world's premier security; but that those who do not follow the fiscal operations of the Government closely may better understand the strength of our financial position, the following statement of the estimated receipts and disbursements of the Treas ury is submitted.

The period covered runs from April 6, 1917, when we declared war, to July 1, 1918, which is the commencement of our next fiscal year. The temporary loans made through the sale of short-time Treasury certificates are eliminated and receipts and disbursements are stated in round figures.

During this period the disbursements of the Government for its own account, actual and estimated, will not exceed..

In addition to which it will have loaned our allies against their interest-bearing obligations,

say..

Total disbursements..

$8,000,000,000

$5,000,000,000 $13,000,000,000

It is probable that the disbursements are overestimated and the amounts to be realized from the Third Liberty Loan, the War Savings Stamps, and taxes underestimated; but any surplus thus arising is unimportant.

The two significant facts are:

1. That the gross increase in the public debt (i. e., the amount borrowed from bondholders as distinguished from the amount raised by taxation) during the first fifteen months of the war will not exceed...

Against which there will be held the interestbearing obligations of other nations for at least

Making the net increase in the debt only.... 2. That we shall have raised by taxation at least as much as we have borrowed for our own expenses, thereby establishing a new record in the application of the "pay as you go" principle in financing the cost of a war.

$9,000,000,000

5,000,000,000 $4,000,000,000

It is true that the appropriations made by Congress exceed by some eight billions the disbursements for the period under review, and that if the war is not ended the funds to meet these appropriations will have to be provided later on; but this need not lessen the satisfaction and reassurance that are to be found in the showing made for the first fifteen months; and if the intrinsic value of the bonds now being sold were the only factor that determined the demand for them, the entire issue would doubtless be taken at a premium.

The effort and organization that are resorted to in the flotation of these successive bond issues are, however, necessary to secure the wide distribution among many buyers, without which great financial congestion would be inevitable. There is only $5,000,000,000 in money of all sorts in the United States. Of this at least three-fifths, or $3,000,000,000, is in the banks, where it is held as a reserve against deposits that are in turn loaned out. Manifestly, therefore, it is impossible for the banks to pay for three billions of Liberty Bonds without contracting loans to a degree that would produce a panic, and the problem of the various Liberty Loan Committees is to secure the largest possible number of small subscribers who will pay for the bonds they take with the cash they have in hand or the savings that they may be able to effect in future. In solving this problem a large measure of success was attained when the last loan, amounting to over $3,800,000,000, was placed among some 9,400,000 subscribers. This showed what can be done, and in the present campaign an effort to double this number is to be made. As a badge of honor a Liberty Loan Button with a Liberty Bell on it is to be given every one who buys a bond. Some 16,000,000 of these buttons are now ready for delivery. An honor roll on which the names of all subscribers will be inscribed is also to be displayed in some public place in each city and printed in the local newspapers. A service flag with a broad red border sur

an

rounding a white field crossed by three blue bars, signifying the "Third Liberty Loan," is to be given all subscribers, and competition between the various towns and communities is to be stimulated by allowing each district that takes its quota to raise "honor flag" to which a blue star will be added for every one hundred per cent by which the allotted quota is exceeded. By these devices it is hoped that a subscription can be secured from nearly every person who is able to lend his country at least $1 a week toward the cost of making the world safe for democracy. The plan ought to be an overwhelming success if each of us does his part in subscribing himself and making sure that every one he knows does likewise. According to the census of 1910, there were in the United States 26,999,151 males and 24,555,754 females who were then twenty-one years of age or over. Allowing for the normal increase in the population, there are now at least 55,000,000 men and women in the country who have reached or passed their majority.

What a glorious thing it would be if each one of them would agree to pay $1 a week for fifty weeks toward a $50 Liberty Bond.

The resulting subscription would be $27,500,000,000-more than enough to pay for two years of war at the present rate of expenditure.

Such a manifestation of financial strength and confidence would, moreover, go a long way toward convincing Germany of the futility of the struggle, and might bring the war to an end sooner than now seems possible.

