walk stopped for an instant the overpowered attendants heard the King say: "All right, Mr. Lubin; I shall not try again to tell you how glad I am that you came. It is going to be just as you wish. Your plan shall be carried out, to the extent even of my private fortune."

Thus the battle was won. The King consulted his ministers, and presently sent forth a proclamation to the nations. It invited attention to the desirability of international co-operation to obtain official statistics on agricultural production, and stated that "the matter had been called to the attention of His Majesty by Mr. David Lubin of Sacramento, California." Would not the powers send delegates to Rome to consider the project?

So Italy issued invitations for the first International Conference, held at Rome in 1905. Some thirty nations were represented, for from the day he received the King's promise, Lubin did not lose an hour. He travelled everywhere, enlisting publicists, and statesmen. The Sorbonne at Paris, the British Universities, the German economists, were all interested. Hilim Pasha, grand vizier of Turkey, gave Lubin a long interview and sent a delegation. The Queen of Roumania wrote in Mr. Lub

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W. F. Hill, Head of the Pennsylvania State Grange.

That conference of 1905 is now history. With his native eloquence, profound conviction and unflagging energy, David Lubin dominated it. But the big men who composed it, once the big idea. was before them, needed only to be shown how it could be carried into effect.

The conference declared in favor of an international service of agricultural information, and drew up a protocol. The foreign office of Italy was authorized to initiate the pact, and Victor Emmanuel set aside two of his personal estates as a trust, the income to be devoted to the Institute. It is now about $60,000 a year, and will be much greater in future.

The treaty for the establishment and co-operative maintenance of the International Institute of Agriculture was duly ratified by the following countries: Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Ottoman Empire, Spain, France,

which he would get his letters delivered in person to the King; and the King gave loyal support. Sergius

as

Witte, foremost public financier of Russia, entered the list of Lubin's supporters, and Russia committed itself to the project. President Roosevelt sent delegates from the United States, Honorable Henry White, then ambassador at Rome; Albert F. Woods, of the Bureau of Plant Industry; David Lubin, and

BREAD IS THE UNIVERSAL SYMBOL FOR FOOD AMONG WESTERN NATIONS.

Australia, Mauritius, Japan, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Portugal, Salvador, Sweden, Canada, Argentine, Belgium, Chili, Cuba, Egypt, United States, Tunis, British India, Greece, Luxembourg, Nicaragua, Peru, Roumania, San Marino, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Great Britain and Ireland, New Zealand, Italian Erythria and Somali, Mexico, Norway, Persia,

Russia, Servia, and Uruguay-a remarkable diversity of nations.

Victor Emmanuel built the "Palais de l'Instut International d'Agriculture," in the beautiful Villa Umberto I, formerly the Villa Borghese, and dedicated it to the Institute.

The first meeting of the International Institute of Agriculture opened May 29, 1908, in Rome. Sessions continued for Sessions continued for several months, and a detailed organization was perfected. Each adhering nation was asked to perfect as soon as possible a system of crop and weather reporting and estimating, so that the most complete and accurate information possible should be secured. This information should be unified and standardized in such manner that, when all the countries had forwarded their data to the experts of the International Institute, they would

have a more complete and reliable showing of world conditions than private enterprise or speculative zeal could possibly secure. From this, the Institute's specialists would make up conclusions that would guide the world's markets accurately and surely. There would be no favorites. Everybody should have the information at once. The speculative element should be reduced to the minimum. Every nation should place the information before its people-before the smallest producer and the most insignificant consumer, as well as the richest dealer or most powerful market manipulator-all at the same time.

Each of the fifty nations maintains a representation at the International Institute throughout the year. These serve as a clearing house for the exchange not

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only of weather and crop information, but of all kinds of agricultural knowledge. Recently a peculiar blight attacked the orange groves of Spain. The Spanish representative at the Institute asked Mr. Lubin-who has from the beginning been the permanent representative of the United States-for a description of the California process of orange-tree fumigation. It was secured and forwarded instantly, and saved the Spanish orange growers. That is one instance in scores that might be cited, of the tremendously valuable service that has been rendered through this exchange of the world's best agricultural knowledge.

