In the minor tone of McNeill's writing there are few notes, and yet these few are intense and touch the very innermost chords of the soul. This minor chord is found in October, already quoted from, but perhaps the one poem in which it is most perfect is Gray Days-a very picture of sorrow writ upon the white page of his little book that will live forever:

"A soaking sedge,

A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,

Low clouds and rain,

And loneliness and languor worse than pain.
Mottled with moss,

Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.
Upon the stone,

Of each in turn, who called this land his own

The gray rain beats

And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets

And at my eaves

A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves."

In brevity and artistic finish few, if any, of McNeill's poems equal his Dawn. It embodies, at once, a beautiful picture and a soul-longing, which few poems of its brevity in the English language possess. I remember Caldwell sending it to me and calling it "a crystallized gem, embodying a wealth of thought." The verses are:

"The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
Again, with waking life along its way,

The landscape marches westward mile on mile
And time throbs white into another day."

Such vivid beauty illumined most of McNeill's serious poems that when his October was published Dr. C. Alphonso Smith wrote: "I had rather be the author of those lines than to have the finest monument North Carolina ever erected." In Oblivion appear these striking verses:

"At dawn will go

New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.
Then none will think

What chalice life had offered us to drink."

And in his remarkable poem Protest we read:

"Are we grown old and past the time of thinking?

Is ardor quenched in art,

Till art is but a formal figure, bringing

A money-measured heart?"

When I Go Home contains this wonderful picture of beauty:

"When I go home the dogwood stars will dash

The solemn woods above the bearded ash.

The yellow-jasmine, whence its vine hath clomb
Will blaze the valleys with its golden flash

When I go home."

But one could quote page after page from John Charles McNeill's "Songs Merry and Sad" and never weary. That was his first book, his second being "Lyrics from Cotton Land." The first contains his serious work, the latter his dialect poems. These two small volumes are the gift of his short life, cut off at the age of thirty-three.

And yet these two little books contain verse as rich in literary value as anything ever written in the South, where the best American poetry has been produced. For this reason the South, and especially North Carolina, owes to this lamented Shelley a debt of recognition which should not be forgotten. He sleeps among his native Scotch ancestors, in the section he loved so well, but the work he did in the few short years of an uneventful life will live as long as English books are made.

The Coming of the Budget System

CHARLES Wallace ColLINS

Author of "The Fourteenth Amendment and the States"

The most radical and revolutionary reform ever undertaken in the public affairs of this country is now proposed for the National Government. Our financial operations are to be conducted and controlled by means of a budget system. A definite stage in the progress of this movement has already been reached as is evidenced by the fact that a plank in each of the Progressive, Republican and Democratic platforms pledges its ultimate enactment into practice. The cumulative effect of years of criticism of our financial methods by practically all students of public finance and publicists has at last begun to bear fruit.

It is thus apparent that this reform-like our preparedness program has the distinction of being non-partisan. The leaders of each party have seen the necessity for action and, what is more to be considered, they agree, in general terms at least, that a budget system will meet the need.

What then is a budget system and what are its necessary. implications? And exactly why do we need it? What is wrong with our present system of raising revenue and spending it?

The weaknesses of our financial methods are conceded by all who have studied them. Some of these we shall now set forth in outline before proceeding to discuss the remedy-a national budget system. The government of the United States now raises by taxation, direct and indirect, the enormous sum of more than a billion dollars a year to meet the current needs of its various departments. The machinery for handling these vast sums is not provided for in the constitution, nor is it patterned after the system in vogue in the days of Alexander Hamilton and his immediate successors. It is a growth which in recent years has taken on important and far-reaching changes. Simplicity and unity have given way before a scattered and decentralized responsibility.

The first step in our financial procedure is the preparation

by the governmental department heads of the estimates of what their expenditures should be for the coming year. Each department, without taking into consideration the governmental expenditures as a whole, and having in mind only its own needs and desires, sets down in itemized form the sums which it hopes to get. They usually ask for more than they actually expect, feeling sure that Congress will make the usual cuts.

These estimates are next, according to law, transmitted to the Treasury Department. The Secretary of the Treasury is required by law to bind them in book form and to transmit them to Congress at the opening of the session. The Treasury has no supervision over the preparation of the estimates. When they are sent in, the Secretary has no authority to criticize or revise them on the whole or to suggest the reduction or elimination of any of the items, although he knows the condition of the Treasury will not permit of the spending of all of the money for which the estimates ask. His duty toward Congress is purely clerical. He has nothing to say as to financial policy. The President, as chief executive, and head of the executive departments has also no voice in the preparation of these estimates of expenditure. His criticism comes at the end of the program if any criticism he has. After Congress has enacted an appropriation measure into law, the President can veto the entire measure. On the other hand he can not strike out any item, or reduce any item, of which he disapproves. The whole appropriation must stand or fall in its entirety. So far as financial policy is concerned the President's hands are practically tied.

On the other hand a President may by virtue of a strong and dominant personality, and in his position as party leader, exercise, extra-legally, a powerful influence on financial legislation. This is sometimes done but it is too accidental and uncertain to be relied upon. All Presidents do not exercise this influence over their party and there have been some who were even quite subservient to party leaders in the House and Senate.

The estimates in book form are transmitted to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury just as they come to him—without co-ordination or criticism. The Speaker of the House per

functorily divides them up and assigns them to the several committees that draw up the appropriation bills. But these committees do not have to follow the estimates in making the appropriations. In fact they ordinarily make numerous

changes.

In addition to these regular estimates Congress receives also, directly, estimates for river and harbor improvements from the army engineers. Other money bills may be drawn up entirely upon the initiative of a private member without any recourse to the executive departments. Each session of Congress sees many financial measures of this character acted upon, dealing with public improvements, expansion of the public service and the like.

In drafting a money bill for a given department, the committee usually holds what are called hearings. They call before them the departmental officials and subject them to an examination as to the proposed expenditures for the department. Outside experts may also be called in. The bill is then drawn up often in disregard of the opinion of the executive officials. The judgment of the committee governs. It must be borne in mind that there are no members of the committee who have an expert knowledge of the department in question, unless by accident as when Mr. Hobson was on the Naval Affairs Committee of the House. They are usually men of no special training-in many cases country or village lawyers excellent men but in the main strangers to the field of public finance.

Money bills are drawn up and reported by the following committees, namely: The Appropriations Committee, which at one time drafted and reported all appropriation bills but now only the bills for the legislative, executive and judicial departments, sundry civil appropriations, fortifications, District of Columbia, and the deficiencies appropriations; the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the diplomatic and consular service appropriations; the Committee on Military Affairs, the military establishment appropriations; the Committee on Naval Affairs, the naval establishment appropriations; the Committee on Indian Affairs, the appropriations for the Indian Service; the Committee on Pensions, the pension appropriations;