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ble without skilled and diligent labor. This labor is labor that must know its trade as a sailor does, and work like a sailor under the pressure of natural forces that do not keep union hours, and suffer the exposure that a sailor suffers, and be almost as isolated and ill paid as he. And that is why American farming in the East is in almost as bad case as the American merchant marine. There were recently a hundred thousand men unemployed in New York City and a hundred thousand unemployed acres within easy reach of them; yet one back-to-the-land farmer who was willing to pay thirty-five dollars a month and board to a hired man (which is equivalent to sixty dollars a month in town wages) got only one applicant from the municipal employment bureau that was trying to find these men work.

The Eastern farmer cannot keep his own sons on the farm; the town takes them. The hired man has no home ties to break, and if he wishes to stay in the country, he can get an abandoned farm for next to nothing and work for himself. If he remains a hired farm-hand, it is generally because he is a drunkard, or so slow-witted and shiftless that the town has no use for him, or because he goes to work on some millionaire's country estate, where the wages are as honorific as the gardening that is done. The back-to-theland enthusiast has usually not enough experience to do his own farming; he is

unable to hire his neighbor to help, because his neighbor is overworked trying to do his own; he cannot compete with the wages that are paid on millionaires' estates for any farm laborer who is worth anything; and he falls back in despair from the worries of employing drunken incompetence that breaks machinery and lames horses and poisons stock and wastes in every way. He ends by seeking a purchaser who has not foreseen the servant problem in farm life and the gregarious. instinct in the laboring-man; or he puts his farm into grass (and weeds), and keeps it as a suburban residence, with an automobile and a commutation-ticket.

The truth seems to be that so long as the railroads carrying manufactured goods to the West must bring back farm products or return with empty cars, the Eastern farms will be at a disadvantage. They will have to be owned by truck-farmers who can reach a market without a railroad haul, or by foreigners who do not demand the comforts of American city life, or by millionaires who can support the luxury of an unprofitable estate. For such as these the back-to-the-land movement is not merely a beautiful dream; but for the tired city wage-slave who has visions of fortunes in poultry-farming and dividends growing on fruit-trees, it is proving as impracticable as the Zionist movement for the Ghetto or the return to Liberia for the colored man.

Public Opinion

WEEK before the outbreak of war in Europe, the German Socialists issued a manifesto declaring "the frivolous war provocation of the Austro-Hungarian Government calls for the sharpest protest. For the demands of that Government are more brutal than have ever been put to an independent state in the world's history, and can only be intended deliberately to provoke war. . . . Not one drop of a German soldier's blood shall be sacrificed to the lust of power of the Austrian rulers and to the imperialistic profit interests. . . . Comrades, we appeal to you to ex

press at mass meetings, without delay, the German proletariate's determination to maintain peace."

The appeal was heeded. Mass meetings and party congresses passed resolutions against the war. The Socialist newspapers declared that the German Government was responsible for the Austrian aggression, and virtually threatened a revolution if Germany were involved in the conflict. Even after the German mobilization had been ordered, "Vorwaerts," the official organ of the Socialists, asked: "Is it possible that Austria can be utterly

without conscience? Is it possible that Germany is determined to go through thick and thin with such an ally?"

The German Government made no attempt to stop the meetings or suppress the editorials of protest. No coercion was used. But apparently all over Germany the newspapers published reports that Russian troops were marching against the German frontier, that French troops had already crossed the border of Alsace-Lorraine, and that French aeroplanes had dropped bombs on several cities in southern Germany; the Germans of all parties. -the Socialists with the rest-rallied to the defense of their country; and war was procured by a ruse as simple as Bismarck's forgery of the Ems despatch in 1870.

Similarly, German public opinion has condoned the violation of Belgian neutrality because of newspaper proofs that the French had already violated it and the British were prepared to violate it and the Belgians had compromised it by preparations for its defense. The sinking of the Lusitania has been justified by official misinformation that she was an armed war-ship. The killing of women and children by submarine warfare is forgiven on the newspaper plea that the British are starving German women and children, although the official boast of the German leaders now disproves that plea. And a popular animosity has been procured against this country with the publication of official statements that American-made shells have caused seventy-five per cent. of the German losses in battle, although our customs returns for the first year of war show that we have not exported munitions sufficient to provide the Allies with shells for a single day.

No government is likely ever to attempt such a poisoning of the wells of public information in the United States, but po

litical influences have tried to do it many times for party advantage, and they have succeeded sometimes in restricted areas where they could create a local prejudice. The Mormon Church has done it successfully even before its recent censorship of newspaper despatches about the notorious Eccles Case. In industrial disputes in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia employers have successfully suppressed the news of strikes that have lasted sometimes for months; and it is these industrial wars that are the greatest menace to the peace and prosperity of our country.

