Association. The first work it did was to equip a small hospital and nurses' home at Altopass, N. C., with an operating room and fifteen beds, as a centre for organized work in rural nursing. The plan is to establish numerous neighborhood houses. with infirmaries, as headquarters for nurses and as meeting places at which the people may gather for instruction in home nursing, care of children, cooking, and housekeeping. Perhaps these houses may develop also into social centres.

The Red Cross Society, acting upon the suggestion of this example, has organized between eighty and ninety local committees in the United States that select and enroll nurses who shall act as reserves for the Army Nurse Corps in time of war but who shall at other times be utilized in the rural nursing movement. With such powerful backing, the possibilities of this movement for the amelioration of suffering and for the improvement of sanitary conditions. in the country districts are inspiringly great.

CLEANING OUT THE LOAN SHARKS

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HERE are a good many million people living in the cities of the United States whose only property is to their household goods, and their only income a not too large salary. When an occasion arises in which they need to borrow they have but two alternatives: to put their household goods up as collateral or to mortgage the coming salary. The money-lenders who do this business easily become usurers or "loan sharks." They charge from 10 to 100 per cent., and they hound and persecute those who fall into their clutches.

Organized efforts have been made to end this vicious system. Perhaps the most hopeful movement of the sort was made in Cincinnati last spring when Mayor Henry T. Hunt stationed a policeman in every loan office in the city with orders not to allow them to do business until they took out a license and otherwise came under the laws. Mayor Hunt then invited everybody who was in the hands of the loan companies to notify him. The response was so large that the city machinery of relief proved inadequate. At this

point the Citizens' Mutual Loan Company stepped in. This company was organized in 1900 by leaders of the religious and philanthropic life of Cincinnati. One of its directors, Mr. Harry M. Levy, wrote to Mayor Hunt, placing at his disposal the organized aid of the Company and $10,000 in cash to help out the victims of the loan sharks. The offer was accepted; and here are some of the results:

In one case the Guarantee Loan Company demanded $20 on a loan. The case was settled by the payment of nothing. The "Society of Cincinnati" demanded $68.70 in another case. Settled for $40.95. D. H. Tolman demanded $31.85. Settled for $15.15. Ohio Finance Company demanded $14. Settled for $5.50.

These are typical settlements in about two hundred and fifty cases. Altogether, nearly three thousand dollars was saved to these people by the action of the Citizens' Company. This is only the money side of the question. The saving in mental distress and in moral degradation. was incalculable. Twenty-four other public associations are attacking the problem in all parts of the United States, and they are doing great good. Similar results can be achieved in every city by like methods.

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A COUNTY THAT CURES
DRUN KARDS

OUNG Dick" O'Rourke is a graduate of Valparaiso (Ind.) University, a former student at the Michigan College of Mines, and a saloonkeeper in Houghton County, Mich. In the spring of 1911 he was elected county supervisor from Franklin Township, and by the end of the year he had drafted an ordinance that has nearly eliminated drunkenness from that community.

Young O'Rourke, as supervisor, learned that Houghton County, in spite of its prosperity as the centre of a rich copper mining district, spent S65.000 a year for the relief of paupers. He investigated and found that nine tenths of this distress was caused by the excessive drinking of men who were family bread winners. Last winter, at his suggestion, the board of supervisors chose a special officer whose duty it should be to seek out habitual

tipplers, warn them to stop drinking, and, if they failed to heed the warning, to get their photographs and to file copies of them with every one of the three hundred saloonkeepers in Houghton County, with orders that no liquor be sold to these men. Frank Rahkola, a big, mild-eyed young Finn and a teetotaler was chosen for this work. Immediately the wives, sisters, sweethearts, and employers of the hard drinkers began to report them to him. Rahkola visited every case. Often he had to make the journey on skis over six feet of snow. In seven months he called upon ninety men. Eighty-four of them forswore their drinking; only six photographs had to be posted. Many of those who "swore off" were out of work because of their irregular habits. Officer Rahkola got jobs for them, and they have all justified his recommendations of them by staying sober. He visits these probationers frequently to give them encouragement, counsel, and admonition. The photographs of the six worst cases are kept under lock and key and are known only to the saloon men and to the special officer. Thus there is no humiliation of anyone.

