of the East, of the West, and of the Middle West? The Massachusetts Supreme Court, in July, 1911, gave a liberal interpretation of the constitution, by declaring valid a law which abrogated all three of the employer's common law defenses negligence of a fellow servant, voluntary assumption of risk, and contributory negligence of the injured man.

Washington followed suit in September, 1911, taking the opposite stand to the New York court toward a law embodying the same principle. It is significant, especially to the advocate of judicial reform, that whereas the New York decision was based on the argument that private property could not be taken without due process of the law, the Washington decision declared that the enforcement of compensation was merely the exercise of police power, which Judge Fullerton defined as "the power to govern." Thus we have two state courts taking exactly opposite attitudes. The Washington court expressed the belief that losses caused by injury to a workman should be borne by the industry causing them or, perhaps, by the consumers of the products of such industries; "That the principle thus sought to be put into effect is economically, sociologically, and morally sound we think must be conceded. Indeed, so universal is the sentiment that to assert to the contrary is to turn the face against the enlightened opinion of mankind.”

II

Wisconsin took a stand in November, 1911, not only in favor of workmen's compensation, but against an "eighteenth century interpretation of an eighteenth century constitution" in the twentieth century. The opinion of the court, written by Chief Justice Winslow, declares that "Doubtless the law will need and will receive some changes and amendments as time shall test its provisions and demonstrate its weak points. It would be unreasonable to expect that a law covering so important a subject along lines not before attempted should be perfect, or very near perfect, upon its first enactment. If experience shall demonstrate that it is practicable and workable and

operates, either wholly or in great measure, to put an end to that great mass of personal injury litigation between employer and employee, with its tremendous waste of money and its unsatisfactory results, which now burdens the courts, the long and painstaking labors of those legislators and citizens who collaborated in framing it will be fittingly rewarded by a result so greatly to be desired. That result will mean a distinct improvement in our social and economic conditions."

The Wisconsin law gives both parties the choice of abiding by a carefully fixed scale of compensation, settling their disputes before the State Industrial Commission (which practically has the powers of a court) or of settling damage suits in the law courts as previously, with all the expense and delay which that course involves. Those employers who do not elect to come under the jurisdiction of the Commission are, however, deprived of two of the old common law defenses: voluntary assumption of the risks of the industry and the negligence of a fellow-servant. The fellow-servant doctrine holds good only where the industry employs less than four men an industry so small that the employer can guard himself against the mistakes or misconduct of others. The new law is looked upon as somewhat compulsory in effect, though optional in form; for it leaves the non-electing employer, of his three common law defenses, only contributory negligence of the injured person. The law went into operation the first of September, 1911, and so far as can be learned, not one of the 435 firms (which employ more than 63,000 men), who have chosen to abide by the rates and decisions of the Industrial Commission, has paid out as much money for claims as it formerly paid to insurance companies for protec

The firms that have elected to come under the operation of the law in Wisconsin are the larger concerns which act under the advice of lawyers. Twentyfive per cent. of the accidents in the last year in Wisconsin were adjusted under this law. The workmen, too, have gained, for all who have had valid right to compensation have secured it without the expense and delay of a regular law suit.

In Wisconsin and California, for example, an employer must affirmatively elect to come under the operation of the act before it applies to him. The result is that few of the smaller employers take the trouble to study the law and hence relatively few concerns operate under it. In New Jersey, however, it is assumed that an employer wishes to act under the law unless he specifically elects not to do so, with the result that a relatively large number of concerns do operate under the law.

CARRYING THE GRADES TO
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL

ERE is the simple plan by which Mr. I. J. Scott, Superintendent of Schools of Story County, la., applied the town method of grading classes to some of the country schools under his supervision. Instead of having children of all ages taught in every schoolhouse, as the rural custom is, he divided the pupils of three adjoining districts into three groups composed, respectively, of the primary classes (grades 1 to 3), the intermediate classes (grades 4 to 6), and the advanced classes (grades 7 to 9). He then assigned the first group to one schoolhouse, the second group to the second schoolhouse two miles to the east, and the third group to the third schoolhouse two miles to the west. Every pupil walks to the schoolhouse nearest his home, as he did before, and if his classes recite in one of the other schoolhouses he is carried thither by a wagon that is hired especially for this purpose by the united districts.

Some of the helpful results of the plan are these: from 31 classes a day these schools are now able to cover the same work with 14 classes a day; from an average recitation period of 10 minutes these schools have risen to an average recitation period of 25 minutes; the teachers are able to give much more thorough preparation to their work and far more spontaneity to the class-rooms; the pupils receive more individual attention and therefore get more enjoyment and understanding from their lessons; the average attendance of the three schools has risen from 36 pupils

to 45. And these benefits are achieved for only $3.52 additional cost per pupil per year. The children have suffered no inconvenience from the wagon ride even in winter. On one Friday afternoon of every month the wagon, after taking the children home, brings their mothers back to the schoolhouse for a neighborhood discussion of the schools, with results in increasel interest in the school work and in strengthened social relations that have added much to the community life. The school libraries were divided into three parts according to their suitability to the ages of the children of the three schools, and many new books were added. Better morals and easier discipline are reported by the teachers because the children are segregated according to ages.

