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NEW YOBE,

24, 1907.

The
1

The suspension on Tuesday


of
the
an inKnickerbocker Trustcompany,
stitutlonwith $63,000,000 deposits, 101lowing the difficulties of the Mercantile
NationalBank
with
its
$12,000,000,
earlierinthe
week, cannotbe characProterizedexcept
asthe Outcomeof
longedindulgence in unsound banking.
Thecase of the Mercantlle, which was
insolvency through
the
saved
from
promptand judicious asslstance
the
larger New York banks, is a s e ~ u e lt o
thecareer 01 certain promotingfinanciers,whoundertook
t o supporttheir
outside schemes by buying control Of a
group of small banks and. obtaining actees to the surplus funds That
egisode
we discuss a t length In thearticle on
current finance i n another column. The
troubles of the Knickerboclrer Trust
arose, as far as can nom be seen, from
not, wholly disgimilar use of the institutionsresources,
buttheymust
also
be ascrlbed tothe defective provisions
of the law for trust company reserves,
2nd tothe wholly inadequate Supervision of the State Banking Department
, Wse belleve that a remedy for these evils
wlll now.be forced, through urgent and
enlightened public demand, and that the
house-cleanlng of New Yorbs fiduciary
mstltutions will make for a much safer
Enancial future.
well, I t looks as lf legitimate huslness would nowhave a chance t o get
bankmg. acconlmodation. Words to that
effect have been heard from hundreds Of
business, men within the past few days.
They thinic they see in the rescue of certam banks from domination by promoters and stock gamblers, the promise Of a
return of all the banks to the tradltiona1 andsafer methods of an older day
That is, in a word, t o utilizesavings
and employ capital so as to secure the
steady ongoing of mercantile and manufacturing enterprise The honorable
traditionhas been thateachbankhas
its customers whom it must take care
. of. That simplymeans
that the merchant and the manufacturer, the planter
and the farmer and the dealer, shall be
on
abletogettheir
necessaryloans,
proper security, and always be sure that
good bills will be discounted for them
t o such
busmess
needs,
To
minister
banks Wete first created; and their chief
duty should be to fulfillthatend of their
being. But what have .we seen in- New
Pork during the past half-dozen years?
Greatbanking.institutionsprostituted
into tools
. .~_b funscrup.ulous
.
speculators.

Under such a twlstedandmalign


con:eption of banking,business can, for a
time, make shift toget on. But let a
period of restrictedcredit befall, as
che past SIX months, and what IS
re;nlt? It IS legitimate business thatis
iirst made to suffer. I t is the merchant,
the manufacturer. whom thepresident
of the bank sends f o r and says that he
is sorry, but that he is compelled to ask
him to cut down the line thatthe
bank is carrymgfor hlm by one-third
or one-half.
interest on loans is
marked up, even f o r old customers But
all the time, there is too much reason t o
believe, the resources of certainbanks
were belng put a t the disposal of promoters and speculators. In other words,
the hold of stock gamblers upon banks
has really been a grip upon the throat
of busineEs The immensediscredit into
which this viclous system has now fallen
must give greatsatisfaction
t o those
conservative bankers who have consistently denounced a n b resisted speculaIt was tothemthatthe
tivebankmg
very speculators had to turn, when the
crisis came; and f o r their courageous,
firm, and thorough dealing with the perverted banks, the financial community is
lastingly in their debt.
What
is
perhaps
the
largest
cash
prize ever offered
literaryeort,
aside fromlinericksandshort
fictlon
with heart-interest, is put up by Senator Bourne of Oregon for the strongest
in support
and best written argument
of a second elective term f o r Thew
dore Roosevelt. Three proposltions laid
down by- Mr. Bourne form the skeleton
whlch the successful contestant is to
clothe in verbal flesh.. At first glance,
the thing seems so easy that any citizen not of the undesirable sort could do
It out of sheerpatrioticinspiration
It
is true that the first proposition, that
thePresidentmustand
wlll be reelected by reason of honesty,courage,
mltiative, imagination, e t cetera, demands only thesort of fervor which
Dolliver, Beveridge, orany of the politlcal novelists, like Brand Whitlock or
David Graham Phillips,could
supply.
But Mr. Bournes Introductory demonstrationis
more difficult. It must be
shown that Roosevelt IS competent to
arbitrate the destinies of this nation, t o
regulate most of the affairs of a free
people, t o spin, on occasion, the very
t o decide
globe in his hands; in short,
anything and everything-except
the
nextRepubllcan
nommation. To show
that a man of incredible justice and wisdom muststill
be overridden on the
qqestion which concerns him, most nearly,demaqds
the logical adroitness of
F$ot or. SpToner: Wllliam Allen .White

