the hope, not in the belief, that in some way it might help. Later when the President vetoed the resolution and they passed it over his veto by a Senate vote of 53 to 5 and a House vote of 250 to 66, their views had not changed. They were merely expressing certain personal feelings.

A good many representatives of farmers' organizations appeared before the agriculture committees of the two houses, but on none of the days that I listened to their testimony did there appear any marked enthusiasm for the project to revive the War Finance Corporation. Privately, some of them said it was a useless undertaking, but that they didn't wish to discourage statesmen who were trying to be helpful.

Then there came the emergency tariff bill, putting prohibitory duties on imported wheat, beans, onions, potatoes, wool, and other farm products. It was rather difficult for one who merely consumes wheat, beans, potatoes, and such truck to see wherein the erection of a tariff wall was going to help much in view of the fact that this country had a surplus and was seeking foreign markets. Of course, there was the case of the Aroostook County potato growers in Maine, who raised 15,000,000 bushels in 1920 in response to the Government's urging and found it cost them $2 a hundred pounds to do it. They were getting only $1 a hundred pounds, just half their cost of production, and hoped by barring Canadian and Danish imports to bring their own price up somewhat. The same day I learned about the plight of the Aroostook growers I learned also that eight potatoes cost a quarter in Washington.

T

A Life-and-Death Struggle

HE point here aimed at is that the scheme to relieve the farmers generally through a sweeping tariff enactment did not originate with the farmers but with Congress. An emergency agricultural tariff bill was conceived and born all in one day apparently in the House Ways and Means Committee-a most unusual thing.

and so important by a large part of the Senate that they allowed it to stall the machinery of legislation for weeks while they tried to break through a Democratic filibuster-actually was giving the voters it was intended to help almost no concern whatever.

The farmer has come to understand that his entire hope does not lie under the great white dome at the lower end of Pennsylvania Avenue. He has discovered that his problem can only be solved finally by himself, the problem being how to get his wheat, corn, potatoes, beans, strawberries, apples, and such to the American housewife without allowing too many volunteers to assist him. He learned it out in California, where he now markets prunes, raisins, oranges, berries, walnuts, and most everything else he produces, with very little assistance indeed. He learned up in the Pacific Northwest so to market his apples and berries. In Vermont he discovered it is the profitable way to market maple sugar. In Michigan, potatoes. All over the country local cooperative organizations are proving their usefulness. They are beginning to establish contact here and there with consumers' cooperative organizations, as in New England, where mill employees in several communities have organized to buy directly from the producers and where many big manufacturing concerns are supporting and sometimes initiating the movement.

In the Senate the same thing was on the verge of happening, when Senator Penrose, who had been absent up to this time, came out of his convalescence and made protest. Reports preceded his arrival in Washington that the Pennsylvania leader's views on tariff legislation had been undergoing a change since the war. Many of the great industries of the State, including steel, it was said, had become seekers for world markets and were asking for aid in establishing such markets rather than aid in keeping foreign competitors out of this country. Manufacturers of automobiles openly espoused the theory that what was needed was not more tariff but less. The same was true of certain other important manufacturing lines which were ready to compete in the markets of the world. With a surplus to sell abroad, they had begun to find retaliatory tariffs tangling the legs of their salesmen. Senator Penrose did not disguise his distrust of this emergency tariff bill, and he put an immediate end to all plans for rushing it through the Senate in the manner in which it had gone through the House. He had to call on Democratic members of his Finance Committee to help him delay the bill, since most of the Republican members appeared keyed up to slam it through. It is unusual when Penrose calls on Democrats for help.

That Penrose suddenly switched about and announced himself in favor of the bill did not convince Senate observers that his heart had undergone a change. The public then was permitted to witness a great life-and-death struggle in the Senate. It lasted for weeks. And

it was all in behalf of the farmers. That being so, it naturally would follow that all the representatives of agriculture in Washington-and practically every farmers' organization has headquarters here -would be centering their efforts on the passage of the bill. But they were working for the tariff measure in about the same manner that they were working for free seeds-which was not at all.

And that is what I call the supreme jest of this recently deceased Congress. A measure deemed so important by the House that it passed it with its eyes shut

O

a

Lplank.

The crux of the present agricultural condition lies in prices, labor, and credit.

The Republican party believes that this condition can be improved by: practical and adequate farm representation in the appointment of governmental officials and commissions: the right to form cooperative associations for marketing their products," and protection against discrimination; the scientific study of agricultusal prices and farm production costs, at home and abroad, with a view to reducing the frequency of abnormal fluctuations; the uncensored publication of such reports; the authorization of associations for the extension of personal credit; a national inquiry on the coordination of rail, water, and motor transportation with adequate facilities for receiving, handling, and marketing food; the encouragement of our export trade; an end to unnecessary price fixing and ill-considered efforts arbitrarily to reduce prices of farm products which invariably result to the disadvantage both of producer and con

sumer.

