The metals of Bolivar, especially tin, can not be brought to the United States via Panama.

Frequently the case arises that products from our coasts are imported into the United States, after being trans-shipped either to Liverpool, Havre, or Hamburg, because of the lower freight rates for Europe as against the United States. It may be interesting in this connection to consider an interview with the chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission reported a week after this memorial was presented.

Chairman Theodore P. Shonts of the Commission was authority to-day for the statement that the long predicted shake-up in Isthmian freight and passenger rates will not take place. Mr. Shonts said: 66 Nothing will be done that will disturb the balance of the transcontinental rates. The Panama Canal Commission will not do anything that will affect the stocks of lines owned by American citizens.''

The next step which would naturally have been expected would be a clean sweep of the men whose whole weight in the past had been thrown to the perpetuation of conditions, unjust, perversive and intolerable from a national point of view, the letting out of the old railway manipulating personnel, responsible to themselves alone, and their replacement by men directly appointed by and responsible to the government. Was this done?

Three commissioners were first admitted to the Board of Directors of the Panama Railroad. The remaining ten members of the board were holdovers from the old days qualified by owning one share each. Part of them were venerable gentlemen whose names added solidity-the congressional investigation of last year found them quite unable to tell the salaries of any of the company's officers; part of them, the active men, who had been the real leaders of the company's policy ever since the French company had come on to the scene. No member of the commission appeared to regard it as out of the way that a private group should constitute a majority on the board of a governmentowned railroad, with no responsibility to any ruling authority. There they remained to help manage the forty-seven miles of railroad across the Isthmus of Panama.

The men of one commission have sat on the railway board as directors and have gone, another commission has come and has not yet gone. The inactive venerables, that at one time buttressed the board, have

departed. But the fixed pole star on that list of board directors, the lone star that nothing eclipses, has been there since the bankruptcy of the French company and has guided and advised the policy through all these years. The minister of a foreign government and two private persons not directly employed by the United States sit in the directorate. There are only two motives that could actuate these private gentlemen. One is the self-abnegating patriotism which would guard the United States government and people lest they be tripped by designing interests; the other is the mercantile consideration of the fivedollar dividend on their one share of stock. Do these guardians, whose advice was given on all contracts in restraint of trade and upon every step the French company took, who were in full cognizance of the vote for an eight per cent dividend immediately before the United States took over the property, of the issue of $265,000 bonds for urgent repairs and of all the peculiar financiering immediately after, do these gentlemen remain on the board for patriotism or for the pittance?

The railway under the old management was honeycombed with such abuses as put a paper value of $2,000,000 on a wharf whose erection cost $600,000. The French company had used the line as the yellow dog for purchases and contracts, not allowed to appear on the books. The paths had all been worn smooth for repetitions of these. The confidence-inspiring course would have been so to change the organization that everything must be aboveboard, clean and open. Instead, the door has been left wide for concealed contracts and hidden privileges. One has only to recall the list of emergency contracts let by the first commission without competition, under cover of the railroad; the $618,000 bond issue to secure more money for the commission, which Congress seemed reluctant to vote in the usual way, under cover of the railroad; the Markel contract for subsistence at a rate some fifty per cent more than the rate for which the soldiers in Cuba were provisioned, under cover of the railroad; importation of "common law wives" from Martinique, without the cognizance of the Commission. The shield covering all these is that incorporated anomaly, the governmentowned Panama Railroad.

There might advisedly be an end to a situation that made American cement unable to compete with foreign because of government steamboat rates. There is nothing that justifies the handicapping of our own merchants to their elimination. The United States has acquired clear title and unconditional control. A complex organization is not necessary on a mere portage railroad, whose management for the chief engineer at the Isthmus should be a bagatelle. It remains for Congress to dissolve a difficult and a dangerous corporation that has already borne fruitage enough of humiliation and mistake.

