school is for

the building of a broad and a strong foundation, upon which the individual may erect his own superstructure.

The great storehouse to which all dramatists must go is Life. Life must be studied constantly and minutely. Therefore, those young men and young women whose education I shall undertake to advance must train themselves to observation. I have always worked hard - have done so since I was a baby. Such education as I now have has come to me as a result of my study in those two great schools Life and Nature. I am observing all the time. I set apart hours which I devote to the study of life as it is spread before me. My book is the people; my lesson of the day is the individual.

HOW I STUDY HUMAN NATURE

One of my favorite places of observation is the Grand Central Station, where there is a constant flow of humanity and where the emotions are bared in their utmost nakedness. There I see grief without intruding upon it; there I witness happiness and joy and permit myself a share of it.

I watched a young widow following with tearful gaze the casket holding the dead form of her young husband. Her grief tore my heart. It was real with me. I grew old with her, but I learned something of life, I added to my store of the great human emotions.

Again, I saw in a crowd awaiting an incoming train a young woman upon whose face was a look of joyful expectation. It required no mind reader to know whom she was expecting. The great train rolled in and came to a stop. Out through the gate flowed the mass of humanity. There were little dramas being enacted all about us. But my eyes were only for the one central figure. Joy passed from the face, and worried expectation took its place as the stream of home-comers began to thin out. That was followed by the keenest of disappointment, and tears of sadness wet my own eyes. Then of a sudden, joy flashed back, and rapture. and rapture. Now came a straggler. He was the man. If there is on the American stage to-day a young actress who can display the emo

tions as did the young woman at whom I gazed from my position behind a sheltering pillar, her future needs no assuring. But I do not know her.

When I find myself halted in my work of play writing, I know that it is because of lack of material, and for that material I must return to the great storehouse. Again I go into the streets; I haunt the shadowed doorways; I study life as it passes me. At last I single out from the throng the individual the character that suits. I hunt him down, I stalk him as eagerly as ever the sportsman in the jungle stalked his big game. Then at last he is mine.

If great good is to be accomplished by the work I have undertaken, it must come as a result of the proper education of the young men. Women are better natural actors than are men. They have fuller emotions, and I would almost say a better understanding of human nature.

THE STAGE A SCHOOL OF LIFE

More earnest work by more competent stage artists means better entertainment for the public. As there is created in the theatre a cleaner and more wholesome atmosphere the effect will be felt in the homes and in public life. The stage is a tremendous influence for good or evil. It is a great educational institution.

Lessons are being taught every night in all parts of this country to the thousands who throng our playhouses. Styles and fashions are established by the stage — not only the styles and fashions of our clothes but of our methods of thought, action, and speech, and of our morals.

We are imitative animals. Improve the music of the stage and you will improve the music of the homes. Improve the manners of the stage and you will improve the manners of the street. Improve the speech of the stage and you will improve the speech of all the people, standardizing pronunciation and establishing a purer language.

These are some of the things the success of my plans will mean to the public; in fact, I am working for the public, for without its encouragement and patronage no theatre door would open to-night.

B

EHIND a flat-top desk in Washington, D. C., sits one of the busiest men in the United States. He is a slender, fragile-looking young man, and he is busy because

He is the only director of 10,000 savings banks, all established since January, 1911;

He is establishing 1,000 new savings banks a month and expects to have 12,000 of them doing business by June 30th of this year;

He is the official custodian of $25,000,000 of the people's money, with deposits growing at the rate of $1,000,000 a week, and he expects the total deposits to reach more than $40,000,000 by the time this article is published.

He is Theodore Linus Weed, the Director of the Postal Savings System of the United States.

When, on the spur of the moment, President McKinley appointed a Commission for the Evacuation of Cuba, the clerical staff was selected in the morning. and left Washington for Tampa in the evening of the same day. Attached to this train of evacuators were two typewriters -inconsequential young men claiming not even the dignity of stenographers. One was Theodore L. Weed and the other was W. Morgan Shuster, later TreasurerGeneral of Persia, both beginning their careers as public servants.

Born in Norwalk, Conn., March 4, 1876, Theodore Weed moved to Washington with his parents when he was a child. He went to the public schools, then into his father's real estate office. In the spring of 1898 the War Department was authorized to employ temporary clerks on account of additional work occasioned by the Spanish War. Young Weed, then twenty-two, obtained a position as typist and copyist at $1,000 a

year. Though short of stature and never robust, he found that he could stand up under heavy work, and the men higher up grew to depend upon him as a copyist. It was while working at this thousanddollar job that he was attached to the Commission for the Evacuation of Cuba.

When the Commission arrived in Havana, in September, 1898, they found the streets strewn with corpses of starved reconcentradoes, and yellow fever waiting for those whom starvation had spared. In November, their chief sent a report to Washington saying that two nervy young men had stuck to their work throughout the fever epidemic and all other dangers without faltering, and for their courage and faithfulness he urged that they be rewarded by promotion. These two young men were the typists

Weed and Shuster. Promotion duly came to the position of stenographer, $1,200 a year. Soon their paths diverged, each speedily to work much higher up.