:auld make another hit like his Whats

;he matter w ~ t hKansas? if his straightiriving Western pen could only be made
;o explain how infallibility can be wrong
In its most emphatic expression of belief. w e suggestthat
a collaboration
would stand an excellent chance of Winning the prize, for the field of indePenient competitors isnarrowed
by the
:Ircumstance that some of the chief Republican intellects, Fairbanks, f o r exjmple, Foraker, Knox, La Follette, and
Cannon, will not be in the runningat all
Gov. Hughess speech at the New Pork
Republican Club Friday night has been
eagerly scanned t o see if he gave Mr.
Parsons, in thearms
of Hearst, any
comfort The comfort is exceedingly
:old In general, Mr. Hughesrestated
his position of last year. He is f o r a
resolute but patlent and orderly plan of
putting an end to publicabuses,withinwsout tumult or disorder, without
tlce o r demagoguery That looks as
hard and straight at Hearst as did any
of the Governors speeches last year.
Still more explicit was his reference t o
thosepolitical
grafters whoendeavor
to make selfish profit out of public
wrongs. And, coming down t o dehiIs,
Mr. Hughes plainlydeclared
that, as
Governor, he had steadfastly refused t a
express a t h e r approval or disapproval
of party action or of particular candidates-especially to pronounce upon
suchaction or candidacies in advance.
Now, If words have any meaning, this
is intended to inform the people of this
C L that
~
GOY. Hughes did not a d v m
Jn his attitude
the fusion with Hearst.
towardsnational politics, Gov. Hughes
neems determined t o drive the politicians t o despair He roundlydeclares
thatheisnotseeking
anypublic office, and t?&t he is not trying, and will
not try, t o influence the choice of any
delegate toany convention. Themen
whom he has calledabout himinthe
publlc pervice, hehas
counselled t o
stick t o their jobs, and let politics alone
No, if. the people of this country have .
any notion of bidding. GOT. Hughes go
up higher,they willhave
attend t o
the business themselves, without the intervention of any machine. Here is a
man who makes it evident that he does
not want, and will not seek, the Presidency; and who thinks of theburdens
of thatgreat
office as tolerable only
whenassumed under honorable conditlOnS and at the command of the people. What a fool! thepoliticians will
think,toimagine
that he can get on
WithOUt spokesmen and
workers
and
press agents and a personal organization
Yet such
theperversity of poljtical
human.
suck t h e liking of Amer

T h e Nation.

364

, .
-

[Vol. 85, No.

