September 28, 1927

Coal-black miners underground and sweating, half-naked puddlers in the steel mill have co-operated in its construction. The paper is inserted in one end of this colossal machine, the mysterious electric energy is turned on and, presto, out of the other end comes what? This wretched article! Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus, was the comment of that genial satirist, Horace, on such efforts the pregnant mountain labored and brought forth a wretched little mouse.

Now I do not call this article wretched in affected disparagement, but because that term expresses the feeling that occasionally overwhelms every hack, whether he be writer, painter, or musician. Preachers, who have to do a great amount of hack work, sometimes suffer from such depression, I surmise. They have their "blue Mondays." It is not because hack work is perfunctory. On the contrary it is often performed from a high sense of duty and with painstaking care. The words "pot boiler" are customarily used as a term of opprobrium by art critics. But does not this reproach spring from a mistaken sense of proportion? Mankind must have food, clothing, shelter before it can have art, and to keep the pot boiling is not infrequently the sternest duty of him who would, if he could, create great and noble works of art.

Let the pot boiler or the hack writer, provided his work is as sincere and honest as he can make it, be of good cheer. Something may come of it, after all, besides mere utilitarianism. The man who has to whip himself to do his daily column or his weekly article may take courage by recalling to mind the fact that some of the greatest names in literature are those of men who were once in the hack-writing class. Xantippe thought that Socrates was a useless and provoking hack. Shakespeare wrote many of his best plays as pot boilers to keep the box office of the Globe theater in a profitable condition. Dr. Johnson was the greatest hack writer the world has ever known. He alone has made the profession almost an illustrious one. Two of his greatest creative productions, the Dictionary and the "Shakespeare Commentary," were pure pieces of hack work.

He once said to his friend, Sir

John Hawkins: "I look upon this [his edition of Shakespeare] as I did upon the Dictionary; it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing I know of." Perhaps the most remarkable example in English literature of the hack writer

who has become ennobled is George Meredith. In certain circles the highest test that can be applied to a candidate for a diploma of literary taste is to ask if he reads "The Egoist" or "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." My "I. Q." in this respect is very unsatisfactory. I confess that I am unable to read Meredith with spontaneous pleasure. This is probably because I belong to the great middle class who, as an English Meredithian explains, "read with their eyes and not with their minds." But at least I recognize my limitations and willingly admit that for intellectual power Meredith stands among the giants of his trade -the trade of novelists whom Heine called the pastry-cooks of literature.

It is not, however, for his intellectual power that I refer to Meredith. It is because for seven or eight years he was the veriest hack writer, supporting himself by contributing, says the most eulogistic of his biographers, "one or two leading articles and an average of about two columns of news notes each week" to a provincial newspaper, the "Ipswich Journal." He was unhappy about it. "Above all things," he said, "I detest writing for money. . . . And journalism for money is Egyptian bondage. No

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slavery is comparable to the chains of hired journalism."

I like Dr. Johnson better as a hack; partly because he did not complain but did his plodding work manfully, and partly because one of his sententious pronouncements is the best possible justification of the work of the literary hack. When his life-long friend David Garrick, the great Shakespearean actor, died, Dr. Johnson wrote that this untimely death "eclipsed the gayety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure." Boswell took the Doctor to task for indulging in an anti-climax. "Is not," asked Boswell, "harmless pleasure' very tame?" "No, sir," retorted Johnson, ""harmless pleasure' is the highest praise. Pleasure is a word of dubious import; pleasure is in general dangerous, and pernicious to virtue; to be able therefore to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess."

If this article, then, in spite of its share in deforestation, should give any reader a little harmless pleasure I should happily feel that I have the backing of one of the sanest and most likable moralists of modern times.

A

MERICA retains the International Challenge Polo Cup, and with it a prestige as remarkable as has ever been achieved in any one sport.