Under this law eighty families have had temperate fathers restored to them; Houghton County has saved probably $15,000 of poor relief money in seven months; and the saloonkeepers are entirely satisfied with the ordinance. Altogether, Mr. O'Rourke's plan is a hopeful step toward the solution of a difficult problem.

PROGRESS IN THE STATES

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HE Initiative and Referendum are operative in South Dakota, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Oklahoma, Maine, Missouri, Michigan, Arkansas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and California-fourteen states. In seven more, a constitutional amendment providing for the Initiative and Referendum has been submitted to the people: Washington, Nebraska, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Mississippi, and Ohio. In two more states, Wisconsin and North Dakota, one legislature has approved the Initiative and Referendum; in each case another legislature must do so before they go to

the people. The prospect of adoption in all these nine states is practically undisputed. With the Initiative and Referendum operative in 23 states, half the Union, lacking one state, will be under the rule of direct legislation. Such has been the progress of the idea of giving the people more immediate control of their own affairs. fairs. The first Initiative and Referendum law was passed (in South Dakota) in 1898.

II

The Income Tax Amendment needs the approval of but two more state legislatures to become a part of the Constitution of the United States. The New Jersey Assembly, meeting early next year, is confidently expected to make one of the two; Pennsylvania may be the other.

HELPING THE FARM SEEKER

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ATELY people have come to realize more pointedly than ever before that prosperity is impossible without good farming, and the farmer has been the most assisted worker in the United States. Through state and national departments of agriculture, experiment stations, fairs, exhibitions, demonstration farms, farm special trains, publications, and colleges there has been available to him the most modern and detailed advice, criticism, suggestion, and help. Even the embryonic farmer in the agricultural school or college is to-day offered greater opportunities and facilities than were given fifty years ago to any student in any institution.

But only within the last year or so have definite steps been taken to help the man who, even more than the actual farmer, needs guidance and advice - the farm seeker, the prospective farmer in search. of a desirable location. Excellent colonization work has been done by railroad companies and boards of trade, but, sincere as it may be, their literature is inevitably local, partial, and biased in favor of their own territory.

A broad field of usefulness lay practically untouched. The need was urgent for disinterested, trustworthy, detailed information about all parts of the country.

To meet it, the WORLD'S WORK organized its Land Department. It has found the need acute, the desire for information sincere and definite, the appreciation of the assistance generous and spontaneous.

Then came other movements in the same direction to help along the work, and their cordial reception proved the reality of their service. The first National Land and Irrigation Exposition ever held in New York City, the organization of a National Committee of Immigration Officials, the beginnings of the Land Departments of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago InterOcean modelled after that of the WORLD'S WORK, and the recommendation made to the Secretary of Agriculture by Dr. B. T. Galloway, Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, that the Department take steps to assist farm seekers in obtaining facts about the various sections of the country - all these are mile posts in the remarkable growth of the new idea.

Most recent of all, there has been issued by the Bureau of Naturalization and Immigration of the Department of Commerce and Labor, a set of pamphlets summarizing briefly the facts about every state in every one of the seven census divisions of the United States. The nature of the country, the land, and the natural vegetation is mentioned; the climate, the distribution of population, railroads and markets, the types of agriculture most likely to prove successful, the average prices of land, the number and condition of farmers and the status of their labor problems, the special inducements, drawbacks, and opportunities all are reviewed and presented in compact, readable form.

Obviously an exhaustive account of the agriculture of the country or any part of it would make a volume of unwieldy size. And on the other hand, all the information that one should know about the particular farm he buys could never be included in any book that deals with extended areas. It must be gained by personal examination. These booklets, however, serve admirably to point out the various ways and give the necessary preliminary knowledge. Any one contemplating the ownership of a farm, unless he has already chosen a locality, should look

through them. And there is no reason at all why he cannot. They are free and will be sent for the asking.