This is no petty matter that can be let take care of itself. By the Panama purchase the United States entered upon its first practical experiment in the ownership of railroads. At a time when ConAt a time when Congress is being offered the alternative of government rate-making, or government

ownership for the protection of American freedom of commerce, this latest chapter of the Panama Company's history' is of peculiar interest. The United States has become possessed of a commercial route in working order. Its forty-seven miles of permanent way offer no difficulties whatever compared to that of managing such a system as a trunk line. The material obstacles hampering the test are the smallest possible. Here of all places is the ideal experiment station for government ownership. An experiment, of course, is not carried out with the ease of long familiarity. The initial inertia of strangeness must be overcome. But when sufficient momentum has been gathered, it is to be hoped, and it may certainly be expected, that this administration, appreciating the true situation, will make the end of the Panama Railroad career as honorable and creditable as was its beginning.

sickly, weak-minded husband had kept her too busy for any leisure. In addition there had been twins who lived for fourteen months wrapped in cotton wool, and then had slipped away from earth again, and while the poor mother wept for the loss of them, she found therein cause for gratitude. "De Lord was good, I t'inking. for how can I work for my man and my odder children wid dem twins to carry."

How much it means to the mothers and children in the crowded tenement neigh.

borhoods of our cities, to be taken to the summer camps in the country for one or two weeks' outing can only be realized by those who have come in direct contact with persons thus benefited.

The eagerness with which the outing is anticipated is indicated by the small boy who watched daily for the coming of the postman with the card which would announce the date for him to go. No fear lest he would fail to be ready! He had been waiting for weeks for his turn! Very early in the morning on the day they are to start, are the children up and dressed, as Milan, a little Russian Jew, said, "I stood up and put myself on till it was dark already."

Last summer a woman went to one of the camps who had not been out of the city since she came to it, a bride, in the seventies, from Croatia. She had not been on the street cars even for sixteen years, and, of course, had never ridden on the elevated road. It is hardly possible to imagine what the outing meant to her.

Chicago and New York are leaders in the "fresh air" work, while Buffalo, Indianapolis, Washington and Cleveland each have a well-organized and efficient summer outing plan. Among the evils arising from the teamsters' strike in Chicago, in 1905, not the least, perhaps, was the suffering it caused to mothers and children. It deprived some of these of the summer outing they otherwise might have had, for in consequence of the strike, contributions for this work were not as large as in previous summers. For the season, however, a total of 1,193 were entertained at Camp Goodwill in Evanston and Camp Ruskin at Glen Ellyn. The loss was more marked in the number of day outings, there being a necessary decrease of 1,390 owing to lack of funds.

Camp Goodwill at Evanston is sustained largely by the church people who coöperate in the work in a beautiful spirit of good fellowship with those whom they entertain. The Chicago Bureau of Charities selects the guests. Each party of one hundred stays for seven days. The camp is open for six weeks and the total cost for the season is about $2,000. The trustees of the Northwestern University generously allow the use each year of a beautiful part of the campus on the lake shore. Transportation from the city is furnished

by the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. Each family tent is 7 by 12 feet, is set upon a board floor, and has an extra roof to ensure protection in case of storms. Larger tents serve for dining room, kitchen, entertainment, superintendent's quarters, and bathrooms.

To each church coöperating is assigned a certain week or number of days during which its own committee takes entire charge of the meals, supplying provisions and waiters, providing entertainment for the evenings and carriage drives for the tired mothers. The executive committee of the camp, composed of representatives from all the churches, draws up a regular weekly menu for the season, which each individual church committee is expected to follow.

Religious services are arranged by the Board of Managers, but the camp visitors are left entirely free to attend or not as they may choose. Each morning a kindergarten is held for the children, and for an hour the mothers gather for a friendly talk given by some lady on topics relating to family life, housekeeping and hygiene. Evanston physicians visit the camp daily and freely give their services to any who are sick or ailing. The spirit of coöperation which governs in all this work is seen also in the contribution of the druggists who fill prescriptions free of cost. Water, sewerage, gas and telephone connections are likewise donated. The camp at Evanston is rightly named "Goodwill," for a kindly, helpful spirit makes beautiful all that is done in this really model establishment. And this spirit is influencing those who receive its benefits so that they themselves are desirous of showing it to others. A tired mother of thirty-seven years who had never been outside Chicago, said:

"I never realized there were such trees and grass and bathing places. And I never imagined even that there were such people as you folks here who spend all this money and do all these kind things for poor people who have no claim on you and are not at all important. I tell you it has been a great lesson to me, and I am going back to do all the little acts of kindness I can around my own neighborhood. For I'd like myself to be you kind of folks."

