selves in the presence of Rodin, "The country which has produced such a man cannot die!"

Especially in his old age the great sculptor had attained a wonderful serenity. In his perpetual contact with nature, which he saw with the eyes at once of the lover and of the naturalist, he had wholly divested himself, in her presence, of the spirit of criticism; for him there was no longer either good or evil, but only the opposition of forces and temperaments. This gave him a superior equilibrium, a contagious certitude of having found the true meaning of life. Every time I saw him in his immense studio at Meudon, casting the eye of a gracious sovereign over the people of his sculpture, I said to myself, "He is one of the Blest."

By an accord rarer than is generally supposed, his art had followed a parallel path in this progress toward serenity. Daily he put from him everything impetuous, harsh, harassing, in order to attain the immense sweetness of a modeling bathed in air and light. Before these marbles of his one is overcome with a strange charm, amazed to find oneself unable to distinguish the moment in which light becomes dense and turns to shadow from that in which shadow dissolves and turns to light.

Alas! The marvelous eyes that discerned the indiscernible are closed forever. The hand of the noble workman is relaxed in eternal repose.

He had been declining, if not in health, at least in strength, since the autumn of 1914. For a year he had ceased to work; fortunately, he did not regret it. His last work was a masterly bust of his friend Etienne Clémentel; then he stopped abruptly, leaving no sign of mediocrity or decay. He was arrested as a great tree is arrested which has yielded all its flowers

and all its fruit and passes without becoming less majestic. In a sort of twilight, an unbroken reverie, he dreamed over what he had always loved, the flowers of his garden, his animal friends, the changing sky, his precious collections. A brief illness carried him away without suffering. During the last two days, feverish, but calm, despite all, he no longer spoke, his lips keeping, an obstinate silence, though his great blue eyes were still alight. Just once, as he was lying there, his voice rose as clear and full of distinction as ever, showing that even on the threshold of death the dream of art had not ceased to haunt his brain: "And they say that the work of Puvis de Chavannes is not beautiful."

A few hours later he passed through the mysterious gate with no cruel reawakenings, nothing to interrupt the tranquil force, the dignity of attitude that had been his through life. Later, in his bed, in the white robe in which we clothed him, under the shining silver of his hair and beard, his hands crossed, he was a vision of sublime beauty. He seemed a great monkthe monk of art that he truly was-hushed in the peace of his conscience. He seemed as it were the very incarnation of sculpture. In truth, he was sculptured himself; for what shone from his beautiful, austere features was the rigor of his professional conscience, the nobility of his thought, in which he equaled the greatest creators of all time.

While our hearts overflowed with emotion and gratitude for the work of art. which he achieved in himself and offered to us as a last gift, the voice of memory murmured to us these words, uttered once by him: "I have tasted happiness in love's most powerful form, work. And when my hour comes, I shall sleep in nature and regret nothing."

W

HILE our newspaper strategists are occupied in deciding whether the war will be won in Flanders, in the East, on the Italian line, in the Balkans, or on the sea, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the war may be won or lost at home, here in the United States. Assuming that the war is to be fought to a military conclusion, the nature of its termination will depend in a large measure on whether the American democracy is able to organize its internal resources to a maximum of effectiveness. Only through such organization can the United States eventually become a great force on the fighting-lines. If we fail in organization, it is probable that the Allies cannot endure, to so great an extent are they dependent on us.

Beside the colossal task of industrial mobilization that faced the United States with its entrance into the war, the problem of raising an army of a million or even several million men is comparatively simple. Already we have been able to mobilize a great army without material disruption of any phase of our national life; but in order to effect the industrial mobilization necessitated by our entrance into the war we have been compelled to revolutionize our whole industrial scheme. This revolutionizing process is still in progress; probably it has only begun.

The war brought a strain on the industrial fabric of every country that even

the most far-sighted statesmen and economists had not foreseen. Everywhere the laissez-faire system broke down completely. Competitive individualism in the processes of production and distribution, which apparently served well enough in time of peace, failed woefully under war conditions. In country after country the governments were compelled to step in and scrap the old systems of free competition, to coördinate the whole machinery of production and distribution under government control.

HOW GREAT BRITAIN ORGANIZED ITSELF

A striking instance is Great Britain, whose reputation for conservatism toward any change of method has been completely blasted by the war. As soon as Great Britain entered the war the Government took over all the railroads and operated them as a unit to serve the needs of the nation and the war. A normal profit was guaranteed to stockholders, and skilled railroad men were left in charge, but coöperation replaced competition.