THE FOLLY OF FEDERAL AID
FOR ROADS

N EXAMPLE of the economic folly and political immorality to which the theory of Federal aid in the construction of good roads inevitably leads is found in Mr. Shackleford's bill which passed the House of Representatives last July and then died on the Senate files. This bill provided, first, that all highways in the United States that are traversed by rural mail carriers should be classified into three grades: (A) shell, vitrified brick, or macadam; (B) clay, sand and clay, sand and gravel, or rock and gravel; and (C)—well, "just roads," provided only they be ditched at the sides and dragged periodically. Then followed this astonishing provision: that whenever the United States should use any such highway "for the purpose of transporting rural mail, compensation for such use shall be made at the rate of twenty-five dollars per annum per mile for highways of class A, twenty dollars per annum per mile for highways of class B, and fifteen dollars per annum per mile of highways of class C."

And further, that "the compensation herein provided for shall be paid at the end of each fiscal year to the officers entitled to the custody of the funds of the respective highways."

Reduced to practical results, the bill would have provided a free gift every year, from the Federal Treasury to the county board of supervisors, of at least $15 a mile for every mile of "reasonably passable" (language of the bill) roads within the county limits.

"It will only cost $20,000,000 a year at first," pleaded Mr. Shackleford in support of his bill.

"Yes," retorted Mr. Kent of California, "and it will start a worse than pension system, with a bigger budget than the pension roll, and without any mortality tables ever to put an end to it."

"What is a paltry $20,000,000 to a great

country like the United States?" pleads Mr. Shackleford.

"The coast fellows and the river fellows get their 'pork' in the rivers and harbors bill: our folks on the dry land want theirs," was an openly-spoken argument heard many times in the House lobby.. And the bill passed the House, too.

That is the temptation, and the shameful falling under it, that grows naturally out of our pension graft. Good roads we must have, but that price is too high to pay for them, even as the padded pension roll is too high a price to pay for a reputation for "gratitude" to men who never earned it.

GOOD ROADS AND “PORK”

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R. JESSE TAYLOR, secretary of the Ohio Good Roads Federation, sent by Governor Harmon as a delagate to the first convention in favor of federal aid for good roads, in a vigorous plea for this policy, said:

Look now at the agricultural appropriation bill enacted by the Congress of the United

States and signed by our President on the 3rd day of March, 1911. From 1832 down to the 3rd day of March, 1911, there was not a dollar appropriated from our National Treasury to aid in the construction of public highways, although we have done all these other things which I have enumerated; but on the 3rd day of last March, 1911, there appeared in a bill passed by Congress and signed by the President of the United States, the enormous sum of $10,000 in aid of the construction of a public road. I am not giving anybody away when I say that the President of the United States in his busy life and the business of his official office over in the White House saw something in that bill — he might have seen something about the boll-weevil or something about the scab on the sheep or the disease of the cattle in Texas, but there was something else in that bill which attracted the eye of the President of the United States, and it was that little ten thousand dollars in there. Within forty-eight hours after he signed the bill a request went from the White House that the $10,000 be expended - where? To improve a road which leads from the District Line to the front gate of Chevy Chase Golf Club. They went out and made a deal with the State of Maryland to put up an equal amount, and they are constructing one of the finest roads

ever built within the United States with this $10,000, and the Maryland money, from the District Line to Chevy Chase Golf Club, and I stood on it on the 28th of last September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and eleven. And that was the first money spent, the first national aid to the people at home, since the year 1832.

Now, if it is right to do all these other things; if it is constitutional and right to take $10,000 out of the National Treasury and spend it on a road for the pleasure and comfort of the President of the United States, I will be damned if

it ain't right to build one in front of my door.

