by the breakdown of a banking system or by failure of crops, is an example. But when a nation is engaged in war, adjustment is even more difficult because the necessity for it is not brought home to every person by diminution of his purchasing power, which is the exact effect of the reduction in surplus food or in control over it, which results in hard times. On the other hand war takes hold of the matter from the opposite direction, viz., by directly applying the forces maintained by the surplus food to the production of other utilities than those with which the wants of the community, aside from food, have hitherto been supplied.

Therein lies the peril of leaving the adjustment as regards mobilization of human resources to the play of money's control over that which it in fact represents, viz., surplus food. Men with money do not at once see, as in ordinary hard times, the necessity for retrenchment in personal expenditures. In ordinary hard times they see this because they have not the money, while in these times they may have the money and yet the public necessity exists that there should be retrenchment.

To put it another way, in ordinary hard times a reduced production of marginal utilities can be brought about quickly enough for all purposes through the falling off of the purchasing power as regards utilities least desired; but the sudden, convulsive change of conditions owing to the country's engaging in war calls rather for community consideration as to what marginal utilities should be struck off. Therein are both the distinction and the occasion for looking below the surface to see the forces really at work before determining what utilities should be suppressed. If this were not done, the preferences of many of those who have the power to supply their wants, however unessential such wants may be, would be exerted to make it exceedingly profitable to minister to these wants, which would be disastrous to a nation under the stress of war.

It seems entirely clear, from a purely theoretical standpoint, that there are many very expensive utilities of a marginal character not at all essential to the real well-being of a people and even in many cases very deleterious, which nevertheless come to have so great a hold upon them that it is difficult to shake loose this hold. First among these are the habit-forming drugs, beverages, foods and amusements.

Careful consideration should be given, as regards several of

these, as to whether they are not really diseases of civilization instead of utilities at all. As regards drugs, there is no doubt; as to alcohol, little question. Even in ordinary times its inutility, as compared with other substances, has come to be recognized and its deleterious effects are also widely recognized. It is produced by direct transformation of what would otherwise be food; that is, its production calls for the expenditure of the very force which enables mankind to enlarge its standard of living. Accordingly, a good deal has been done in all countries to limit or to prohibit the use of alcoholic beverages.

On the other hand, a larger portion of the cultivated land of our country will be devoted in 1918 to the production of tobacco than in any previous year; the government has just taken over for the use of soldiers and sailors, the entire product of a great tobacco factory. Yet tobacco involves a quadruple loss of force, viz., the application of a large amount of labor; the use of vast tracts of land which could be devoted to the production of food; a very large waste involved in the manufacture, transportation and distribution; and a not inconsiderable diminution of the force of those who consume the tobacco. That there is such impairment of efficiency owing to its use is perfectly well understood by trainers of athletes.

Neither our labor power nor our land is applied to the production of tea or coffee; but a large amount of each is devoted to producing commodities which are exchanged for them. These in turn have little food value. These habits, already formed, will doubtless persist in greater or less degree; but it should be recognized that they stand in the way of successful prosecution of war and, in times of peace, in the way of an enlargement of the things essential to the best standard of living.

Habit-forming amusements are also very costly, enervating and destructive. The passion for entertainment, as if ever to know a serious moment were irksome and void of joy, is a weakness which causes many tens of thousands, supported by this surplus food, to expend their energies in ways which do not make for mobilization of our powers.

Other forms of waste may not be so obvious; but some of them can be pointed out and perhaps can be more readily obviated than these. There is, for instance, the purchase of articles not for their

use but for ornament, a vast amount of labor being applied to make them especially rich and costly. It ought to be unfashionable to indulge in these and their production should cease.

Processes of production, transportation and distribution should be simplified and rendered less costly. As regards production, great strides have been made to eliminate waste. Under transportation enormous loss of power is being eliminated everywhere. There is still, however, as much waste as ever in distributing commodities. Special attention ought to be given to avoiding forcing commodities upon purchasers. The greatest of these wastes is advertising, which has become almost as much a disease as habit-forming drugs and beverages. It enormously adds to the prices of commodities without increasing their utility. Many who are so employed could be exceedingly useful to the country in the war. There is also much labor wasted in printing these advertisements and producing ink and paper. There ought, on patriotic grounds, to be an effective boycott against articles sold by advertisers who seek to maintain "Business as Usual."