A gallant band of British officers connected with the army in India, financed and abetted, encouraged and advised, by the Maharajah of Ratlam, as good a sportsman as ever came to these shores, was turned back by the one-sided score of 13 to 3 in the first game, and by the much closer tally of 8 to 5 in the second encounter, when the challengers had been reinforced in the forward positions by heavier men. The same four that defended the cup so decisively in 1924 against a challenging Hurlingham team that was torn with British polo politics, and led in a forlorn hope by Lewis L. Lacey, of the Argentine, a Canadian subject who fought with the British arms throughout the war, was chosen to defend after an early experiment with a radically changed formation. This consisted of J. Watson Webb at No. 1; the incomparable Thomas Hitchcock, Jr., at No. 2; the deft and canny Malcolm

Stevenson at No. 3; and Devereux Milburn, the world's greatest back and captain. It is characteristic of the man Milburn that, finding the newly chosen order of the American Defense Committee (Winston Guest, Hitchcock, Cheever Cowdin, and himself) going badly, he took the whole matter in his own hands, reinstated the veteran formation, and won through with it, so inspiring it with his own personality and leadership that in the first game of the series it turned in a brand of polo that certainly equaled if it did not surpass that of the famous original Big Four-the Waterburys, Harry Payne Whitney, and himself.

The American victory had been expected before the matches materialized. The English team had a peculiar history that did not add to its prospects, and a streak of luck in the matter of weather that was a downright handicap. Hurlingham, through which all challenges for the Westchester Cup, in play this time for the forty-first year, must be made by the terms of the deed of gift, had confessed its inability to gather up a team that could challenge with even a

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remote chance of success. This despite

the fact that four English players had been in action in this country the year before, and playing in our open championship, who would have represented any country with credit, and that Lacey, the greatest of them all, was still available. Whereupon India took fire and asked the privilege of challenging.

The Indian army had turned out a team that had swept all before it; it was a team that had been together for a year, it was superbly mounted from the stables of the Maharajahs of Ratlam and Jodhpur, two of the greatest sporting Indian princes, and with their rupees and those gathered from army messes and the polo public of India it was prepared to conduct such a campaign as never before had been undertaken by any Hurlingham output. Consent was forthcoming, rather grudgingly, to be sure, but, at all events, the team sailed. When Colonel-Commandant H. A. Tomkinson, managing the invasion, landed his men and his mounts on this side, he did not pretend that he had better than an even chance, if that, to take the trophy home, but he did promise to show America a team that was a unit, one that was here with a definite object, had little or no interest in social engagements, and was organized as none of its predecessors ever had been. Native grooms came with the mounts, and they were among the best in the world. India and Australia, with a scattering from England, had been drawn upon for the four-footed players. The team, in its first appearance at the Westchester Biltmore field, a month before the event, showed so well, playing in the order in which it had been in action in India, worked so smoothly that the American Defense Committee was outspoken in its praise and publicly announced its realization that here was a foe worth America's best.

A

FTER that the deluge.

The team had worked up its beautiful combinations and crisp hitting on the fast fields of India, and had refused to play in England in order to avoid any risk of slowing down. Yet throughout the period of preparation in this country, such was the weather, the team never once had a chance to play under anything like home conditions. There was another problem at hand. There was in action in this country an Irish player, an officer in the British army, and at one time attached to the Poona Horse in India, Captain C. T. I. Roark, who could not well be kept off the team from Hurlingham's point of view, although

had Hurlingham itself been handling the team it is possible that he would have had even a lesser chance. It was no fault of Roark's that he was taken over to the team and mounted by Captain the Hon. Frederick E. Guest, long and still a power in the Hurlingham committee. Roark is a remarkable player, but it was plain to any acute observer that he was in and not of the company that faced the American Big Four. Although Major Atkinson was the captain of the team, it was the voice of Roark that was heard over the field, scolding, cajoling, exhorting. By his appearance he displaced Captain John Pitt Dening, who had played No. 3 on the original team, and it soon became apparent that something was wrong up forward. Captain George at No. 1, who had turned in splendid play in India, and Captain A. H. Williams, who was a very fine No. 2 at home and in his early appearances here, fell off in their play, and while Williams retained his place with the four for the opening game at Meadow Brook, George was displaced by Captain Pert, a young and popular officer weighing 151 pounds, who was supposed to match in the battering riding off of the modern game the old master of all polo, Milburn, riding at more than 180 pounds. The impossibility of such a selection should have been apparent to the British management, but the British manage ment was hurried and worried, and Pert turned in a fancy day's play too close to the matches to be readily set aside.

The result was that in the first match, before the largest and most brilliant gathering that had ever witnessed an international, the British were almost literally swept from the field, the American Big Four playing almost beyond themselves. It was a great exhibition. The day after the match the British had learned one of their lessons. They had learned that Roark was no great asset if the light and outclassed forwards could not keep the thundering Milburn and the canny Stevenson from coming clear through and literally smothering him. Incidentally, they smothered the gallant Atkinson, too.