Camp Ruskin at Glen Ellyn is carried on jointly by the Bureau of Charities and the Daily News Fresh Air Fund, of Chi

cago. It is proving a decided success although it has not the advantages of the Evanston camp.

Near Glencoe, on a high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, is the Gad's Hill encampment which this year will open for its ninth season under the auspices of Gad's Hill Center, a settlement located in the great lumber and manufacturing district of Chicago. Last year 1,558 women and children enjoyed a week's stay at this delightful place, 326 of this number being of German nationality, 383 Bohemian, and only 438 of American birth. The people of the North Shore towns sustain this encampment, giving the North Shore County Fair at Ravinia each year in its behalf. The cost of the 1,558 outings amounted to $5,025.62 for the seven weeks it was open. In addition $3,073.13 was expended for permanent equipment, including the erection of a dining-room and kitchen.

Cooperation is the keynote of this camp, the girls helping in the domestic duties, and the boys in the care of the grounds and the work of the garden. Some new features were introduced last year and are to be continued this season. A vacation school was held for two hours every morning, instruction being given in sewing, basket weaving, nature study, water color and charcoal drawing. There was also a kindergarten. Realizing that there were many families who could not afford the usual expense of an outing, and yet should not be given it free, four family tents were rented at a dollar a week for each family. A separate dining-room with a full supply of dishes was furnished for this Coöperative Division, as it is called, and cooked food was served there at cost-price. For those who preferred to do their own cooking, small camp-stoves were provided.

Distinct from the main part of the encampment was the Visiting Nurses' Section, a group of seven tents wherein were housed some twenty women and children suffering from tuberculosis, under the care of a trained nurse.

Even while they enjoy the rest and care-free conditions to which they are so unaccustomed, some of the women can not wholly forget the struggle for bread from which they have come. A widow spoke thus:

"I haf tree children and no bread for

dem. For two days before we come here we go hungry. My husban', he die so sudden. For me I haf not a dollar to go back to, but I worry not dis day. De good Lord will send us food, maybe. plenty to eat."

Here we haf

And another, overhearing, with the quick sympathy of the very poor, said:

"I can no help her. I am hungry too, but my heart, it haf a pain for her. I know what it is to have children and no man and no bread."

Camp Commons, which for eight seasons has pitched its tents on the west bank of the Fox River, near Elgin, is under the management of Chicago Commons. Some two hundred and fifty boys and girls from eight to fifteen years of age are taken there each summer in groups of forty at a time, the boys going first and the girls later in the season. Intimacy with Nature is encouraged in all possible ways, walks being taken through fields and woods, learning the names of trees and flowers and noting the bird songs. big dairy barns and the harvesting machinery are a continual source of interest. Baseball offers opportunity for moral teaching and practice. Swimming, boating, hay-rides and band concerts provided by the Elgin people, evenings round the camp fire telling stories and singing, occupy the time to the delight of all. Special effort is made to know each child personally so that during the winter better work may be done in the clubs and classes.

The

Each boy and girl who is able to do so, pays one dollar. For the two weeks' outing it is necessary, however, to raise $2 per capita additional to cover the cost of transportation and maintenance at the camp. Dr. Graham Taylor, the indefatigable head of the Chicago Commons, believes that these outings count for so much in developing character among the boys and girls that $3 could hardly be invested anywhere with better returns.

Many of the crippled children of Chicago have been taken to Sycamore, Illinois, where all the churches have united in furnishing supplies. The tents were equipped with electric light and every convenience for the weakly little guests. A similar experience was enjoyed for two weeks at Saugatuck, Michigan, in the Forward Movement Park. Seventy cripples were also taken to Dixon, Illinois, eleven