2208

1cans for a man not too consumed with enforce mould not be a bad working cne or two causeswereresponsible
anxiety for office, that the Hughes boom motto for the Attorney-Generals Office. thls state of aEairs, the army might regard it with cheerfulness., But there 1s
for the Presldency is certain
to
be
no generalagreement,save
perhaps on
strengthened by his denial that he wants
The refusal of the Na.W Department thedesirability of raisingthe
pay
any boom.
are the non-comm~ssionedofficers and O n the
to allow some of its officersmho
studyingengineering problems to. wit- relat~~on
of the prosperity of the country
engines t o the falling off in enlistments h a n g
To call thls a two-billion-dollar COUn- ness theexperimentswith
try is to-day far Inside the truth, in the nom going on at the Jamestown Exposi- theother causesassigned are the conview of the various officials who are hon, ischaracteristic.Theexperiments
stant sh~fting of officers, andthe presin question are of the greatest interest
now malung out thelrestimatestolay
of manymcompetentones;
lough,
before Congress. Every department to the martlme world; but the the Navy brutal,and Inefficient o r untrained serall the pur- Department intends to ignore them, be- geants and corporals; t o o many practice
wants more money, and
poses for which they want it, from four cause it isnot satisfied that the gaso- marches and manceuvres; dislike of fornew battleships t o ship subsidies, public lene launches now in its possession are eign service,therefusal
of the public
buildinge, and food-inspection, are equal- a success One thingthepresent
to conslderdesertion a crime;the abbe ac- sence of an army service corps, as a rely worthy, the obvious policy is to give glme intheDepartmentcannot
each whatitasksThat,
again, can be cused of-a desire t o lead in the naval sult of which lack the man who enlisted
world. In thematters
of turbine en- to carry a rifle is compelled to become
done only on theassurancethatthe
country wlll stand the bills. Indeed, the glnes, the speed of Its torpedoboat de- a scavenger, a teamster, a servant, or a
efforts t o rouse some enthusiasm whxh stroyers, the size of its battleships,its
day-laborer as soon as he enters the sercan be cashed later on have been among floating mines, etc., it is evercontent
vice; and the absence of a beer canWhat
has
become of our teen. Finally,the disease of a depleted
the most prominentfeatures of recent to follow
and
initiative?
news ThePresidentscruise
down the Amerlcan ,enterprise
army IS aprogressive one. The smaller
Since theEnglishnavalarchitectsare
Mississippi, furnlshmgtheopportunity
a company becomes, the lesscontented
tor a thousand special articles on river a t this moment discussing a thirty-knot I t is bound to be. It takes the life and
explosion-englne Interest out of a soldier if he is made t o
improvements, the dispatch of the fleet gasolene linerandan
to the Pacific, the voyages of the Lusi- battleship, one would thinkthatthe
go through a , company drill when there
tan!a, with
demonstrations
that
Ameri- Navy Department would have detailed is but a platoon, and officers smilarly
cans could have done still better with an at least one engineer officer t o goto
lase interest. So far as the pay is conJamestown, and then to England, for thecerned, a higberrate for non-commisadequate subsidy, down totheattacks
of indigestion which could have been purpose of finding out everything pos- sioried officers as well as for officers
newmethod of propul- seems justand
averted by a littlemoreliberal
provi- slble as to this
desirable, and would
mind
mighrt even help t o keep in the service a permanent
sion forFederal inspectlon. already in- sion. Some bright
suggest thattheDepartment. ought to staff of sergeants.But a mereincrease
creased 500 percent. in ten years-all
these help to get Congress into a money- be experimenting itself, instead of being of $2 a. month in the pay of the private
to
build
twenty-four-knot
de- will help, in our judgment, not at allspending frame of mindThelast
Con- content
stroyers, when other nations insist on nor would $6 o r $10, as long as there is
gress was the doer. I t had the satisfactlon of carrying out the Presidential pro- thirty-three knots, and to turn out sev- such unrest among the officers and so
gramme of legislation. One need not be enteen-knot battleships two years after
much hard, non-militarylaborrequired
in Speaker Cannons special confidence, the appearance of the twenty-two-knot of the soldier.
however, to be sure that his programme Dreadnought.
forthe new House resembles t h a t of
According to the Penslon CommssiontheLords In Iolanthe,to do nothing
The recent newspaper statement that ersreportforthe
fiscal yearendmg
In particular and do it very well.
our army 1s 20,000 below the authorized June 30, 1907, there were no lessthan
strength is borne out by many facts 24,000 pensioners of out little war with
The seizure this week of 8,750,000 cig- which have appeared of late. At the un- Spain and the Filipinos, on the rolls on
.arettesmanufactured
by the Tobacco veiling of the McKinley monument a that date-only
wme yearsafterthe
Trust is verydrastic governmentalaccompany of the Twelfth Infantry parad- battle of Santiago. The size of this
tlon. Yet this policy, like SO many of ed wlth but 1 8 men in line The
Sixty- small army of young pensioners becomes
theotherrecent
po1ic:es withteeth,
thlrd Company of Coast Artillery a t Fort Ihe more astounding if one remembers
is not based on a new law at all. It is, Casey, Wash., has 27 men in it, or 25 per thatthe
Fifth Corps, which assaulted
in fact, inthe poor old Sherman law Gent. of its authorized strength. In the Santiago, had only 17,000 men in i t when
that authority for the seizure is found East there are artillerycompanies reduc- it sailed from Tampa, and that all told
Nobody ever thought before of using ed t o eight andten men. The dearth is
not there were in service in the army in the
the section which declares forfeitany
peculiar to any locality or branch of the years 1898 to 1901 not over 350,000 men.
property owned under any contract or service. The samesituation,says the Perhaps during these years 40,000 more
by any combination, or pursuant to any
and Navy RegtSteT, exists at all served for one period or another in the.
conspiracy, but the authority, existed a.rmy posts, and in the infantry and cav navy. Moreovdr, all of these men were
all along Most so-called lost arts are alry, as well as theartillery When supposed tohave undergone before enbelieved by archeologists never to have regiments go to the Philippines they are listment the most rigid Thysical examexisted a t all. Yet therace which in- supposed t o have ranks full of men with mation ever applied in this country, and
habited thls country in the days
before atleast two years to serve. The adju. it was confidently asserted that the pepthe infiltration of iron in
blood and tant of the Twenty-third Infantry, which sion evil was therefore not to be dreadthesummary expulsion, of t h e coward is t o leave in February, reports, accord. ed as a result of this war. At the batand the weakllng, seems to have known ing to the
and Navy
thal tle of Santiago 21 officers and. 222 men
a ew things about makinglawsthat
there were in the regiment on Septem. were killed, and 1 0 1 officers and 1,688
will reallyhitthe
malevolent corpora- ber 21 only 136 enlisted men who have menwere wounded. Thecasualtiesin
tions.Possibly- intimeanotherstanza
servicelenough t o go t o the archipelago, the Philippfnes were much larger, but If
may be added to those popnlar verses Of these, cply nineteen. are privates every man wounded since 1898 had been
Which tell the merits of old wine, old two are cooks; a i d Me rest sergeantsand given a pension, and one were awarded
.books, and
friends.
t o corporals. Now,,if
every one &greed
killed, we should still
~