At the outset Great Britain found herself deprived of nearly three fourths of her normal supply of sugar, which she was accustomed to import from Germany and Austria. The Government immediately became a purchasing agent to supply the British people with this necessity. It has served in this capacity ever since and has seen to the distribution at a fixed price. It also went into foreign markets for the

purchase of grain and other food-stuffs. It commandeered ships to carry the grain. It allowed the millers a fixed price and sold the flour at a loss in order to guaranty to the people a pound of bread at less than five cents. The Government enforced a standardization of the loaves in regard to weight, and as time went on it dictated the ingredients of the loaves, insisting on twenty per cent. adulteration. In greater or less degree a similar control has been exercised over other foodstuffs and commodities. In agriculture the Government has decreed what lands shall continue as grazing-lands and what shall be turned over to the plow. It has stimulated production by guaranteeing prices for certain needed farm commodities, such as potatoes.

The Government has assumed broad powers over the labor market. In all industries essential to the war, in which are included all industries essential to the national existence, the Government in effect fixes the compensation of labor. Compulsory arbitration for labor disputes is enforced, and strikes and lockouts are barred under heavy penalties. Through a system of labor exchanges workers are furnished for the essential industries. Through a system of licenses, government control of raw materials, and other methods, industries classed as non-essential have gradually been cut down. No nonessential industry which uses materials essential for war purposes or employs labor available for the manufacture of munitions exists in England to-day. No Englishman could now start in his country a factory to make, let us say, such things as chewing-gum or jewelry or silk shirts. He could not secure the labor or the machinery or the raw material or facilities for marketing his product.

OUR INDUSTRIAL UNPREPAREDNESS When the United States entered the war it faced a much larger task of industrial mobilization than any of the other Allies. In addition to our own problem of supporting our own population, raising and training a great army, trans

porting it to Europe, and maintaining it four thousand miles from our shores, we were confronted with the added burden of the dependence on us of the Allies themselves, struggling against the German war machine with a constantly reduced man power to supply their needs. Among them whole populations and whole armies were relying on us in greater or less degree for war munitions and equipment, shoes and clothing, food-stuffs, ships, railroad materials, metals, machinery for the farm and factory, and automobiles.

To meet this tremendous strain on our industrial vitality we had a go-as-youplease system of production and distribution; a decadent railroad system, suffering from competition and the malpractices incident to competition, laboring under the diverse regulatory laws of the National Government and forty-eight States. with one sixth of our railroad mileage represented by roads in the hands of receivers or just emerging from bankruptcy.

We were probably in a state of greater industrial unpreparedness than any other great nation entering the war with the exception of Russia.

Our political leaders have always exhibited considerable timidity in facing economic problems. So, for that matter, have our leaders in economic affairs. Perhaps the economic leaders have been not unnaturally distrustful of the politicians, and our politicians have been either too trustful or too distrustful of the economic leaders. Moreover, we have made a practice of electing men to Congress not so much for their ability as for their plausibility.

For fifty years our congressmen have attempted to solve most of our internal problems by tinkering with the tariff, and during the last fifteen years this activity has been supplemented in Washington by that favorite latter-day pastime of American statesmen, busting the trusts.

THE ANTI-TRUST HANDICAP

Nearly thirty years ago, when improvements in transportation and communi

cation were beginning to make industrial concentration on a national scale inevitable, the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was passed with the intent to make such concentration illegal. In the scramble toward business integration that had set in, flagrant injustices had been perpetrated, and the Sherman Law was designed to put an end to them; but incidentally it served to establish the dictum that a business must be bad because it was big. This dictum has been the key-note of our governmental policy in dealing with business ever since.

Of course the Sherman Law was no more effective in keeping back the rising tide of big business than King Canute's broom in keeping back the sea. The perfection of the telephone drew the nation and the nation's business together. By 1905 the main office of the Cudahy Packing Company in Denver was talking with the branch manager in Boston every day. Within the next decade the telephone conquered the Rockies, and San Francisco could converse with New York.

The result was that, though the Sherman Law hindered business development, it could not stop the increasing concentration, even when, during the Roosevelt and Taft administrations, the trust-busting fury was at its height. Where one business was sliced to pieces under the law, a hundred new combinations sprang

up.

The law was evaded by devious shifts. There were anti-trust cases that the Government spent scores of thousands of dollars pressing to a decision, the only result of which was the establishment of a more cumbersome method of bookkeeping in the desicated industries, or at best a loss of business efficiency.

But there was no let-up. "Competition was the life of trade," and there was an end to the argument. With our entrance into the war that theory vanished, for a time at least.