Spend whatever you like from the Federal Treasury but give me my share — that is the substance of his plea. It is also the philosophy that underlies all "pork barrel" appropriations.

It is debatable how much traffic is interstate, how much the Federal Government should help good roads: but it is an established fact that while millions of dollars a year have been spent by "pork barrel" methods on our rivers, the traffic on them has decreased. And it is just as certain that similarly conducted Federal aid for good roads will not give us permanent good highways, but will add another tremendous source of "honest graft" for the Congressmen to bring home to their districts.

When Mr. Taylor gets the Government to build the road to his front door his next door neighbor will bet his salvation to get the Government to do the same for him.

Behind the desire for good roads, which are a paramount necessity, lurk the porkmongers. The good roads enthusiasts, unmindful of the fate of the waterway, enthusiasts, are willing to compromise a little with the pork barrel. By their overzeal, they are running a risk of seriously crippling a movement that means much to every part of the country.

preventable. Many of them were due to harmful industrial methods which thoughtfulness could have avoided. Almost every branch of industry has its special dangers of injury or disease; some industries deal with substances dangerous to health; some tend to keep the workman under conditions injurious to health; many, in these days of complicated machinery and high speeding, subject them to nerve strain. "Diseases of occupation" are nowadays recognized as having a very wide range indeed; cobblers' chest, "phossy jaw," writers' cramp, and telegraphers' palsy have their parallel in almost every industry. In New York State, practising physicians are required by law to report to the State Department of Labor cases of "occupational disease" which they are called upon to treat. Germany and England are far ahead of the United States, however; in both these countries the protection of laborers against the special disease to which their occupation subjects them is assumed by the State as a duty. II

In America, having but lately and still only partially awakened to the necessity of the conservation of material natural resources forests, waters, lands, minerals, and the like — we are still unconscious of the duty of conserving our vital resources. We are allowing a million and a half lives. to be lost annually and three million human beings to live in a constant state of incapacity.

A considerable part of this great annual national loss is unnecessary. Here is race suicide at least as deplorable as that which receives so much attention from so many students of our vital statistics. It is safe to say that, in the light of present medical knowledge, one-third of the million and one-half yearly deaths are preventable; of three men who died last year, one, at least, might still be living and working.

A bulletin issued by the Federal Bureau of Education on the subject of the health of pupils in the schools goes so far as to assert that three fourths of them need attention for physical defects. Fifty per cent. have bad teeth which affect their health; 30 per cent. have adenoids, enlarged tonsils,

or cervical glands; 25 per cent. have defective vision; another 25 per cent. suffer from malnutrition; 5 per cent. have tubercular symptoms; 5 per cent. spinal curvature, flat-foot, or some like deformity.

Yet there are people who doubt the advisability of the Federal Government (which has long studied the welfare of fruits, grains, horses, and hogs) interesting itself in the health of the men, women, and children who make its chief wealth.

WORKING MEN'S COMPENSATION LAWS

WELVE states now have laws relating to industrial insurance: California, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Hamphsire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. In nearly all the states of the Union statutory changes have been made to modernize the laws of employers' liability, but only the states just named have acts that apply to all servants and that are, therefore, compensation acts." Most of these laws were framed by legislative commissions, who investigated the work of other states, attended interstate meetings of similar committees, and then made their recommendations to the legislature. Governor Osborne, of Michigan, called a special session of the legislature expressly to pass a Workmen's Compensation Act and a Presidential Primaries Law.

New York was the pioneer in legislation favorable to workingmen, but the Court of Appeals set aside that law, which compelled the employer to pay compensation only according to a certain scale in a few hazardous trades. The ground for the adverse decision was that the act would deprive the employer of property without due process of law, and some of the arguments bolstering it up were so absurd, the comparisons so illogical, as to arouse general condemnation. Every state court that has passed upon the constitutionality of a similar act since that decision, has upheld the act; and there are five such decisions to decisions to date in Massachusetts, Washington, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Kansas. What has been the attitude of the courts