home communities they would come back clean and would not contaminate society nor bring to their wives and to their children and to their children's children the heritage of an unclean life. That has been demonstrated.

Just a word in proof. Before the war, during the year 1916, the annual venereal disease rate in the army was 91 per thousand. That meant that 91 men out of every thousand in the army had one of the venereal diseases some time during the year. If that rate were kept up during the first year of the war with the 1,600,000 men in the army we should have during that period 145,000 troops incapacitated from venereal diseases. The Surgeon-General's office estimates that the average time during which soldiers so diseased are incapacitated for service is 18 days. That would have meant that 2,620,800 days of training and military service would have been lost to the United States. The Surgeon-General also estimates that 25 per cent of soldiers who contract venereal disease are permanently impaired, not necessarily totally impaired but impaired for the hardest kind of active service. If the pre-war rate of disease had continued, nearly 36,400 troops would have been permanently impaired and unable to perform anything but the lightest form of service. That is more than a division-more than most of our cantonments now have.

As a matter of fact, if the present rate of venereal disease in our armies as a whole is maintained for the balance of this the first year of the war since mobilization, this loss will have been reduced nearly one-half. That means a saving of 72,800 soldiers from contamination; it means a saving of 18,200 soldiers from permanent impairment. When we remember that it costs approximately $5,000 to train, equip and place each soldier in the trenches we can figure the tremendous financial saving alone in such a reduction of the venereal disease rate. The saving of the 18,200 soldiers who would constitute a total loss as far as trench duty is concerned would mean a financial saving of $91,000,000. But the saving in money alone by this reduction of the rate of venereal disease represents only a small part of the saving. Think of the saving in man power and in morale on the side of the army and the saving to society in broken lives and homes wrecked when the soldiers come marching home.

Now, what are the activities of the commission to this end?

We have had to bring pressure to bear on seventy-five or eighty cities throughout this country. I believe the exact number of red-light districts that have been closed at the request, and I may say at the pointed request in some cases, of the Secretary of War or the Secretary of the Navy, is eighty-one. In addition to these eighty-one cities who have wiped out their venereal disease swamps, as we sanitarians like to call them, there are countless others that have inaugurated campaigns of vice suppression. Before the war it was the belief of many intelligent people that the elimination of a red-light district and of vice brought no substantial results, that it only scattered vice into the resident sections of the city. There were not any statistics to prove anything either way because the records in the police departments and the district attorney's offices have never been adequately kept. Now, however, we are able to prove that this kind of a campaign does bring practical results and an immense improvement in conditions.

Before the war there were two camp cities in this country-I will not name them-who were responsible for the highest venereal disease rates among the troops stationed near their borders. One of these cities was responsible for a venereal rate of 250 per thousand among its troops, and the other for a rate of 200 per thousand. A report has just come in from the latter of these cities. This rate of 200 had fallen to 167 in October of this year, after the recreation program which I have described had gone into effect and some results had been achieved thereby. In October we got our law enforcing forces to work in that city. We brought pressure to bear upon the judges, we brought pressure upon the mayor, we brought pressure upon the district attorney, we got the judges to convicting, we provided hospital facilities and quarantine facilities for those afflicted with these diseases, and during the month following that campaign the rate ran down.

Prior to October, 826 men would have been exposed to venereal disease during the following year if the existing rate had been maintained. But by making prostitutes inaccessible by a vigorous lawenforcing and the public health campaign, the rate of exposures to these diseases dropped from 826 in October to 497 in November, showing conclusively that the amount of exposure to venereal disease among troops varies directly as the accessibility of prostitutes to them. This campaign was continued during the following month,

so that in January the prophylactic rate had dropped down to 251 per thousand, and during these same months the venereal disease rate dropped 167 per thousand down to 40.5 per thousand. Lawenforcement program against vice, which includes treatment and quarantine of those infected, will produce very remarkable results. This shows what most of us have believed, but have never been able to prove, viz.: that a great many men drift into immorality who, if prostitution and vicious conditions are not thrown in their faces, will not seek them.

That is only a sample of what is going on all over the country today. We have eliminated open vice every where so that there are today no cities or towns within five miles of an army or navy station where bodies of men are in training where such conditions obtain. Our end is military efficiency. I think we may fairly maintain that the activities of the commission have contributed in no small measure to that end and that new standards have been set in the government of our cities which will persist to the benefit of the whole nation after this war has been won.

LABOR EFFICIENT

BY HON. HENRY F. HOLLIS,

Member of Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate.

I was once the captain of a baseball team playing an important series. My side won by a narrow margin. A man who bet on the wrong team said to me, "Those fellows batted harder and fielded better than your men. How did you pull it out?" My reply was,. "When we had to have a run, we got it. We depended on fighting spirit instead of percentages."

You cannot win a battle with listless soldiers, or Hessians. You cannot get maximum production with listless workmen, or outsiders. Wages, hours of labor, sanitation, and the rest of it, are important, but they are only batting and fielding averages. We must have enthusiasm and morale, tons of them. We must make the working-man believe that we are really fighting for liberty, and not for profits. Instead of treating working-men like beasts of burden, to be kindly treated and well fed, we must treat them like partners and saviors of the nation.

There really is not much we can do. We shall do well if we undo most of what we have done. To begin with we must make restitution. We must return to labor its stolen property. I do not mean profits. I mean the war itself. For this war is labor's war, and labor knows it. Give labor back its war, and do not worry about any labor stimulant.

The best of us are prone to put on full dress and talk down to labor. We feel that we are broad-minded to notice labor's existence. Labor knows this, and good-humoredly tolerates our weakness. Working-men are better informed than we on the real issues of the day. They know that they can get along without us, but we cannot get along without them. They also know that we are ignorant of this solemn fact.

Labor knows that all we need to win this war is men to fight, property and labor. We need a few super-workmen like President Wilson, Secretary Wilson, Henry Ford, Hoover and Schwab, but

we can get along very nicely without the owners of property. If they will not loan us their property, we can take it by taxation. We can conscript soldiers and we can conscript wealth; but the spirit which makes American labor the most efficient on earth cannot be conscripted. Nor is such conscription necessary.

Working-men, including farmers, make up this nation. The rest of us cling on the edges, a paltry handful. By dividing the workers against themselves, we skillfully appropriate the balance of power.

Labor's sons make up the bulk of our army in France. Labor weeps when our soldiers suffer; it thrills when they go over the top. Instead of asking labor to help us win our war, we ought to thank God that labor lets us knit sweaters and loan money to help it win its war. Bear in mind that this is labor's war, not only to make the world a decent place to live in, but to make the working-man's home à decent place to live in.

Cut out profiteering. Stop patronizing. Put a working-man beside every capitalist and college professor on every board. Consult labor frankly and humbly. Follow labor's advice. If your services are of any value, proffer them. Give labor a fair chance, step out of the way and watch the smoke. And save your stimulant for yourself.

THE EFFICIENCY OF LABOR

BY HON. WILLIAM B. WILSON,

Secretary of Labor, Washington, D. C.

It is my purpose to discuss the subject of the efficiency of labor. But before proceeding to a statement of the policies that are being pursued to attain the end desired, it may be well to examine briefly the background leading up to our entrance into the great world war, in order that we may better understand the policies that should be pursued in dealing with the great problem of labor efficiency.

Our people are a peace-loving people. If they had not been they would not have submitted to the many indignities and wrongs heaped upon them for the length of time they did. We had dreamed