It is of course unlikely that there are 55,000,000 persons in the country who can or will invest $1 a week in Government bonds, but it is not at all improbable that there are 12,500,000 who could afford so to invest $2 a week, and 12,500,000 more who could put aside $1 a week. On this basis a total subscription of $37,500,000 a week, or $18,750,000,000, could be obtained, and the Treasury would be assured of all the money it required for about eighteen months.

Why should this not be done? It can be done if all of us will make it our business to see that every one he knows who can afford it takes at least a $50 bond. One dollar a week is less than fifteen cents a day.

There are very few of us who can't save that much or more without feeling it. For most men it would mean simply a reduced expenditure for cigars, cigarettes, drinks, car fares, moving pictures, lunches, neckties, and a hundred other trifles in the purchase of which we could economize with benefit to ourselves. Let him who doubts this keep a memorandum of every expenditure of less than one dollar that he makes for one week and then reflect upon how unnecessary most of them are. Of the economies that are possible for women I do not feel competent to speak, but I am sure that there are within my acquaintance at least twenty workingwomen who could easily save $1 a week if they tried, while those who have incomes of their own or are dependent upon men would have no difficulty in putting aside a much larger sum. Employers can greatly aid in rolling up an enormous subscription to the bond issue by buying bonds for their clerks or workmen and allowing them to pay for them by a weekly deduction from their salary or wages. With a little encouragement those who are getting as much as $12 or $15 a week will find themselves able to invest $1 a week in a 44 per cent bond that can be sold whenever there is urgent need for the money. And what an education in providence and self-denial the effort will provide! The chances are that the bond will never be sold, and that, once having learned to become investors in this way, other bonds will be bought until the wage-earner becomes a capitalist and employer himself.

There must be not less than three million persons in this country each one of whom knows, upon the average, ten other neighbors, associates, employees, and customers who could take a bond for $50 or more. If these three million persons will each of them make it his or her business to see that ten bonds for $50 or more are sold upon the partial payment plan, they will make the forthcoming offering a greater success than any that have preceded it, and will render a very substantial service to their country.

In almost every city and town in the United States there is some bank, banker, or patriotic capitalist who will be willing to finance the purchase of a few thousand dollars' worth of

bonds at reasonable interest against the agreements of responsible wage-earners to pay for them in weekly installments; and if those who cannot make such an arrangement will write to me

at 15 Wall Street, New York, inclosing a stamped and addressed envelope for reply, I will try to put them in touch with some institution that will provide the necessary facilities.

“T

THE question now is, whether the army can win the war before the navy loses it." With some such words as these Sir William Robertson, former Chief of the Imperial British Staff, recently summed up the war situation. This, without being derogatory to the British navy's fighting prowess, was a suggestive way of stating the problem of the submarine the problem of merchant shipping. If Sir William's remark is apt to-day, how much more does it apply to the month of April, 1917! Then, and in the days that followed, with the entrance of the United States into the war, there seemed to flash all at once upon the Powers that were fighting Germany the realization of the jeopardy of their position. Undersea warfare was destroying the very arteries of their intercommunication-the arteries that supplied the vigor of their armies. Thus at a time when unrestricted submarine warfare was depleting Allied shipping at a rate which, if continued, spelled certain defeat, the United States was facing an absolutely unparalleled demand for tonnage to transport and supply a vast army in Europe and to convey huge supplies to our allies. We had not been in the war more than a fortnight when there was formed an organization whose very name indicated what the situation was-the Emergency Fleet Corporation.

The United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, as soon as organized, undertook the letting of contracts for the construction of the fleet of vessels which was to help nullify this undersea ultimatum. But from Fore River to Newport News and beyond, from the yards along the Delaware clear out to the Union Iron Works at San Francisco, the established shipyards were well filled with existing contracts. These yards were allotted such additional vessels as they could undertake, and those expert in ship-building were encouraged in the construction of new yards by giving them contracts for a sufficient number of ships to warrant the investment of the capital required to build the yards. These contracts usually ran from ten to twenty vessels each. These were large orders, but, compared to the needs of the country, seemed only too small.