For the second match, therefore, Colonel Tomkinson threw in his big men, as he had been advised to do by American critics even before the first encounter. They were Captain R. A. George and Captain J. P. Dening, who had earned their reputations by playing with the best of the American test teams, and were showing better form even than that in India. How well they had learned American polo in a couple of weeks is attested by the great fight they

made in the second match, for, with the exception of the first period, when Tommy Hitchcock, mounted on the greatest polo pony of the year, the pie bald Argentine, Tobyanna, and sup ported by his other players on the three next best of the string, scored three goals, the teams were evenly matched all the way. It is true that the American Big Four could not again be expected to reach the heights attained in the first game, for any set of men has just one game like that in its system, but, even so, the Americans were playing hard enough to permit the loser to retire with a great share of the credit for the afternoon's work.

TH

'HE British invaders had once again to learn that America plays rough, hard, if legitimate polo, with unorthodox formations and terrific hitting, and that only that same type of game stands any chance of wringing the famous Westchester trophy from their grasp. It is a pity that that lesson was not learned earlier. So the Maharajah departs vowing to return next year in quest of the Open Championship, a mission that requires no sanction from meddlesome and society-ridden Hurlingham, and with a full knowledge of just what "big time" American polo is. He left behind him a team that was desperately striving to take home that same trophy in the course of the wind-up of the present expedition, but sadly depleted in mounts through the loss of Roark, mounted by Captain Guest, who has them here for sale, and by Williams, forced to return for other reasons. However, the British Army-in-India made a splendid impression in this country.

The general mix-up on the other side of which they were to some extent the victims will undoubtedly serve to reinforce the Argentine demand that the Westchester Cup, whose deed of gift is hopelessly out of date, be thrown open to challenge from India, the Argentine Spain, France, or anywhere else that the game is progressing along the advanced American lines. It has become painfully apparent that so long as the present powers rule at Hurlingham England will not or cannot send over a team that has a fair chance of winning, and will not allow any other section of the British Empire to do so without meddling. Al of which, of course, is no reflection or the gallant Roark. The Maharajahs wil be welcome again in their own right, and it may be that some day Hurlingham will see the light.

In the meantime the Cup is safe fo another three years.

Shall We

RAILWAY transportation, steamship transportation, the packing industry, banking statistics, and the hotel industry are represented in statements from distinguished business men printed in connection with this article. E. W. Beatty, Robert Dollar, F. Edson White, George Foster Peabody, Roger W. Babson, and E. M. Statler are all practical men of affairs with imagination. They have made their statements in response to a telegraphic request from the Editorin-Chief of The Outlook. We should like now to

A

"MONTH" does not mean anything. A day means something. A year means something. But a month? In the vernacular, what do you mean, month?

We cannot scrap our days or our years without scrapping the sun. We could but we do not want to scrap our weeks. Religious tradition, long habit, and convenience combine to make the week a very acceptable division of time. But we can (and, if we once come to see the awkwardness and inconvenience of them, we will) scrap our months.

When you say month you do not say anything definite. Do you mean a month of twenty-eight days or a month of thirty-one? Do you mean a calendar month or a lunar month? And if you mean a lunar month, what kind of lunar month? The best general definition that the dictionary can give of a month is that it is one of the twelve parts into which the calendar year is divided; but even that definition does not fit a lunar month for there are more than twelve lunar months in a year. Even in law the word month is an inaccurate term. It once meant a lunar month—that is,

Shall we make every month look
like this?

SMTWTFS

1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

The International Fixed Calendar

and robbed February of a day and named one of the longer months after himself. Then came along Augustus Cæsar and he took to himself the month that followed Julius's, but because he wanted a month that was just as big as Julius's he added a day to it. To do this he stole another day from February.

Then he changed around some other days and left the set of calendar months in a jumble. And ever since then we have been putting up with this arbitrary arrangement as if it were as fixed as the tides and the circuit of the earth around the sun.

What is the consequence?

some kind of lunar month-but in Eng-A

land and the United States it means a calendar month whether of twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, or thirty-one days.

HOTEL that did a business of $10,000 per week in room sales found that its receipts from room sales were less in May than those in April.

20

onth is a wholly irrational division of time. It has no relation to anything in astronomy, or human experience. It is an inaccurate and varying measure of time that is a constant annoyance in business and a misleading unit in science. 15 It has no religious significance.

A month is nothing but just a bad 10 habit.

The worst of it is that it is a habit that has been wished on us by people long since dead and forgotten. Long before the Christian era the Egyptians had a better set of months than we have. Then came along Julius Cæsar

-THE EDITORS.

