sia are to the effect that Asiatic cholera, which has been epidemic in St. Petersburg since the spring of 1908, is rapidly spreading to other parts of the Empire, and is threat

ening to become a great national calamity. According to the latest official statement, there were 23,944 new cases and 10,725 deaths in the week ended August 13, and 112,985 cases and 50,287 deaths from the beginning of the year. Until the present summer the scourge had been confined, for the most part, to cities and towns, on the main routes of travel; but it is now invading the rural villages, where the ignorant and superstitious population is least able to deal with it intelligently and successfully. In the south of Russia, and particularly in the basin of the river Don, the whole population is panicstricken, and it has become impossible to get laborers enough to carry on the current business of the season. Exporters of wheat have orders for seven thousand tons a day, but cannot get men to load it into cars, while proprietors of coal mines report to the Minister of Trade and Industry that, if health conditions do not soon improve, the great coal-mining industry of the Don basin will be absolutely ruined. Although the epidemic is worst in the south, where the number of cases is large and the rate of mortality extremely high, it is rapidly extending to all parts of the Empire, and has even appeared as far north as Archangel, on the White Sea. Asiatic cholera in Russia is not a new nor an unfamiliar visitor. It first made its appearance there in 1829, and it has prevailed in epidemic form during thirtyseven of the eighty-one years that have since elapsed. In the course of these thirty-seven years 4,558,000 Russians have been attacked by the disease, and 1,995,000 have died from it. In the year 1848 alone there were 1,740,000 cases and 690,000 deaths, and even as late as 1892, when the cause of the disease and the best methods of dealing with it had been ascertained, there were 340,000 cases, 158,000 of which terminated fatally. These statistics, taken in connection with the recent progressive extension of the epidemic throughout the Empire, are enough to justify the most serious apprehensions. In countries where the population is enlightened and the Government. efficient, cholera, in the present state of medical and sanitary science, is not greatly to be feared, because it can be easily controlled and quickly stamped out; but in

Russia, where an overwhelming majority of the people know no more of the causes of epidemic disease than they do of the ultimate origin of life, and where the Government has never dealt successfully with anything except revolution, cholera is as much to be dreaded as war.

POPULAR IGNORANCE

2

In this, as in all previous epidemics, the greatest difficulty with which the Russian physicians and sanitarians have to contend is the invincible ignorance and hostility of the common people. Instead of following the instructions of the doctors and cordially co-operating with them, the peasants regard them with suspicion, refuse to admit them to their houses, and frequently attack them as poisoners and spreaders of infection. They even believe that patients who have apparently died under the physicians' treatment revive after burial, and knock persistently on their coffin-lids for rescue. "He keeps knocking," said the peasants of one village to the parish priest; "we must dig him up." In some parts of the Empire the hostility of the people toward the physicians has taken so violent a form that the authorities have had to suppress it with force. Such was the case in several of the southern and southwestern provinces, where the reactionary Jew-baiting organizations known as the "Black Companies were allowed to assure the peasants that the Jewish doctors and medical students were spreaders of cholera and poisoners of wells. Even in the Duma, the reactionary leader Markoff recently declared, in a debate on the medical academy bill, "The Jews are a hateful criminal caste, and should not be permitted to practice medicine. No one who loves the Russian people would send a criminal to give them medical assistance, and the Jews are all criminals." For most of this ignorance and prejudice the Government is primarily responsible. Since the defeat of the revolution it has systematically crushed every means of popular enlightenment that it could not wholly and exclusively control, and has forcibly closed probably not less than five hundred public libraries, societies for popular culture, teachers' unions, and educational organizations of one sort or another. This policy it continues to pur

sue even now, when the consequences of popular ignorance are so deplorably manifest, and when a great epidemic of cholera is getting wholly beyond control. Only a month ago a newspaper in the Crimea began a series of popular articles intended to enlighten the peasants with regard to the causes and nature of cholera and the best means of combating it; but after the publication of the first article the editor had to inform his readers that, for reasons beyond his control, the series would be discontinued. Only a few weeks ago the Warsaw " Society of Polish Physicians," which had four hundred members, was suppressed, by order of the Governor-General, merely because it had kept its records in the Polish language instead of in Russian. It had done most valuable hygienic work, and had greatly improved the sanitary condition of the city hospitals; but its officially approved by-laws provided that its records and accounts should be kept in the Polish language, and, moreover, its President, Dr. Heinrich Nussbaum, happened to be a Jew.

the Jewish physicians, doctors' assistants, and medical students, who have patriotically offered their services in the parts of the Empire where the epidemic is most serious, can only be described as criminal. In all parts of southern Russia there is urgent need of doctors, nurses, and atttendants, and even of fearless men to bury the dead; but Jews are not permitted to help. The Association of Southern Mine-Owners is said to have made a direct appeal to the Council of Ministers for permission to employ the Jewish men nurses and medical students who have volunteered their services, but thus far it has received no reply. Meanwhile General Tolmacheff, the Prefect of Odessa, has made a report to the Minister of the Interior in which he recommends that the Odessa Public Hospital, which has been in existence about fifty years, be closed, because the Jews have acquired control of it, and it may in the near future become politically dangerous. Odessa at the present time is suffering from both cholera and bubonic