Here also arose a new danger. Relying on the unceasing demand for ships and on the hope of a Government contract where none had been given, irresponsible, or at best inexperienced, promoters all over the country were also launching new ship-building enterprises. These were springing up almost overnight in an unhealthy, parasitical growth. The current issues of the shipping papers printed appalling lists of freshly incorporated ship-building enterprises. "Of the making of shipyards there was no end," but to the making of ships this promised to be a menace. For there was added to the already huge demand on American industry for ship-building material the irresponsible clamor of those who would overtax that industry without the ability to convert it into what was needed-ships. Not only was some additional and vastly larger enterprise required, but something radically new, more responsible, more co-ordinate-more like America.

Figures tell the story. By July 13 last the Shipping Board announced that it had contracted for 77 steel ships of 642,800 tons and 348 wooden hulls of 1,218,000 tons. This did not include the steel ships already under construction as the regular programme of the established yards throughout the country. This tonnage amounted to about 2,800,000, and was shortly to be requisitioned. So much was contracted for. As to performance, the estimate could be made about as follows: The

established shipyards, having brought themselves to the limit of

capacity, had attained a volnine of output which meant an anual delivery of steel ships amounting to about two million tons (dead weight); that is, with capacity to carry two million tons of cargo, stores, and fuel. In addition to this, old and new wooden ship yards, working on the recently allotted Shipping Board contracts, were turning out wooden hulls at the rate of about one million tons annually. Here was a total of three million tons (dead weight), which was a tremendous figure. To make it possible, all existing facilities had been pre-empted. It looked as if it were the maximum we could hope to reach. Compared to previous performances in this country and in the world, it was startling. Previous American ship-building had been at the rate of four hundred thousand tons per annum. We were preparing in the current year to multiply this figure by eight! Previous ship-building in Great Britain, mistress of the seas, had been less than two million five hundred thousand tons per year. We were going to better this by twenty-five per cent! Previous world ship-building had been upwards of four million tons. We were attempting to build ourselves in one year three-fourths the amount of tonnage that in less stirring days all the shipyards of the world could produce! But, unprecedented as this programme was, it was seen long before July that the maximum along these lines would not meet the crisis. As early as May 14 the Shipping Board announced that, in addition to all the construction it was providing for, it was imperative to construct another 3,000,000 tons! Think what this meant! With every available shipyard, old and new, pushed to the limit, there had somehow got to be built simultaneously an additional fleet of 3,000,000 tons (dead weight)! No yards existed where such a fleet could be built; in fact, there were not sufficient skilled ship-builders to work in such yards had they existed. In short, there was nothing out of which to create this tremendous tonnage of ships except the consciousness that it had to be done. Time-honored methods, or the speeding up of time-honored methods, must be put altogether out of mind; a revolution in ship-building had to be effected.

An undertaking to build ships on the staggering scale desired by the United States Government involved such great responsibility, was so revolutionary in character, needed such enormous facilities, that only the largest and most powerful corporations could possibly attack the problem with any chance of successfully handling it. It required the backing of men accustomed to carrying through great undertakings. It involved the coordination of large enterprises, the ability to handle great bodies of labor, and the vision to attack new problems. In short, the call was for big corporations and big men.

To produce the largest possible number of first-class steel ships in the shortest possible time-this was the problem. These must be cargo ships of ample carrying capacity and satisfactory speed. In the answer to this problem three entirely new ideas stood out:

1. The designing of a vessel so radically simplified that all the vessels to be built could be made as exact reproductions. Thus to standardize construction meant that every possible variation in size and shape of material must be eliminated.