The Federal Farm Loan Act should be so administered as to facilitate the acquisition of farm land by those desiring to become owners and proprietors and thus minimize the evils of farm tenantry, and to furnish such long-time credits as farmers may need to finance adequately their larger and long-time production operations.

July 1 the Government estimated that the corn crop would be 2,779,000,000 bushels. The December future price, in consequence presumably, became $1.57 a bushel. That made the prospective value of the crop approximately $4,363,000,000.

October 8, as the result of sunshine in just the right weeks, the crop was found to be greater than estimated. It was 3,216,000,000 bushels. The December future price dropped to 842 cents a bushel. The total value became thereby about $2,717,000,000.

pencil will confirm this fact: For a crop 437,000,000 bushels greater than the estimate, the farmers were to receive $1,646,000,000 less money. One easily understands that a large crop might result in less money per bushel, but simpleminded agriculturists cannot explain a less total price for a greater total crop.

But wait. July 15 the Government estimated the wheat crop would be 809,000,000 bushels, and the December future price on the Chicago Board of Trade thereupon became $2.70 a bushel. That made the prospective value of the crop $2,184,000,000.

October 8 the Government's revised estimate brought the yield down to 750,648,000 bushels. Ha! you say, smaller crop, up goes the price. But the price went down to $1.931⁄2 a bushel, making the total value of the crop about $1,452,000,000, or $732,000,000 less than the farmers had been led to expect!

Now, many farmers maintain that these prices are determined by the speculators. They say the reward of one-third of the American people for their year's labor is determined by a gigantic gambling enterprise. (Continued on page 29)

"A gamecock is built for battle from the ground up. He's the fightinest thing that lives. Right in his eye it says plain that nothin' can make him quit. So long as he can draw a breath-he'll fight." Public opinion, backed by law, has abolished. the misuse of the gamecock's courage. Mr. Foote, lover of animals and writer of the greatest animal stories of the decade, recalls the days when the cockpit still had a holeand-corner existence, and tells the story of the "fightinest" cock that ever lived

M

Y guest waved aside the list of New York's dramatic offerings and elected to see the screen version of a match race between the king of thoroughbreds and the nearest approach to a rival that the world had to offer.

I had once taken Blister to a racing play with disastrous results. He had been bored to extinction. Fearing a similar catastrophe now, I urged the merits of a certain musical comedy upon him, but to no purpose. He was firm for the moving picture, and thither we went.

I had no cause to regret it. The picture was marvelous. Every stride of the horses from the barrier to the wire was distinctly recorded, and Blister gave it all a rapt and breathless attention.

I felt a sort of pity for the loser. I had seen him win the Kentucky Derby with astonishing ease. He had then won stake after stake, while thousands screamed his name as he galloped home. But the camera made it painfully clear that now he was

utterly, woefully outclassed. He could. as easily have overtaken the Twentieth Century Limited in full stride as the giant three-year-old that swept triumphantly on before him.

When it was over, and we were "catching some eats," as Blister put it, at a near-by restaurant, I recalled with some astonishment his rigid attitude and swerveless gaze upon the screen as the picture was run off. "You liked it?" I asked curiously. He nodded with shining eyes. "But you watch horses run every day of your life."

"Not hosses," said Blister. "He's the first hoss I or you or anybody else ever saw run. Fur four or five hundred years, mebbe, us humans has been tryin' to breed runnin' hosses. We've done pretty good at that. Every once in a while we send one to the races that has four legs an' a tail, an' puts up a right nice sort of a gallop. But the good Lord looks 'em all over as they come along an' decides to take a shot at the game hisself. 'I'll learn them poor fish how to make a regular hoss,' he says. The name of what he turns out is Man o' War."

"So he's the Lord's work?" I said.

"Sure," grunted Blister. "He's the A'mighty's own idea. You seen what chance the little Sir Barton hoss has with him. An' he's a good colt as our kind of colts go. But that four-legged flyin' machine ain't human-as I've just told you."

"There may be another one just as good in the future," I reminded him.

"Sure," Blister admitted. "But you and me'll never live to see it. The Lord's got a lot on his mind. He don't get round to the hosses again fur a coupla thousan' years or so."

"No," I said; "you're wrong as to time. He turns out the supremely great faster than that. About once a century is a pretty fair estimate for novelists and composers and statesmen and soldiers. I'll admit it takes longer for poets. I don't know why."