It looked as if the business was dropping off. May was one day longer than April and yet its room sales were less. The figures, however, proved to be very misleading. As a matter of fact business was actually better in May than in April-ten dollars a day better-but the monthly comparison seemed to show that it was worse. Why? It is simply because the hotel, like the rest of us, was doing what Julius and Augustus had whimsically told it to do. The explanation is very simple. The hotel business is not uniform throughout the week. Eminent accountants have estimated that, on the average, room sales are usually more on Wednesdays and Thursdays than they are on any other days of the week. The average in percentage is Monday 17, Tuesday 17, Wednesday 18, Thursday 18, Friday 12, Saturday 10, and Sunday 8. Now it happened that there was a fifth Wednesday and a fifth Thursday in April while in May there was a fifth Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On a weekly business of $10,000 the Wednesday and Thursday in April brought in $3,600, while the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in May brought in $3,030-$10 a day above the average. A worse report for a better business.

This, of course, is not an actual case;

One

In the proposed calendar, every month will be like every other month.
day every year will have no week-day name, but will be called Year Day.
Each of the present months will lose a day or so, and a brand-new month
will happen between June and July

the figures are given in round numbers;
actual cases are much more complicated;
but the case is typical.

This sort of thing happens all the time in other businesses.

A weekly periodical gets a larger daily average of receipts on Monday than on any other day of the week. It charges its salaries and wages to Saturday and its other expenditures to Wednesday. In 1922, for example, there were four months in which there were five Saturdays, four months in which there were five Mondays, and four months in which there were five Wednesdays. But those months did not coincide. In January there was an extra Monday; so the periodical's income that month was disproportionately large. In March there was an extra bill-paying day. In April there was an extra salary day. In May there was an extra income day and an extra bill-paying day. In July there was an extra salary day and an extra income day. In August there was an extra bill

ying day. In September there was an

extra salary day. In October there was an extra income day and an extra billpaying day. And in December there

Th W Tu MSF ThWTu

WATCHES AND CLOCKS AS
CALENDARS

Under the International Fixed Calendar your watch or clock can show the date and day of the week. By a day pointer you can tell the time, not only by seconds, minutes, and hours, but also by days

The Outlook for

was an extra salary day. This irregularity not only makes it impossible to compare one month with the next, but it also makes it impossible to compare the month with the same month in another year, for each year every month is different from the same month in the year before and the year after. Under these conditions what do monthly comparisons mean? Nothing. In some cases it means worse than nothing, for it misleads directors and confuses executive officers.

As a piece of business machinery the month is a joke.

If we had any other piece of machinery dating from Roman emperors that was as unworkable as the thing which we call the calendar month we should scrap it at once. In fact, we should not have it. We should have scrapped it long ago.

WH

HY is it then that we people of the twentieth century hold on to the present calendar month?

Is it because we think of it as part of the immutable processes of time? Is it because we think that the month is somehow mixed up with the moon? As a matter of fact it has very little to do with the moon. And even if it had a great deal to do with the moon it would not help matters much, for the moon has nothing whatever practically to do with our daily life. The sun provides our daylight, and it causes our seasons; but the moon marks no periods that are of any consequence. And even if it did, what period should we select? There are various kinds of lunar months-the anomalistic, the tropical, the sidereal, the nodal, each differing from the others. The moon is well called inconstant. We have forgotten the moon for a great many centuries and we can continue to forget it in making up our calendar.

If we wish we can make the month mean something.

Indar has been devised. It does away

N fact a new form of monthly calen

with all the absurdities of our present calendar months. It has profited by the wisdom of Moses and the discoveries of modern science. It is designed to promote at once international good will and business efficiency. If adopted-or rather when adopted-it will make life easier for the masses of men. It will benefit women. It will add value to scientific study. It will tend to promote sensible and uniform religious observMost important of all, in the minds of practical people, it will save energy-and money.

ance.

September 28, 1927

This plan came out of the very practical experience of a railroad man. George Eastman, Chairman of the Board of the Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York, tells about this railroad man in a pamphlet entitled "Do We Need Calendar Reform?" This railroad man is Moses B. Cotsworth. While he was special investigator - and adviser to the general manager of the Northeastern Railway he found it very difficult to explain the variations in increases and de

W

From F. Edson White President of Armour & Co.