2. The mobilization throughout the entire country of all that portion of our industrial resources that was germane to ship-building; the adaptation of these resources to the new purpose. This included, first and foremost, the bridge and structural steel industry; then the builders of engines and

boilers; finally, the torges, machine shops, and factories capable of producing any piece of equipment that goes into a ship from a propeller shaft down to an anchor chain. This meant the preempting of the output of plants of all kinds in many parts of the United States. Most important of all, it meant that the labor engaged in that output would be utilized right where it was instead of by precarious and disorganizing concentration at a single point-the shipyard.

3. The reproduction of vessels in large numbers, every one of exactly the same construction, thus permitting the use of the factory methods in which America is pre-eminent. It was as if the new shipyard were to become the assembling floor of a colossal ship factory, whose machinery was made up of all the interrelated wheels of American industry, whose employees were the entire body of American labor, and whose conveyer belts were the American railways.

This solution, both in method and in magnitude, was a new departure in ship-building. Standardization had been attained to a slight extent in England, but on nothing like the scale that the present programme demanded. In reaching this solution several large organizations co-operated. The Emergency Fleet Corporation took up the problem with the Submarine Boat Corporation, the American International Corporation, and the Merchant Ship-Building Corporation. In the matter of standardization the Submarine Boat Corporation had had some experience. They had been engaged in the quick assembly and construction of a standardized type of eighty-foot wooden submarine chaser, equipped with gasoline engines. They had built 550 of these for the British Government. Then, in standardizing a type of merchant steamer, accurate knowledge of modern steel ship construction was essential. The American International Corporation owned an interest in one of the larger ship-building plants on the Atlantic coast-the New York Ship-Building Corporation and this corporation was called upon to assist in the design of the vessel. Most important of all, the necessity for speed was paramount, both in the construction of the yard and of the vessels. No time could be spared for the gradual building up of a competent constructing organization; it was necessary to find one already existing. Closely allied to the American International Corporation was the engineering firm of Stone & Webster, who were just building the San Antonio cantonment for the United States Government in record time. They were accustomed to handling many million dollars' worth of contract engineering work. Their organized force consisted of approximately five hundred superintendents, engineers, foremen, etc. They were ready to begin a new job on an hour's notice. The whole of the co-ordinated programme thus fitted together. Its achievement was made possible by the fullest measure of understanding between all the principals and the Emergency Fleet Corporation.

As a result of this co-operative effort, and chiefly under the direction of Theodore E. Ferris, then Naval Architect of the Shipping Board, three types of standardized vessel were evolved a 5,000tonner, a 9,000-tonner, and a 7,500-tonner. The 5,000-ton boat was to be undertaken by the Submarine Boat Corporation, that of 9,000 tons by the Merchant Ship-Building Corporation, while the 7,500-tonner was to be built by the American International. A design of boat was worked out with a view to suppress ing all non-essentials. Curvature of plates, particularly that requiring multiple bending, was, as far as possible, eliminated. No camber,1 no shear; straight sides also, and a flat bottom. It was a design of boat which carefully combined the best shipbuilders' and bridge-builders' practice, embodying the latter wherever possible, for the reason which shall shortly appear. Furthermore, maximum cargo space was adjusted to maximum safety, utilizing the principle of a multiplicity of bulkheads, which had saved more than one torpedoed oil-tanker from going to the bottom.

In this revolutionary programme of standardization, the essence of the novelty, as has been suggested, was large quantity output; on this depended all the rest. The Submarine Boat Corporation and the American International Corporation