With the growth of the direct-primary system of nominations in the West, newspaper publicity has taken the place of party conclave in the choice of candidates for political office, and the power of the press -and of the newspaper proprietor-has been greatly increased. To offset the danger of this control, it has been proposed that no man or corporation should be allowed to own more than the bonds of a newspaper and that the stock should belong to the newspaper staff, so that the owner of a public journal would not be able to subsidize it against the popular interests, and the men who wrote and printed it would have to depend on popular support for their salaries and would be responsible only to the public for their utterances. This is, on the face of it, a wildly radical proposal, and it has, no doubt, innumerable defects; but it is a welcome recognition of the fact that an American newspaper is a public institution that should be more directly responsible to the public, and any recognition of that fact is valuable to a democracy that depends upon the force and discriminating education of public opinion to control its representatives and to defend its liberties.

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THE

Neglected Poets

By LEONARD HATCH

HE old down-east salt is being justified. You remember he said that poetry was writing which had its loose ends all to starboard. That has become the approved method nowadays. First you corral your subject,-what, does n't matter; it may be "Love" or "The Street Sweeper's Broom,"-then you produce your poem by suspending your thoughts on paper in lines. You really need n't exercise any more care than when you hang up the wash in lines. This you call vers libre or, better still, get your friends and acquaintances to call it that. And, lo! the trick is turned: you are a fullfledged poet!

But what saddens me is the realization of the fact that there are still old-fashioned people who do not know that this is poetry. They still entertain the oldfogyish notion that poetry has something to do with rime and rhythm. Sadder still, many of them do not know that they themselves are poets. All unawares, they turn out poetry far above most vers libre, and then set it before the blind world disguised as mere prose.

Such neglected poets are scattered through every walk of life. The business world is full of them; in brokerage or department store or advertising agency they go their humble way. To help open your eyes, I shall print some of their actual utterances in the rightful lyric form, in order that you may be thrilled by their hitherto unrecognized Promethean fire.

Listen to this little gem entitled "Charmeuse Dresses":

Georgette crêpe and lustrous charmeuse
In green, brown, and navy,
Make this charming afternoon gown.
Silver-thread embroidery in lace-like

patterns

Adorns the underbodice and sleeves. Finished with many tiny buttons. Novel, too,

Are the skirt's pointed draperies.

How those very lines shimmer "in lacelike patterns"! Harken now to the sterner pulsation of martial music depicting the clash of mighty armaments in Wall Street:

Railroad stocks More than held Yesterday's gains

At the opening this morning,
3000 shares of Pennsylvania, for example,
Appearing on the tape

At an advance
Of 14 points.
New York Central,
Canadian Pacific,
Baltimore & Ohio,
Norfolk & Western,
Reading, Lehigh Valley,

Union, and Southern Pacific,
All showed substantial gains
During the early trading.

Those first four lines one can scan far

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outpouring of even richer emotional con

tent:

After giving the number,

Listen to the operator

As she repeats it;

If she repeats the number correctly,
Say "Yes" or "Right";

If she does not repeat
The number correctly,
Say "No."

That strikes the note of deep humanity, mingled with a vein. of latent romance—the mastery of distance aided by the ewig-weibliche genius before some switchboard at "Central." It is anonymous, this plangent chant in the telephone; and, like all the rest that I have quoted, its true nature lies hidden in solid printing.

How much longer will the captains of industry, just for the sake of saving the cost of extra paper, try to mask this flow of verse? How much longer must these humble, nameless poets continue to waste their sweetness on the desert air of apparent prose when stuff not half so good is every day given to the public as poetry?

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THE

fied. You remember he said that poetry was writing which had its loose ends all to starboard. That has become the approved method nowadays. First you corral your subject,-what, does n't matter; it may be "Love" or "The Street Sweeper's Broom,"-then you produce your poem by suspending your thoughts on paper in lines. You really need n't exercise any more care than when you hang up the wash in lines. This you call vers libre or, better still, get your friends and acquaintances to call it that. And, lo! the trick is turned: you are a fullfledged poet!

But what saddens me is the realization of the fact that there are still old-fashioned people who do not know that this is poetry. They still entertain the oldfogyish notion that poetry has something to do with rime and rhythm. Sadder still, many of them do not know that they themselves are poets. All unawares, they turn out poetry far above most vers libre, and then set it before the blind world disguised as mere prose.

Such neglected poets are scattered through every walk of life. The business world is full of them; in brokerage or department store or advertising agency they go their humble way. To help open your eyes, I shall print some of their actual utterances in the rightful lyric form, in order that you may be thrilled by their hitherto unrecognized Promethean fire.

Listen to this little gem entitled "Charmeuse Dresses":

Georgette crêpe and lustrous charmeuse
In green, brown, and navy,
Make this charming afternoon gown.
Silver-thread embroidery in lace-like

patterns

Adorns the underbodice and sleeves. Finished with many tiny buttons. Novel, too,

Are the skirt's pointed draperies.

How those very lines shimmer "in lacelike patterns"! Harken now to the sterner pulsation of martial music depicting the clash of mighty armaments in Wall Street:

Railroad stocks

More than held Yesterday's gains

At the opening this morning,
3000 shares of Pennsylvania, for example,
Appearing on the tape

At an advance
Of 14 points.
New York Central,
Canadian Pacific,
Baltimore & Ohio,
Norfolk & Western,
Reading, Lehigh Valley,
Union, and Southern Pacific,
All showed substantial gains
During the early trading.

Those first four lines one can scan far

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