For more than two years Mr. Weed stayed in Cuba and was promoted through various grades until he reached the rank of clerk at a salary of $2,500 a year. While still on a $1,200 salary he married. But the Cuban climate finally forced him to return to Washington. In 1903, Mr Weed was hired at $1,400 a year to be the personal stenographer and secretary to the Chief Clerk of the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor. And when Mr. Oscar S. Straus became Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Mr. Weed was made his private secretary. When Mr. Hitchcock was selected to take charge of the Taft campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, young Mr. Weed became also his private secretary. From February 22 until June 16, 1908, Mr. Weed worked double time as secretary to a Cabinet officer by day and with Mr.

Taft's campaign manager two thirds of every night. After Mr. Taft became President, Mr. Weed was promoted to the position of Chief Clerk of the Department of Commerce and Labor at a salary of $3,000. In the summer of 1909, he became interested and active in the movement for a nation-wide organization to enlarge the commerce and industries of the United States through a coöperative trade extension body formed of representatives of leading chambers of commerce, boards of trade, and other influential commercial bodies. He served as Chief Clerk until 1910, when Mr. Hitchcock had been made Postmaster General and wanted him as Chief Clerk of the Postoffice Department at the same salary.

DIRECTOR OF THE POSTAL BANKS

Here Mr. Weed began organizing the Postal Savings System of the United States, which had been authorized by Congress, and which then existed only on paper. This organization work, in addition to the regular routine labor of the Chief Clerk's office, meant that for months Mr. Weed was at his desk sixteen and eighteen hours every day.

Finally all details had been attended to and, on January 3, 1911, forty-eight postal savings depositories were opened, one in each of the states and of the territories that were then prepared for statehood. By the end of this year the system will probably be self-supporting.

At the end of the first month (that is, on February 3, 1911) the deposits in the 48 experimental depositories were $60,101.

At the end of the first six months the total deposits amounted to very little less than $7,000,000 and the number of depositories had been increased to 400, despite the fact that for four months after the first forty-eight depositories began business, no new ones were established and the large cities had not been reached.

At the close of business for the first year (January 2, 1912) there were a few more than 6,000 depositories and the total deposits had grown to a sum in excess of $12,000,000.

As this article is written the number

of depositories exceeds 10,000 and the amount of deposits exceeds $25,000,000. New depositories are being established in postoffices in all parts of the country at the rate of almost a thousand every month, and cash is pouring into them at the rate of $1,000,000 a week. And that means much when you consider that not more than $500 may be deposited by one person.

As soon as possible, probably within four years, every one of the money-order postoffices in the United States will also be a savings bank, and then there will be 50,000 postal banks.

In these depositories any person over ten years of age may deposit savings up to $500 and receive interest at the rate of 2 per cent. a year, and the credit of the United States Government stands back of the deposit as a guarantee of safety. The smallest amount that may be deposited is a dollar, and no one may deposit more than $100 in any one month. Provision for savings smaller than a dollar is made by having savings cards and savings stamps for sale in every office. A savings card costs ten cents and a savings stamp costs ten cents. When nine of these stamps are attached to a card the card is worth a dollar at the depository.

The Government supports the Postal Savings system by lending these savings of the people to banks at an increased rate of interest. Under the law each local postmaster may deposit the Postal Savings money in a local bank, the bank paying 2 per cent. interest on it. As the Government thus gets $25,000 interest on every million dollars, on which it is paying only $20,000 interest, it clears $5,000 on every million deposited with banks. Already the total interest received from the banks is far greater than the total interest paid to depositors.

GOVERNMENT BONDS FOR DEPOSITORS

Twice a year, January 1st and July 1st, Postal Savings depositors may exchange. a part or all their deposits for United States registered or coupon bonds, drawing 2 per cent. interest. These bonds are exempt from all taxes or duties of the United States as well as from taxation of

any other sort. If a depositor has $500 in a depository he may buy bonds with it and then he is free to start a new deposit. When the Postmaster General makes up a statement of the number of bonds applied for, the Treasury Department issues them, at the same time calling in a like amount of outstanding bonds. Thus these savings bonds do not increase the public debt. The first Postal Savings bonds were issued July 1, 1911, and amounted to $41,900. By the time the next six months' issuing period came around, January 1st of this year, the amount had increased to $416,920.

For years foreigners, accustomed to Postal Savings Banks in their home countries, sent their savings to Europe for safe keeping. But now they have begun to entrust them to the more convenient Postal Savings depositories here. They are especially impressed that, contrary to the custom in Continental savings banks, no fee is charged here for opening accounts. Though the volume of international money orders issued in New York City in 1911 was about $44,000 greater than in 1910, there was a falling off of more than $36,000 during the five last months of the year following the opening of the first Postal Savings depository in that city in August, 1911.

Of the 13,869 depositors in the United States at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1911, 3,691 were foreign born, and since the opening of hundreds of depositories in large eastern cities this proportion has increased. Of the depositors at the end of the first six months 3,984 were women, 2,159 of them being married and the married women's accounts are by law beyond the control of their husbands.