were each to construct an enormous Government ship-building plant, in which each would eventually build 200 vessels, to be completed within eighteen to twenty-four months. This large number alone made possible the "fabricated " ship. The "fabricated "idea simply means that you have a manufactured" ship instead of a "made-to-order" ship, just as you have a manufactured automobile and not a made-to-order automobile. We should smile to-day at the idea of a made-to-order automobile. We take it as an accepted fact that all automobiles constructed by one concern should be made after one or two standard models, with consequent quantity output and duplication, even interchangeability, of parts. It would seem ridiculous to us that a firm making motor cars, on receiving an order for a number of cars, should make up fresh sets of specifications for these cars and of all the machinery and parts going into them, and then construct all of this equipment according to these new designs, possibly different from every car they had made before. Then, if they should later receive another order from a different source, and in filling this order should work up still other designs of automobiles, we should not only say that this was a big economic waste, but we should expect it to take a long time to deliver these cars. Yet such was the position of the ship-building industry up to to-day. But the very magnitude of the work of building a single ship and the length of time it requires to complete one diverted attention from the old-fashioned, made-to-order methods which prevailed. Furthermore, there never was a demand for enough boats at one time from a single yard to focus thought upon the development of factory methods. Orders would come for one, two, or three vessels at a time, and the clients of ship-building were accustomed to demanding special features in the boats they ordered. Demand was hand-to-mouth; supply, naturally, was the same.

If we examine conventional shipyard practice, the situation becomes clear. After the vessel has been designed and the specifications made up in accordance with the client's desires, the steel and iron required in the form of plates, shapes, angles, etc., and all other materials, are delivered from the mills to the shipyard. There at the yard the plates are shaped and punched, the frames bent and punched and beveled, and all the riveting done; stern-posts, connecting rods, etc., are forged, the boilers and engines built-in fact, every component part of the vessel especially worked up. Every boat stands by itself as an individual piece of workmanship. They are all fine vessels, but they are an economic luxury. Most important of all, they depend upon a trained force of skilled ship-builders.

Obviously these time-honored methods, though speeded up to the limit, would not produce the 3,000,000 tons additional desired by the Government within twenty-four months. Even had there been yards available in which to build ships in this way, there were not sufficient experienced ship-builders to man them. The evolution of a new method was inevitable. This was the "fabricated" ship, or, in other words, the application of quantity methods to ship-building.

Ship-building being such a large-scale industry of itself, the application of quantity methods made the scope of a single plant Nation-wide. The shipyard became merely the assembling point. The key to the situation was the great shops throughout the country of the structural and bridge industry, first cousin" to ship-building. They were specialists in the line of fabricating steel, with all the special tools and labor-saving devices at their disposal. They had already strong organizations of skilled workers. They were accustomed to turning out large quantities of structural steel, little different from the framework and plating of a ship. A little adjustment and these workers could be turning out all the component parts of a ship's hull, to be shipped ready-made to the seaboard, there to be set up and riveted into a unit on the ways. An arrange ment was made with the important structural, bridge, and tank shops, obtaining priority of their output. The rest was in the adjustment. This was chiefly through the introduction of an elaborate system of templets, developed beyond anything known in bridge or ship building. This insured accurate reproduction of all details. The templet makers were recruited from both the bridge shops and the shipyards. Thus the punching, shaping, and to some extent the riveting, were done in the shops. The multiple duplication of parts enabled the manufacturers to produce

rapidly the plates and shapes to exact size as required. The shipyard's job was erection, riveting, and assembling.

But the distribution of labor was not confined to the hull. Orders for the engines for the first fifty vessels were placed with outside engine-builders, expert in their line; for boilers, with outside boiler-makers. All the necessary forgings, such as stern-posts, connecting-rods, etc., were tentatively contracted for, and, in fact, every item of equipment going into the finished ship was started in the process of manufacture somewhere in the country.

To take an example, the largest contract was with the American International Corporation. It was signed on September 13 last, and it called for the construction at Hog Island, near Philadelphia, of a shipyard with fifty building ways. It called for the completion within thirteen and a half months of fifty fabricated steel ships, each of 7,500 tons capacity and capable of a speed of 111⁄2 knots' an hour. It foreshadowed the ultimate construction of 200 steel ships, all to be delivered within twenty-five months. The cost of this huge fleet, amounting to 1,500,000 tons dead weight, would be approximately $200,000,000.