"Mebbe poets is a harder job," mused Blister. "They would be fur me. But all that stuff is forty miles over my bean."

"Why, no, it isn't," I contradicted. "Take statesmen. In our own country we have Washington and Lincoln."

"What about Teddy?" asked Blister quickly. "We'll have to leave that to time and history," I explained. "I'd say-yes."

"Me too," said Blister emphatically. "There was a he-man. That's three, ain't it? I guess you're right about the time. In the things I notice particular I've seen it happen three times myself. The Man o' War hoss is one. This here Ruth guy is another. Did you ever see him lean against the pill? Oh, papa!"

"What's the third?" I inquired.

"A gamecock," answered Blister. "A gamecock at Covington, Ky. I seen the greatest gamecock that ever wore spurs, an' I learn that outside of hoss racin' I'm a saphead."

"Tell me about it," I demanded.

"I ain't got the time," said Blister, examining his watch. "I gotta take that eleven-ten. I gotta work a hoss early to-morrow mawnin'."

"Take the next train," I urged. "That will give you an hour more. I don't see you often these days." "My sleep's nothin' in your life, is it?" grumbled Blister; but he put up his watch, reached for his "makin's," and I was content.

"This happens when Justis cigarette, lan

HIS happens when I'm just a lousy swipe,"

that's been quite a spell back. I ain't been out of the cradle a great while, but that don't stop me thinkin' I'm fully growed an' then some. I'm workin' fur Ed Venable then, as caretaker of a hoss called Free Lance, that's an in-an'-outer at Ed's pleasure. This here Free Lance ain't a bad plater if let alone, but with a coupla gallons of water in him an' the boy givin' him the strong-arm he looks terrible most of the time. Then one day the last good race he runs fades out of the handicapper's mind an' ole Free Lance is in there empty, with only ninety-six pounds up an' the jock told to start sellin' programs if he

don't win.

"At such times the odds is liable to be as good as 15 to 1, an' this Free Lance is just as likely to cop as any dog in it. Even if he don't win, he'll be second or third sure. So you can't lose nothin' to the race if you play it across the board.

"Free Lance is all that stands between Ed Venable an' regular work. The rest of his string is just receptacles fur hay an' oats. They ain't safe to bet a nickel on in a field of one-legged turtles.

"We opened that year at Lexington. Free Lance grabs a nice win, but he catches cold somehow after the race an' begins to cough. The rest of the string

"ON

NE mornin' I'm changin' bandages on Free Lance. Ed is settin' in front of the stall ketchin' a hideful of the first nice warm sun we've had in a week. Ed is a fur-bearin' animal. He's the hairiest guy I've ever saw. The sun workin' on him strong thataway has got him itchy, an' he's scratchin' his back against the edge of the stall door.

"I hate to bother you at a time like this,' I says to him, 'but when do I get some fresh beddin' fur this hoss?'

"Ain't there no more straw?' says Ed, like I've just sprung something new on him. 'I'll attend to it right away.'

""That's what you tell me yesterday,' I says. 'It's a shame to bed a goat down in stuff like this. If I'm goin' to take care of a hoss, I gotta have somethin' to do it with.'

"You're right, you're dead right,' says Ed. 'I'll see the feed man an' order a coupla bales,' he says, but he don't make a move, just keeps on rubbin' his back against the stall door. I let him alone fur a while an' then I start to ride him again.

"Are you goin' to see the feed man or not?' I says. 'I want to bed down. I want this hoss to get his rest.'

"Don't you worry none,' says Ed. 'I'll see him all right. I'll see him-' He stops scratchin' his back sudden an' gets to his feet. 'Holy jumpin' Jerusalem,' he says. 'Here he comes now.'

With that he runs into the stall, climbs out the back window, an' fades from view.

"I'm still lookin' at the window when a long sandy-haired guy rides up on a bicycle an' gets off in front of our stalls. "I'm alookin' fur Ed Venable,' he says to me. 'I got a bill here fur feed an' straw amountin' to $162.73. It's consid'able overdue,' he says, 'an' I'd like some action on it.'

"Right there I know Ed must be up against it good. You can stall a lot of people around a race track, but the feed man gets his or you'll hear somethin' drop.

"Mr. Venable ain't here,' I says. 'He's just left. If you'll leave your bill, I'll call it to his attention. He must of overlooked it.'

"'Yes,' says the feed man, 'he's overlooked it careful for a month an' a half. Now, listen,' he says, 'I seen him make his get-away just now. He oughta know better than that. What does he want me to do-attach these hosses? That's what I gotta do if he don't act like a white man. I know this is a tough game. I do what I can to help the boys out, but I hate to see a guy do a window dive when I come round. It don't look good.'