In the beginning the banks vigorously opposed the system and many citizens were apathetic toward it. Some postmasters were unable to get the news of the establishment of a Postal Savings depository published in their local newspapers, because of the opposition of local bankers. But soon it became evident that many millions of dollars hoarded by timid people would be brought from hiding and be put into productive circulation.

Then the opposition of bankers rapidly disappeared. The deposits in banks have been increased instead of decreased because of the Postal Savings system.

BRINGING HOARDINGS OUT OF HIDING

The Postmaster General has in his office an interesting bit of evidence of the bringing out of hidden treasure — a silver dollar thickly coated with green mold, one of sixty such dollars deposited in a Southern Postal Bank, all showing signs of having been buried for many years.

A woman in an Illinois town brought $60 in dimes, the savings of years, to the postmaster for deposit. An aged woman. went to the Postoffice Department in Washington with a well-filled wallet which she said had been her bank for more than twenty-five years, ever since she lost some money in a bank failure. She declared that she would entrust her savings to no institution excepting the Government. There are thousands of that kind of people. One of the first depositors in the depository in Globe, Ariz., was a miner who came with $47 that he had withdrawn from the Postal Savings Bank of England.

Reports from postmasters all over the country indicate that about nine tenths of the cash brought to the Postal Savings depositories is deposited by men, women, and children who never before had a bank account. Conversations repeated by postmasters show that in fully half the cases the people had been afraid of bank failures and therefore chose to hoard their savings. They preferred to lose interest rather than sleep. Now they get a little interest, have the Government's guarantee, and the banks they feared have the money, making it earn a profit.

When one considers that, in establishing the Postal Savings system in the United States, an original plan had to be evolved that could be successfully applied to the largest territory and population that ever had been served by a banking system, and that that plan had to be worked out in every detail in a very few months, it is remarkable that there have been no mistakes to rectify. The forty-eight postmasters of the towns selected as the first depositories "went to school" for three

days in the Postoffice Department in Washington. During all the rapid extension of the system, from forty-eight postoffices to ten thousand, it has not been found necessary to change a single detail in the plans worked out by Mr. Weed before the first depositories were opened.

KEEPING THE BOOKS BY MACHINERY

But though the system is working without friction, radical improvements for handling the rapidly increasing volume of business are being effected. One of these is the devising of a system for having the deposit certificates issued, the accounts audited, and the bookkeeping done by machinery.

The certificate system is a great improvement on the pass-book system employed in the Postal Savings departments of other countries. One of the most persistent arguments in Congress against the Postal Savings was the enormous expense for bookkeeping that would be incurred. In England, for instance, there are more than 3,000 clerks in the central office alone handling the pass-books. There every depositor receives a pass-book, and a ledger account is kept for every depositor in the central office in London, to which every pass-book, from every part of the United Kingdom, must be sent to be balanced.

But in the American postal banks, pass-books have given way to certificates of deposit in denominations of $100, $50, $20, $10, $5, $2, and $1 each. These are issued to depositors and no central ledger accounts or pass-books are necessary. Individual accounts are kept in the local postoffices. The result is that, whereas it would require under the pass-book system 1,500 bookkeepers in Washington to take care of the business already developed, all the clerical work in the central office is now done by fewer than 150 clerks.

Such errors and delays as have occurred have been due to the use of certificates of seven different denominations and to the fact that they are filled in by hand. These facts have stimulated the authorities to perfect a mechanical method of bookkeeping. In Mr. Weed's office is a contrivance that looks like a cross between a

-

cash register and an adding machine the latest stage in the development of the plan to run the Postal Savings system by machinery. A machine like this, or similar to it, will be put in use in every depository in the country.

Inside the machine is a roll of certificates with a blank space for the amount of money to be deposited. On top are two series of levers, one governing the amount to be credited, the other controlling the serial number of the depositor's account. When these machines have been installed and a man deposits $35, for example, the clerk will set the cash levers at "35," and the other levers at the number of the account. Then he will turn a crank, out will come a certificate and its duplicate, and printed on the end of each will be the date, the serial number of the certificate, the number by which the depository is known in the Post Office Department in Washington, the number of the account, and the amount deposited. The certificate will be handed to the depositor, who will write his name on the duplicate, and that will end the transaction so far as the clerk and the depositor are concerned. Inside the machine the same data are printed on a slip of paper that drops into a drawer which can be opened only by the postmaster. And there is still another compartment that can be opened only by a Postal Savings inspector, thus providing a quadruple check upon the clerk and the postmaster and a quadruple precaution against error. And, instead of three certificates, of $20, $10, and $5, to represent a $35 deposit, as at present, only one certificate will be needed when the machine is used.

When deposits are withdrawn the paid certificates are sent to Washington. There the certificates are put into a machine. that punches holes in them that stand for the post office numbers. Then they are fed through electric automatic auditing machines. The introduction of these machines will mean that when the Postal Savings system has reached its full growth 200 clerks will be able to do the work in Washington that under the antiquated pass-book system would keep about 5,000 clerks busy.