Subsequently, on October 23, under the terms of an option contained in the contract of September 13, this programme was amplified to provide for the construction of another type of vessel, suitable for use as a transport. This boat was to have a speed of fifteen knots, and was to be a combined cargo and troop ship, with a dead-weight capacity of 8,000 tons instead of 7,500 tons. The design of this vessel was a modification of the original 7,500-tonner, and, while slightly larger and embodying certain new features, was made equally adaptable to reproduction in large numbers. The Government order now called for seventy of these faster steamers, while the original contract for fifty 7,500-ton vessels stood. Deliveries of the two types were to be made in alternate groups of twenty-five. This entire fleet of 120 steamers is deliverable within twenty-two months from the date of signing the original contract, September 13, 1917. The total of tonnage is about 1,000,000. The cost will be not less than $170,000,000.

The shipyard in which this enormous programme will be pushed through will be unique. Work on its construction is rapidly going forward. An idea of its magnitude is given by some of the figures. The tract of land on and near Hog Island which forms the site of the plant is 900 acres in extent. To provide the foundations for the shipways 100,000 piles will have been driven. On these foundations are being erected side by side, in groups of ten, no less than fifty building ways. In just one of these groups of ten ways are represented the counterpart of some of the world's largest shipyards-Fore River, the Cramps', or, say, Harland & Wolff's at Belfast. Fifty ways in the new yard means that at least fifty steamers will be building simultaneously. They will be ranged in line along the water-front for one mile. Still others, already launched, will be fitting out in the finishing basins adjoining, which will extend for another mile. Thus there will stand at one time, side by side, two miles of merchant steamers.

To convey materials to the shipways an immense railway switching system is being provided which will aggregate some seventy-five miles of track. This system involves a comprehensive arrangement of classification and storage yards, to facilitate smooth and accurate distribution. The importance of this in rapid assembly is readily seen from the fact that there are 20,000 parts going into every ship, and the total amount of steel required for the fifty 7,500-ton boats is 130,000 tons, and for the seventy 8,000-ton boats 250,000 tons.

The first type of vessel to be built is the 7,500-tonner. She is a cargo steamer of 111⁄2 knots speed, single-screw, with engines amidships. Her general arrangement is of what is known as the "well deck" or "three-island" type. The transport will be a combined freight and passenger steamer, and will have a speed of fifteen knots. She will have a cargo capacity of 8,000 tons. As in the case of the 7,500-tonner, she will be a single-screw vessel

with engines amidships. Unlike the 7,500-touner, she will be of the shelter-deck type. As has been stated, both vessels have been designed without shear or deck camber, and without much of that rounded sweep of line which is traditional in the ocean-going craft. Traditional is the word for this, for it is a curious fact that this elaborate curvature has been handed down in the ship-building art almost from the time of the ancient Phoenicians; yet it bears no more relation to utility in the modern steel steamer than the graceful figureheads which the Phoenicians themselves wrought on their slender galleys.

Looking beyond the welter of the present struggle, what is the augury for the future? What does the "fabricated" ship mean to ship-building, not only of America but of the world, and what does it promise for the merchant marine of the United States? When U-boat warfare shall have gone the way of the Monitor and the Merrimac, will the vital impulse that arose to overcome it pass away as well? It does not seem likely. As the Monitor and the Merrimac revolutionized the navies of the world, making them iron instead of wood, so the "fabricated" ship seems destined to revolutionize ship-building. It does not seem likely, when once a way has been demonstrated of building ships both more economical and more expeditious than the old way, that the old way can survive. The new ships are in all respects as good as the old. In fact, it would seem in many ways that they should prove better. Every component part is produced by a specialist in his field. The assembling is supervised, not only by experts in ship-building, but by experts in the manufacture of the parts. The finished ship is the prod uct of the maximum combination of efficiency.