E believe that the inauguration of the Cotsworth thirteenmonth international calendar will mean the simplification of accounting practices. This would be a great advantage when considering monthly figures on live stock, kill, sales, etc., as data could be more accurately indexed than at present, and comparison would be on same basis. Our accounting is based on twelve periods in the year, eight of which contain four weeks, and four of which contain five weeks. Laborious adjusting is needed to compare four and five week periods. It seems a logical step in the movement for business analysis, which, I think, is one of the outstanding needs in the industrial world to-day.

Chicago, Illinois.

creases of the net earnings of the company each month. Because of the variation in freight traffic during the week, the freight traffic being light over weekends, and the variation in the number of days in the month and in the number of week-ends in the month, he had to make complicated adjustments. He therefore began to study the calendar. And in this study he found that the calendar had similarly unfortunate results in all lines of business, and on churches, and schools, and science, and the daily life of people generally. As a consequence he worked out a proposal which is known as the Cotsworth Proposal for Calendar Reform. After he had worked sixteen years on the subject a plan was under way to call an international conference in the fall of 1914. This conference was blown away with other things by the World War. Now at last the international movement has been renewed. The League of Nations has appointed a Special Committee of Enquiry, and although it has had 185 plans before it, and though it has run up against objections based on nothing better than tradition, and although it is not yet ready to announce a final opinion, this committee by its report has already made it clear that the advantages of this proposal are greater than those of any other.

Out of this proposal has come what is known as the "International Fixed Calendar."

According to this planEvery month will consist of twentyeight days.

From Roger W. Babson

Founder of Babson's Statistical Organization and Chairman of the Board of the Babson Institute

I

LOOK forward to the day when the Cotsworth calendar will be adopted by most nations of the world. My experience plainly points to many real advantages in this fixed thirteen months' calendar plan. It should appeal to almost everybody using statistics for business, financial, and economic problems. There is constant need, for example, for quickly comparing one month with another, and likewise for comparing the same month in different years. At present this latter cannot be readily done because of our faulty calendar. With the new calendar a part of statistical work ought to be fifty per cent more effective. The old saying is that comparisons are odious, and a chief reason for this is the irregularity of our calendar. This is constantly making statistical comparisons laborious, meaningless, or actually misleading. Moreover, remember that thirteen monthly settlements in the year would mean that money spent for rents, salaries, and monthly accounts would circulate nine per cent faster than it does now. Several business concerns among my clients are already using a thirteen months' calendar in their own accounting, and they tell me it works well. Both from experience and observation I can see wherein practically all kinds of records will be far more useful and far less costly when kept on the new calendar basis. I favor it heartily.

Wellesley, Massachusetts.

It will begin on Sunday like the week and end on Saturday.

It will thus consist of four weeks-no more, no less.

Every month of every year will be exactly like every other one.

Thirteen of these months will make up a year

Except one day.

That extra day, inserted between the last Saturday, that is the last day, of one year and the first Sunday, that is the first day, of the next year, will be an international holiday—an extra Sabbath. The new month will be inserted in midsummer, between June and July.

Every four years the additional day (which is now added to February) will be inserted between June and the new month, as an additional Sabbath.

Thus every Sunday of every month of every year will be either the first, the eighth, the fifteenth, or the twentysecond. Then when you say the nine

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teenth you will mean the third Thursday of the month. If somebody tells you that he will pay you something a month from to-day you will know precisely on what day he will pay you. When you pay rent you won't be paying more per day in one month than you are paying in any other month. If you are receiving a salary by the week and you are paying your bills by the month you will know each month just how much you can count on. If you are carrying on a busi

From George Foster Peabody

Banker of New York, Retired

THANK YOU. I have been out of

my advocacy of a thirteen months' calendar relates to my conviction that it will facilitate clear thinking in unnumbered directions, and thus make for greater service in all lines, not omitting religious.

Saratoga, New York,

ness in which you settle your accounts monthly you will not have any month in which you will have an extra pay-roll to meet. If you have any calculations to make you can know instantly the numher of days between any two dates. Election day, as now set for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, will always fall on the third of the month-unless election day is changed to Monday as it might well be, when it will always be the second. The advantages you will enjoy when this plan is adopted, as undoubtedly it will be, will not be merely personal advantages but also advantages which you will get in the common advantage of society. For example, it is estimated that by changing the circulation of money values from twelve times a year to thirteen times a year about two billion dollars will be released in Europe for business expansion, and in all countries about five billion dollars. This is in addition to the enormous saving made in getting rid of unnecessary labor now used in constant and unsatisfactory business adjust