The problem of efficiency in country schools is one of the big vital problems of our country. This plan of graded union schools seems to supply one step forward

in their improvement - a short step, perhaps, but noteworthy nevertheless.

AFFAIRS IN THE CARIBBEAN

HE blowing up of the palace at Port-au-Prince and the death in its ruins of the Haytian President and a hundred of his followers, brought to a characteristic end the "reform" government of Gen. Jean Jacques Dessalines Michel Cincinnatus Le Conte. The victims being only a few score Haytians, it was nobody's business, and the new President, Gen. Tancrede Auguste, who was in the saddle before the flames had expired, will be permitted to carry on for a little while, until he in turn is shot or poisoned or blown up, the wretched tyranny that passes for the Government of the Black Republic.

Le Conte had been in power less than a year and was just beginning to show his abilities as a successor of his former master, Nord Alexis - as savage an old gorilla as ever licked his bloody lips with glee as he watched the dying. he watched the dying. A correspondent writes to the WORLD'S WORK defending Le Conte against the reflection cast upon him by Mr. Hale, in an article in the August

number, for the execution of Gen. Jules Coicou. It is true that the charge on which Coicou was executed was a true one; he had headed a squad that went out and shot down twenty-seven persons (two of them his own brothers) on the street one day during Alexis's reign. Coicou richly deserved his fate. Mr. Hale did not take the trouble to mention the circumstances that he had done the deed at the order of Le Conte, then Alexis's Minister of the Interior. Government in Hayti is a procession of murderous and murdering Negroes; it is a part of the regular order for an assassin's principal in a crime later to be his accuser, judge, and executioner.

People in the United States have a notion that life in Hayti is an opera bouffe affair. Far from it. It is an affair of killing and cannibalism, of poison and plunder. A corpse in the street is nothing. A burning house is nothing. A fusillade into a crowd by drunken soldiers; the sight of a drove of chained prisoners beaten by cocoamacaques, or left to starve and be devoured by wild hogs - these are nothing. Could the facts be realized, the world would not allow another day to dawn on the most sordid, savage, and terrible scene exhibited on earth.

The account of the Caribbean situation given by the WORLD'S WORK in previous issues has been criticised because it asserted that Santo Domingo was in a state of unrest. The death of Le Conte revealed the fact that the Government at the eastern end of the Island was about to declare war on its neighbor to the west, on the ground that Dominican rebels were being armed and paid by the Haytian President. The war will likely be averted by the taking off of Le Conte, but the half dozen insurrections going on in Dominican territory will continue until a stronger man than General Victoria gains possession of the presidency of that country.

of the battles between General Mena and Gen. Emiliano Chamorro, with President Diaz in the background and the American Legation, protected by marines from an American ship, as the principal object of the shells thrown into the Capital by the rebels. All industry is prostrated; business and traffic are suspended; harvests have gone to ruin; and many are dying of famine, a little relieved by food from relief ships in the harbors.

In Mexico, anarchy prevails generally throughout the provinces. The Madero Government is showing little ability to restore order, and American troops are exchanging shots with Mexican rebels across the Rio Grande, while our border towns are crowded with refugees to whom the Federal Government is furnishing shelter and food.

Whether or not our humane instincts are touched by the misery of the Central American and Caribbean spectacle, it is impossible to escape wondering just how long it will be before the United States is dragged into serious trouble and forced to frame a rational policy with respect to it.

I'

POUND FOOLISH DOLLAR
DIPLOMACY

F EVER a human enterprise deserved the aid of mankind, the founding of a Republic in China deserves it. But it is growing tolerably clear that the heroic rising of the Chinese against ancient sloth and corruption, hailed by civilization as an astounding and joyful event, is not receiving the unselfish help that civilized nations might and ought to give. For ten months - critical months for the new Republic -"the Great Powers" have been haggling over the terms on which they might lend China the money necessary to pay off and send home the revolutionary army and to provide for the first necessities of organizing a modern government. Six months were used up in an unseemly scramble to participate in the loan. The United States would not allow a group of European bankers to supply the money alone. It must join them. Then Japan must be admitted—and Russia. Then the coalition split into two groups, jockeying

against each other. Meanwhile the loan had grown to gigantic size; $5,000,000 could not be lent unless $45,000,000 more were contracted for, on terms which meant foreign dictatorship in China's affairs.

It is true that those who lend money to the Chinese are justified in making sure that it goes to rightful uses and in securing the safety of principal and interest. But it is not for this that the Powers are embarassing the Republic with demands to which the national pride of the awakened people will not permit it to yield. Our own State Department frankly says that its interest in participating in the loan lies in its desire to have a voice in the reconstruction of China's fiscal policies and to give American bankers a share in the financial operations of which China is to be the scene.

This may be shrewd diplomacy. Isn't it, possibly, too shrewd? Are we not throwing away a rich heritage in the friendliness of the Chinese to our whole nation, gained by John Hay's frank diplomacy, for a mess of pottage — profits to a few American bankers?