It seems likely, then, that the country that leads the world in factory efficiency, that has become pre-eminent in the manufac ture of structural steel, having adapted these two national assets to the building of ships, will become pre-eminent in that field also. It is difficult to see how shipyards in any part of the world can hereafter afford to build an appreciable number of vessels in the old-fashioned way. The ships that carry the bulk of the world's cargoes, that are seen in every harbor and roadstead from New York to the Cape of Good Hope, will be the "fabricated" steel freighters. For a time the fast passenger liners and other special types will continue to be built from special designs. But probably even these will later yield to the new era. In the meantime, and long after the war is over, America will be called upon to make up the tonnage deficit of the world. With the disappearance of the made-to-order method, the advantage in cost to the European_builders through their cheaper labor is liable to disappear. Higher American wages may be offset by this greater efficiency. The initial advantage of the new method will certainly be ours, by all that is American it should be permanent.

But the question of questions is, Are we building these ships to fly our own flag or another? By that I do not mean to-morrow, or even next year, but the period that will come after the present emergency. Will this large merchant marine which we are fashioning continue in our service after the war, or will it gradually be forced under the flag of other countries, because, though we may be able to build more cheaply, it is an economic impossibility to operate American ships in competition with the foreign? On the answer to this question possibly our whole future depends. What the answer will be depends on our own Government; depends, that is, on the action of Congressdepends, in the last analysis, on the public opinion of the American people.

It has become commonplace to point out the disadvantages under which the American merchant marine labors—the necessity of competing with subsidized vessels of foreign nations when American vessels receive no subsidy; this added to the fact that American ship operators pay the American wages, far in advance of the international wage scale at sea. But, unless it also becomes commonplace for public opinion to demand a remedy, we shall never become a great sea power.

That we shall grow into a great sea power is gradually becoming the fondest hope of every American. The fabricated ship has given the necessary impetus; the people must do the rest. Thus the Nation of the sky-scraper may become also the Nation of the ocean leviathan, and in that manner not only "scrape the sky" but "sweep the seas as well.

C

YORYDON is in Iowa, a dozen miles from the Missouri line. It is the county seat of Wayne County, and at the A time when our story begins, some twenty-three years ago, perhaps fifteen hundred people called it home.

Corydon was a comfortable, right little place, where the amiable ranginess of Missouri and the Puritan energy of the East met and mingled to bear pleasant fruit. Corydon bred good men, who went out and prospered and returned again because they loved their village, its cleanly life, its simple, honest fellowship.

Among its solid pillars was "Judge " Howell, originally a Long Island man. A Princeton graduate and a member of the bar, Mr. Howell in his early days had come to Corydon to begin the practice of law. Now, in 1895, his youngest son, Sammy, had grown to be ten years old. This story is about Sammy.

At the age of ten, Sammy, with his shock of tow hair, his blue eyes, and his copper-toed shoes that he lost whenever he got a chance, was just a happy, hardy, rollicking little boy with a laugh that no one could hear without joining. He rode the farm horses to water with his legs curled up like grasshoppers' legs, because they stuck out straight if he uncurled them. He climbed the hardest trees, to the ruin of his trousers. He swam the longest swims, he ran the fastest, he fought the pluckiest, and he got into the most mischief of any boy in his class. And he never nursed a grouch, never did a mean thing, and never took a dare.

Then something happened that necessitated Mr. Howell's return for a time to his old Long Island home, taking his family with him.

Here, at Southampton, Sammy went to the grammar school, did his lessons very easily because he couldn't help it, played very hard because he loved it, and the rest of the time enlarged his field by running errands, carrying telegrams, and being caddy on the Shinnecock links.

"I don't know about this," said the father.

"It's all right," said the mother, wise and full of faith. "Let the boy work out his mind."

Then came three years at the Southampton High School and a graduating year at that of Babylon-years during which the boy's native manly independence stepped out with a curious sturdiness and took the helm betimes.

"I can support myself," proclaimed Sammy. "Why should another man do it for me, even if he is my father? I'll show you! Watch me."

So in the spring of his fourteenth year he trotted off and got himself a job in the bank.

All summer he worked thereat. Each succeeding summer he returned to it, holding it until late in the fall, because, as he found, he could catch up with the classes whenever he chose to begin.