With war a very stern condition instead of a theory confronted us. The tremendous demand on all our resources of production called for a tremendous acceleration that our haphazard system

of free competition could not provide. Even our acknowledged genius for individual business organization could not save us there. We had to supplant individual effort with coöperation, to reorganize on a national scale all industries dealing with war necessities and the necessities of life. We had to burst asunder many of our ill-fitting political garments, the accumulation of thirty years of congressional tailoring, that were hampering our industrial movement.

A WEDGE OF INDUSTRIAL DICTATORSHIP When we entered the war we had a Council of National Defense, consisting of six members of the cabinet and seven business men as advisory members. The council, which had power to investigate transportation and war industries and make recommendations for putting these activities on a war basis, had been authorized by law in August, 1916, and was organized in the autumn. It had been at work about a month when war was declared, and immediately its scope was greatly enlarged. Subcommittees of prominent business men in all lines were called to Washington to assist in its work.

The army and navy departments were confronted by a colossal purchasing problem for which their limited organizations were wholly inadequate. They had to secure with the utmost speed materials, equipment, supplies of every conceivable kind, and to spend several billion dollars. The council undertook the task of finding where they could supply their needs, of coördinating and systematizing their purchases, of assuring the buying at the source of production rather than pursuing the governmental method of purchasing. through non-producing agents or middlemen who exacted extortionate profits.

It was discovered by the General Munitions Board of the council that the army and navy had been accustomed to bid against each other, and even different bureaus in the same department not infrequently bid against one another. This price-raising practice was eliminated, and other reforms were effected.

In purchasing war materials and supplies the Government had sumptuary powers which enabled it virtually to fix its own prices. If the producer did not agree to a reasonable price, the Government could commandeer the business and run it, with a reasonable compensation to the owner, for the period of the war. Through the Federal Trade Commission it has been able to investigate thoroughly any business whose prices have been subject to question. It has been able to maintain labor standards in manufacturing businesses in which it has been the principal purchaser. It has enforced union rates of wages. It has prevented discrimination against labor organizations. In some commodities, such as copper, steel, and steel products, it has not only fixed a government price, but made this price a standard for the trade generally.

"Let us alone," was a popular slogan of business organizations throughout the country a few years ago. The war put a quietus on this cry. The Government is exercising control over business through scores of agencies to-day. As the war continues, this control will be greatly broadened and strengthened. After the war it is probable that business will never be "let alone" again.

UNCLE SAM, SHIP-OWNER.

Another agency that the Government found itself in possession of was the United States Shipping Board, empowered to purchase and build. To-day the Shipping Board is the sole customer of every shipyard producing mercantile tonnage in the United States. The Government controls all our shipbuilding activity. In addition it has under requisition all American vessels of over 2500 tons dead weight.

The U-boat has made ships the great problem of the war. "We need ships, more ships, and again more ships," cried Lloyd-George last spring, and the need is even more imperative to-day. We know now that the net loss of British mercantile tonnage from the beginning of the war up to last December has been one sixth of

the total. Other European nations, neutral as well as belligerent, have sustained a similar loss.

Ships mean life to the Allies. In wheat alone, on the basis of the 1917 crop, they have been faced by the necessity of importing 600,000,000 bushels. The United States and Canada had an exportable balance, based on normal consumption, of only about a third of this figure. In addition Australia has had available for export 135,000,000 bushels, India 100,000,000 bushels, and Argentine could have spared a considerable portion of the new crop of 200,000,000 bushels. But so far as starving Europe has been concerned, this potential supply of bread in Australia, India, and the Argentine might as well have been on the moon. The depleted shipping facilities of the world cannot spare the bottoms to go so far afield for grain.

So Uncle Sam has entered the shipowning field on a grand scale. At the beginning of the war he seized the big German merchant fleet in our harbors and commandeered the 3,000,000 tons of shipping under construction in our yards for foreign account. In addition he has contracted for the building of about 5,000,000 tons and laid extensive plans, extending over several years. At the conclusion of the war the United States will be the largest individual ship-owner in the world. The American merchant marine will be in a position to press Great Britain hard for the supremacy of the seas.

During the crisis the Government has taken a firm grip on American shipping. Government initiative and power, and particularly government credit, were found necessary to meet a great need. It is improbable that the Government will ever permit this business of water transportation, so vital to the industrial growth of the nation, to get wholly without the sphere of its regulation after the war.

MERGING RAILROAD EFFORT

Our railroads were about as unprepared for the war emergency as our merchant marine. Their earnings in 1916 were