Whatever other Powers greedy for territory may hope for, the United States wants nothing of China but her good will. That is hardly to be secured by assisting the selfish international cabal that is antagonizing Chinese patriotism and seriously embarassing the new Government by forcing upon it an enormous unnecessary loan for which China is to pay the price of surrendering control of its own. affairs.

The most fruitful diplomatic steps that the United States has ever taken in the Far East have been those dictated by generosity and grounded on our assumption of the good faith of our Oriental friends. The return of the Boxer indemnity gave us a place of singular influence in the hearts of the Chinese and brought to our schools the best blood and brain of their ancient land. The revolution was very largely indeed a result of the American education of Chinese youths, and the new Government is very largely formed on American ideals. How foolish to barter our unique advantage for a minor one shared by five other nations!

TO CLEAN UP THE BANKING
BUSINESS

IN THE United States there is a great group of banking houses whose business it is to buy and to sell investment securities; they are the middle men between the producer of bonds and stocks and the consumer. Their function, therefore, is to supply the constant flood of capital necessary to carry on all our commercial enterprises, and, in doing this, to see that the interests of the people who buy these securities are properly protected.

These houses that are engaged in this big business, which has an annual turnover of about $2,000,000,000, have never been organized to coöperate for their own protection. Practically every house has stood on its own feet so far as protection is concerned. There has been no free interchange of opinion. Every house has gone along trusting to its own ability to look out for itself, and trusting to its own judgment solely as to what was good and what was bad in finance. To a certain extent this lack of coöperation was due to trade jealousy and to the very keen spirit of competition that exists in the banking business; in part, however, it was because no great need for coöperation has been felt by the investment banking fraternity. This fraternity has ignored the "get-richquick" game and all other forms of fraudulent finance, on the ground that they did not matter in the least to the legitimate banker and that a study of them would be of no profit to their clients.

Now for the first time there has been organized an association of these investment bankers. Its purpose is to fight "get-rich-quick" finance. It undertakes to establish a bureau to investigate every prospective flotation of stocks and bonds; it pledges itself to aid all constructive financial legislation. The men who have organized the company and who are its officers and governors are almost all men well known in the investment business and men of high standing and reputation. Probably few of them know very much about the illegitimate phases of finance, but all of them are quite capable of learning whatever is necessary to learn. On the

face of it, the organization should be a strong and ultimately a compelling force for the elimination of the "get-rich-quick" game, so far as it can be eliminated.

This magazine has played at least a small part in this battle against crooked finance for many years past and hopes to continue its work along this line for many years to come. We know from our own experience that the only foundation upon which a campaign to eliminate crooked finance and a campaign to educate the public in straight finance can be carried

on hand in hand is that the people or association or magazine carrying it on must go into it with clean hands, free from self interest of a direct sort and imbued with the sense of public service.

This investment bankers' association seems to have all these characteristics. It may well become the very heart of the war against crooked finance and a source from which the public may draw its information concerning all flotations of securities. It should become the Committee of Public Safety in Investments.

O

NE day early in August a Colonel Cornwall was arrested in New York on the charge that he had appropriated and used more than $200,000 of other people's money while acting as acting as executor and trustee for half a dozen estates in Pennsylvania. He declared his innocence, but while on his way home in charge of a constable he managed to get a revolver out of his suit case and to kill himself before the eyes of a car full of people, thus tacitly confessing his guilt.

The record of this incident may be of value to those persons who, having funds, are obliged to lean altogether upon the judgment and good faith of other people. It appears that this man had in his hands two funds of $100,000 each, one of $70,000, one of about fifty thousand dollars, and one of about twenty thousand dollars. It seems that he bought and sold securities and property for these funds absolutely at his own discretion and that practically no supervision at all was exercised over his use of the money.

There are many thousands of funds in this country that have been handed down by people who have died, or that have been set aside for a particular purpose by living men, which are handled by strangers on the same conditions under which Colonel Cornwall handled funds in his charge. What, then, can be done by a man, when he sets aside money, to safeguard

it against the same kind of losses that have fallen upon the five or six estates at the hands of Colonel Cornwall?

First, he should realize that, merely because a man is a good lawyer, a good country bank officer, a good judge, or a good doctor he is not necessarily a good financial administrator. financial administrator. It has been pitiful, at times, to review the history of country funds as this history has been detailed to the WORLD'S WORK in letters received from beneficiaries and from the executors themselves. During the panic of 1907, more than a dozen instances became known to this office of funds that had been handled to the best of the ability of the man upon whom the responsibility for them rested, but that had been nevertheless completely disorganized by that brief panic. In some cases heavy losses had already taken place; and in others the income had been cut down and it would be necessary to go through a long and very painful process of upbuilding before the fund would be restored to its former size.

We have found, in our records, cases where an executor of a large fund did not know that if he bought bonds above par he ought to set aside a certain amount of his income to meet the dwindling of prices as the bond approaches maturity. An executor believed that bonds were guaranteed by a trust company, simply because the name of that company was on the bond as trustee. Other executors have put funds into extremely dangerous, in