Meantime he developed into an all-round athlete, a good sport, and the best kind of a friend, honest as the sun, straight as a die. Still he kept his rollicking spirit and his ready laugh, and still he had never done a mean thing, never taken a dare, and never found out what people meant when they talked of "being afraid."

When he finished high school, the bank offered him a permanent place. But Sam had been thinking.

"I don't want to sit on a stool all my life," he considered, "with my brightest hope just to get my nose nearer the grating. I want to live out of doors and make things-to make things and see 'em grow under the sky and my two hands."

So he went to the firm of Rogers & Blydenburg, of Babylon, contractors and builders of established repute, and he asked them to take him on as carpenter's boy.

They took him on. He stuck to the work with the same spirit and energy with which he had stuck to everything else. Of nights he studied engineering and architecture. All day he drove 1Three stories by Miss Mayo relating to adventures of the Pennsylvania State Police have been published in The Outlook (March 20, March 27, April 3) under the general title "Soldiers of Law and Order." The present story will be followed by an article by Miss Mayo entitled "The New York State Troopers."-THE EDITORS.

at his trade. He joined the carpenters' union. He won his way up, step by step. And when he was twenty-six years old he had already made himself such a record of ability, honesty, skill, and dependableness as building foreman that some architects actually advised their clients to go out of their way to get Rogers & Blydenburg as builders if Sam Howell went with the job.

This very thing happened in 1913, the year that Sam neared his twenty-eighth birthday. The job was the building of a country house up in the wooded hills of Westchester, forty miles from New York. Here Sam had some seventy-five men to handle, and the work went forward with the solid certainty and the hearty good will that his presence had always insured.

There were master workmen under him now, and carpenters and masons who had twice his years. There were young American mechanics of his own age or less. But they all called him "Sam," they all loved him, and they all heartily respected and obeyed him, too.

"You couldn't put anything over Sam," as one of them said. "No cut-and-cover work gets by his eye! But you get the squarest deal from him that anybody could ask, no matter who you are. Sam is a real man, he is, and he treats everybody else like they were real men too."

The two women whose home he was building felt this also. As weeks ran into months, during which time they visited the work and saw Sam daily, they, too, came to regard him with strong liking and respect and with entire trust. Nature had given him the face and figure of the Concord Minute Man-clean-cut, firm, and comely in the sound old American type. And the spirit molding the face was the spirit that all true Americans must recognize and love.

"No need to worry when the work is in that boy's hands," the two women would repeat to each other. "How fortunate we are!" Then came a Saturday morning early in August when a groom, riding in with the mail, casually mentioned to the two women that Sam Howell had been shot.

As quickly as a car could travel the scene transferred itself to the building site. There stood the workmen, huddled in a group, silent, ashen-faced, hands down.

But Sam was not among them.

The master carpenter told the tale, and his white lips twitched as he spoke.

"Most of us had got here already-were standing around, waiting, when we heard a volley of shots over to the north. "Wonder what that is!' somebody said.

"And then in a minute Sam, on his motor-cycle, came up the road out of the lane.

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The second I sighted him I knew something was wrong. He kept his seat till he got to us. Then I jumped for him and he stumbled into my arms.

"I'm shot,' he says. Take the pay-roll out of my pocket, quick!'

"The very most he wanted seemed to be to see that pay-roll safe in my hands. I had to show it to him before he'd talk any more. Then he says, quiet and very clear:

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"You tell the man that gets my place so and so about this work,' and he made me repeat for him certain mistakes that he thought ought to be corrected-certain changes that ought to be made as the construction proceeded.

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Now, mind those points for me-don't let them get built in as they are,' he says.

"And then first he told me what had happened to himselfthen and not till then-not till he'd got every other body's business off his mind!"

The carpenter boss grew suddenly husky-stopped to reconquer his voice. He went on :

"I was riding up the lane by the wood patch,' Sam says; 'I'd got past the birches and was right in the willow brush when four Italians jumped out with revolvers in their hands.

"""Surrender!" one of them sung out. "Give us over that pay-roll."

"Of course I rode straight ahead.' (Sam would, you know!)