Americans cannot readily appreciate the possibilities of such a work, unless they understand that no other country has a weather service or a crop-reporting organization comparable to our own. But under the inspiration of Lubin and the lead of the

OF THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE

THESE WERE THE AMERICAN DELEGATES IN MAY, 1911. From left to right: David Lubin. Wm. C. Hill, Lloyd C. Griscom, Wm. M, Stewart, C. C. Clark.

International Institute, the rest are being induced to effect such organizations. The Crop Information Trust with headquarters at Liverpool is beginning to realize that its monopoly is not so powerful as it once was. The world knows more about its food supplies, its crop outlook, its prospective yields, than it ever did before. It judges more accurately what prices ought to be; it is less at the mercy of speculative cliques or interests. It cannot so easily be fooled by inaccurate or misleading reports.

Of course, this work is by no means perfected as yet. Countries have their crops reported by different systems; some use calendar year periods in making up totals; others use differing fiscal periods that do not synchronize and that make comparisons difficult. But gradually better and better order is being brought out of chaos. The tremendous possibilities of the Institute are at last realized, and governments are backing it with enthusiasm. Nowhere is there so little appreciation of its possibilities, apparently, as in the United States; and that chiefly because so very little publicity has thus far been given to its work.

The bulletin service of the Institute includes not only information about crop conditions and prospects, but more recently has been expanding to include many matters of social and economic importance. For instance, the Institute has been making a study of the Raiffeissen system of people's agricultural and

tutions have been the means of establishing independent credit and banking facilities among the peasant cultivators of Germany and, to less extent, other European countries. Their work has been of the greatest value; last year they did nearly six billions of dollars of business for the poorer people in Germany alone. The system is needed in many other countries; even in the United States it is being investigated with great care by the Grange, the Farmers Union, and some of the state administrations, with a view to its adaptation to our necessities.

This people's banking system is the subject of a very valuable report that the International Institute is just issuing, to be put out in five languages, and distributed to all the adhering countries.

These are random examples of the work done by the institute that David Lubin founded. It is yet in its infancy; but already it gives promise of developing into a World's Department of Agriculture. It is already assured of success as a check on speculative extremes, and a means of bringing together, in a common

fund, the very best crop and agricultural knowledge that the governments can

secure.

David Lubin, honored all over the world as the founder of the Institute, has given up other business, and devotes most of his time to this monumental work. He lives chiefly in Rome; a little, smoothfaced, stoop-shouldered, earnest man with

very big voice and the intensity of a prophet of old Israel. He talks of the Institute, its work and its future, with an eloquence that never fails to carry his point. He is the sort of man who would be set down as a fanatic if he were not right; as a visionary, if his plans did not succeed; as utterly impractical and unbusinesslike, if he were not intensely practical and a distinguished business success. His great business in California goes along without him; his partner, moved by much of the same inspiration that has carried Lubin so far, sympathizes, and his family is devoted to his projects. He is a He is a man to whom the nations will be erecting memorials—a generation or two after he is dead.

Τ'

HE most remarkable political fact of the last decade is the rapidity with which American cities are changing their form of government.

Twelve years ago Galveston, Texas, was practically wiped out by a tidal wave. When the waters receded they left the island covered with wreckage, slime and debt. But that tidal wave wiped out more than a single city! It swept away -though no one dreamed of it at the time-the city boss and the corrupt politician from hundreds of American municipalities.

Galveston was left broken and bankrupt. The work of reconstruction the great problem of making the city safecalled for the best efforts of the strongest and ablest men. It was no job for gang politicians, such as had ruled and despoiled the city in alliance with big businessduring the old days. In their extremity the people of the city called upon the legislature and the Governor of the state to help them. They asked that the old form of city government be suspended and that a commission of five strong men be appointed, who should

have absolute charge of every department of the city government.

So with no idea of forever ending the rule of the Boss-did Commission Government come into existence.

The governor's commission took hold of their great task like men. For two years they labored mightily, while the old politicians sulked and growled and starved. Then there came a chance for the politicians to take the whole question into the courts. The courts decided that because a majority of the commission