Oct. 24, 19071

365

T h e Nation.
~~

be unable t u account for two-thirds of


the noble army of 24,000. Evidently, the
typhoid-fever patients of our camps are
getting their fingers into the Treasury.
It must not be forgotten, too, that the
24,000 pensioners referred t o do not include officers and men on the army rekredlistsin
consequence of Cuban or
Philippine service.

The PrinoetonBoard of Trustees has


voted t o defer serlous consi&euacion of
President Wilsonss quadrangle plan f o r
If this be a setback to the
twoyears.
pnesidlent, hemay
find some consolationinthe
permisslion givenhim
to
continue his Lfforts toconvert faculty,
students, and trustees Two years hence
hmemay have the heaviler battahons on
hns side. Universitiels are slow-moving
bodies, and
many
a
col1,ege president
would be satisfied withhavmg t o his
credit so radlcal an innovation as the
pneceptorjal system Mr. Willson inaugurated at Princeton. It must be confese
ed that the college world has not been
In the habit of thinking of Princeton. as
experimrenl, istation; but i t s situation
and organlaation make it Ian ideal plaoe
for trying th,e quadrangle system Somewhmene th,e experdent mu& be made
before long-the d,iscussion of the English college plan a t Harvard proves that.
Our unhersitles
cannot
continue
to
growas they have wlthout some new
subdivBiom, only for purely administrative reasons. And the ever-wid,ening
gulf b e h e e n studehtt and profmsor is
still another reason why our
educational experts should-support President W11son in his warfare on the banefulundergraduate clubs, and hls quest of a
truer collegiate democracy.
When Irishmenarenot
fighting the
English, they are fighting each o.ther. A
bitter quarrel has been raging for some
months bdwepn rthce Sinn Fein (or revolutponary) movement in Ineland and the
Nationalistparty.
By the batest bulletins from the field of battle, however, it
would appear that Mr Redmond and his
feltow-Parliamrentarians are getting the
bletrterof the co,ntromersy. To have enlrsted John Dillon on their side would
alone more than make up for the defection of Sir ThGmias Esmonde; while t h e
news that Willlam OBrien is willing t o
return to public life m aid of Redmond,
tiogether with the adherenoe of idfluen.tial Catholic prelates, shows which way
the tide ils running The Sinn Fein agitatiim made an undoubted appeal to national prlde, and threatented at one time
to ca.rry off most of Young Ireland with
it. Timeandargument, however,have
apparently consinced the mass, of Irishthat they have .most t o hape from
orderly political methods, andin
ing their representatlvles- at york, mith
solid a backing as possible, within
the
~Q!Al$QbS,~t i8 &$!fiWt,

an this coanectiun, that there are rumors of a new Irish Bill next pear.