Another great waste is in personal service. The maintenance of expensive households or what is quite as bad, tremendous hostelries on a most extravagant scale is an inexcusable diversion of human labor, supported by the surplus food, from the production of utilities or services of importance in these critical times.

There must be a clear understanding by all, that, whatever it may seem to be when one looks through the colored glasses of mere money expenditure, the consumption of utilities of any sort, whether commodities or services, which are not actually essential, is an unpatriotic thing. It draws upon the diminishing stock of surplus food to provide maintenance for men and women in occupations necessary to produce, transport and distribute such non-essential commodities or provide such unnecessary service, who might and would, if there were not this effective call for their services, be employed either in production of food, of munitions or of other commodities essential to the nation's welfare or in necessary service to support the nation. In other words, all such waste is unpatriotic, which would be clearly seen did the actual nature of what takes place appear without the camouflage that one is merely spending his own money in his own way.

An accurate comprehension, therefore, of the true nature of the

forces operating would tend both to enable us to deal more effectually, because more intelligently, with the mobilization of our human resources and to make the people of the country, appreciating these things at their true value, recognize the desirability of such mobilization, and coöperate even beyond the requirements of law in bringing all possible resources, both in human resources directly and in the utilities which human resources produce, to the support of our government in its struggle to maintain the liberties of mankind.

SELF OWNING TOWNS

BY LAWSON PURDY,

General Director, The Charity Organization Society of the City of New York City.

Great Britain has spent about $700,000,000 housing workers in Great Britain.1 I came near saying workmen, but it is not-it is housing men and women and families as well as single men and single women. See the effect on the physical appearance of the workers of what Great Britain has done, and beside that see the spirit in which it is done and the moral effect upon those men and women working in those towns of the fact that those towns are theirs, built not by a private enterprise for them but by the state for them; and probably after the war is over in Great Britain those towns are going to be considered self owning towns. They are not going to be sold to separate owners and spoiled, but probably turned over to such societies as those that have built Letchworth and Hampstead and made coöperative towns. Perhaps they will be turned over to the municipalities that now under the British Legislation have certain powers of constructing dwellings and maintaining them for the people who live within those towns.

Under the circumstances that now confront us the United States must pay a very large share of the cost of what we do here, and, should the war continue as long as we think it may, the $50,000,000 that is now proposed to be spent by the Labor Department, and the $50,000,000 to be spent by the Shipping Board I hope is only a begin→

1 For what Great Britain has done see some of the articles in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.

ning. The United States proposes, generally speaking, to pay at least three-quarters of the expense of these new towns. It asks that local capital be provided for the balance. The money that the United States puts in will in time be paid back in part or in whole probably only in part, because of the excessive cost of constructing buildings during the war. After the war that excess cost must be written off, but the balance will in time be paid back to the United States. The plan so far is that private capitalists shall be restricted as to dividends, probably 5 per cent, and that there shall be no profit in this enterprise for private capitalists. If that program is followed how easy it will be for us to carry out the same plan that is in the minds of those who built these British towns-that the workers living in the town shall in time be in part the controlling power of the town. After the United States has received its money back, there will be a large revenue in excess of that which is required, and that revenue can be spent for the benefit of those who live in the town. In England these self owning towns are generally rather complicated affairs. Financially they work well. I do not say "complicated" as a criticism of the plans, for the plans have worked and that is the test. The men who live there do not own individual houses; they own shares in the corporation that owns the whole. Here some of us have thought that the simpler plan would be for a corporation to own the whole and all the people have an interest, merely because they lived there, and the excess rentals spent for their benefit. So long as they are there they are to have a voting power, but they are free to move away.

The old-fashioned idea has been that it was desirable, in order that labor might be content and remain, that the laborers should own their own houses. Labor unions have generally thought otherwisethat it was not best for men who had only their labor to sell to be nailed down to one spot, and especially was this so in a one-industry town. If conditions did not suit them they were less free to leave their employment and move elsewhere, but if they owned their own houses they would sacrifice their all if they lost their job.

We must find a course that will make men who work contented and free at the same time. That result can be accomplished where so long as they live in any community they own their share of that community. Some of the great corporations have done their best and planned as wisely as they knew to found communities in which