Affwrs in Morocco are moying rapidly. Eventhohghthe


general trend of
recent events has bew towards t h e ultlmate establishment of a French pratetorate, no one expected that a prutectorabewould so soon be openly discussed.
Yet that 11s the question that is reported
to have been taken-up in the intermew
at Rabat-between
Sultan Abd-el-Aziz
and the French MlnlsterRegnault.
As
a prelimnary step towards aprotectorate, the Sultan is said to have wanted
thme French Government to take immediate passesslon of the entire Moroccan
coast. This, of oourse, Franoe w ~ l lnot
do a t present. So open aviolation
of
the Aot of Algeciras would certainly
lead to
trouble
y i t h Germany. But
FrenchInterestsare
wellenough subserved by tormal adherence t o the Algeciras agreement inthematter
of organizing the joint European police. for
th,e ports, composed of nativesunder
French and Spamsh officers and a Swiss
inspect-cp-general That )such anorganization is doomed t o failure, there can
diffibe little doubt. Not only will it
cult to count on the services of the native police agwnsttheir
countrymen,
but the safety of the officers themselves
wouldbe
some danger. Moreover, it
is in th,e power of France to brmg about
the failure of the international police in
ways financial. TheSultanmust
bear
fhe oost of the police, and the Sultan, a
baqkrupt, is now turning t o Fnance for
money. Soon he may be turning to her
also forprotection againsthisbrother,
Mulai Hafid.
,
It has been clear for a long time that
responsibility for the contlnuance of the
be
shared
chaos m Macedonla must
alike by Bulgama, Greeoe, and Servia,
together with the Ottoman Government
Evidenae coming from pgrtisan sources
1s t o be had o n all sldes, and that portion of ~t relating to the rSle of each
nationality as the (sufferer at the hands
of theothers
IS unquestlonably
true.
Last week, it is reported, the Graelr
Crown Prince and the
Cabmetparticipated in the ceremonial laying of the
foundation stones for three citles t o
erecbed inThessaly
as homes for the
Greek i n h e b ~ t m t srecently expelledfrom
Anchialos, Ph?lippopolis, and othw Bulgarian citles. There a r e t o be a new
Anchialos and Philippopol,is, the oost of
w h c h hundreds of poor Bulgarian pewants will undoubtedly: pay withtheir
lives and propefity t o the actlve Greek
guerrilla band.,. Theiorner-stone celebrationsmusthave
been truly impressive. They carry the mind across 2,500
years to the timce when Greek ernlgrants,
carrying fire from the native altar, went
acro8ss tha seas to, found,new. Corinths
and Sicyorus, The unLappy jresint-day

meaning of the event is that raclal war


in the Ralkans, and that t h e governmentsare determined not t o have
pleace except
their own price.

LS rife

~ ~ o c m i l l u aMagazine,
s
one of the best
of the London monthlies, will Soon Cease
publ~cat~on.iUacmallans, was founded
about the same time as Temple Bar and
Corn,baaz; allthreemaintained
a
high standard and enaoyed the credit Of
introducing t o the publicseveral
aZthori who have sincy become famous
has already gone, and
But Temple
of the trio
Cornhzll w ~ l be
l the only
survivor. A year or two ago Longmans
also succumbed. Presumably,
these
magazines, which have tried t o preserve
solme kmd of litermy
standard.
are
drowned out by the flood of cheap, and
popularperiodicals.
We arenot
passionate admirers of magazine literature;
we would not. transfer, even to a good
magazine, Miltons dictum about a
book, and say that he who kills it, kills
reason itself, kills the image of God, as
it were, in the eye. Pet we cannot see
~%facmLlla%s
pass o u t of existencewithour regret. A popular
outexpressing
magazine, as most people know, is like
an army, in that it travels on
belly;
it will go as far as its advertising will
a stepfarther.The
carryit,andnot
~mportanceof the advertising is mdicated by a remarkmade a few years
ago by a magazine pubhsher: If I can
get a circulation of 400,000, I can afford
to give my magazine to any one who
will pay the postage, and I can grow
richfrom
the advertising Whether
th:s statement was ever literally true we
do notpretend
t o say; probably the
presentprices
of white paper would
force a -revision of theestimate;
but,
underany
circumstances, thefactremains that the proverbial advice to the
publisher of a magazine is: Advertisements are the principal thing; therefore
getadvertisements T o the achievement
of this end the direct and obvious means
is ahugecirculation.
The. aim, then,
is tomake your stories, your articles,
and your pictures appeal to the largest
possible reading public. To choose@naterial of literary excellence is fatal; for
n o t one reader in a thousand can boast
anything more than the mostrudimentarytasteTheyare
incapable of sustained attention, and they therefore demandall sorts of scrapsand snippets;
they musthave even theshortstory
shortenedstillfbrtherintothestoriette. It is for a clientele of this grade
that many of our most widely circulated magazines zre obviously intended
These cheap and vulgar productions not
only crowd out decent magazines where
theymight otherwise be read, but by
goyNing up the advertisingthey leave
the magazine of respectable but limited
circqlattopp with little QJ-

support,

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