"I give this feed man the once over, an' I like his looks. He's got a nice blue-gray eye an' a oldfashioned map that you warm up to quick. Furthermore, he ain't offered nobody a battle. He's just

out the gate that night an' over to the feed man's. The store is dark, but I see a light at the back of the house, which is attached to the store, an I mosey around there an' knock. A fat woman comes to the door, an' I tell her I'm lookin' fur Mr. Boggle.

"Why do you come here?' she says, snappy like. "I thought this was his home,' I says.

"It is,' says the fat woman, 'an' I'm his lawful wedded wife. But don't never come here if you want to find Jake Boggle.'

""Where would I be apt to find him, ma'am?' I says, some took back.

L

AST night I was obliged to tell a friend I could not make him a third loan to pay his current living expenses. He is a young banker who breezed into the house one evening last fall, and spent an hour and a half bragging to my wife and me about how he had jumped out of his "fiddling" little bank job, where it took a lifetime to get ahead, and how he was then making $10,000 a year, easy, by selling securities. And he was doing it too. Three times within the past three months he has come to me to borrow money. He has never told me what happened to his $10,000 job. He doesn't have to. I know.

A few days ago another young man-a minor executive in one of our departments-stepped into my office.

"When I went to France," he said, "I left a job that was paying me $40 a week. You remember the notice posted up that the men who enlisted could have their old jobs back if they wanted them after the war. When I came back, like the other boys, I had a pretty poor opinion of that old job. I saw and heard a good deal about the big money that fellows I knew were getting. I wanted some of it myself, and, without stopping to analyze the situation in a common-sense way at all, I decided that I wouldn't take that old $40 a week Job back-not with talk of $100 jobs floating around so plentifully.

"But I liked this company, and I thought I would just as soon work here if you had one of these good jobs for me, so I came down and had a talk with my old chief. He smiled pretty aggravatingly at my line of talk, and

By George Martin

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

along in the fall of 1920, when all of a sudden those 'balloon' jobs began to blow up all around. And maybe you think I didn't begin to feel good then. Not at the other fellows' bad luck, but at my good fortune.

firmed, and that, perhaps, the men who fell victims to the wiles of the silk-shirt era will have learned that he who tries to cross a wide river by jumping over it is apt to land in deep water, and will not try to do that any more.

The day of "men at any price" is gone, because the shortage of men that made it necessary to take them on that basis is gone. With the settling down of business to a sane, normal basis has come the settling up of accounts with the man and the job who aren't paying for themselves.

said that you had foreseen this situation and had mapped out the policy to be adopted toward all such conversation as mine.

"He said, in effect, that all these big jobs that appeared to be coming so easily to ordinary men were 'balloon' jobs-that is, they were jobs that had been blown up to their then proportions by the general inflation of values, and that when deflation set in the gas would go out of them and their riders would find themselves coming down to earth with an awful thud.

"Now, frankly, I thought there was a good deal of bunk in that then-just a smart business trick to nail high-grade men to a low-grade pay roll.

"I asked my old chief for a few days to think it over, which he gave me, whereupon I promptly went out to nail one of those good-looking jobs. And I found them all right. Not exactly in my line, but near enough to it so that they were offered to me; and I was on the point of taking one of them at $90 a week when I got scared. I didn't know exactly what scared me, and I was furious at myself for being that way, and not having any backbone. Then I came back and took my old job here, though when I did it I was quite willing to admit that I was just what some of the boys called me 'a poor fish.'

"Still, I fought back into my old spirit and buckled up to the job, determined that even if I had made a mistake I would make up for it as much as possible by trying to get ahead from the old starting place.

"As you know, 1919 and the first half of 1920 were very good, and I had shoved ahead to $75 a week and more responsible work, though not yet equaling the money or the jobs held by fellows I knew were not a blamed bit better than I was, and most of them not quite so good.

"I was still experiencing an occasional twinge

it reveals a situation that every man and woman holding a job in this country to-day can well afford to think twice about.

It merely proves again what has been proved time and again before: that you get from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top a step at a time, and not by standing on the ground and giving one grand leap.

The men, including those who went to war and came back to the job, who during the last hectic five years have stuck to what they knew, and plugged along earnestly learning more about that thing and reaching out for more of it as they became able to handle it, are consolidating their gains in these days when soft jobs and soft men are having the stuffing knocked out of them.

Such men have records behind them that stand them in good stead and pave the way for future progress. And the ones who lost their heads over easy money during easy times are chiefly the ones who are losing their jobs now.

I do not say this in any spirit of mean reproach. I hope that by saying it the men who weathered the thing through will have their good judgment con

roll

I recall very vividly the case of one young man, disqualified as a soldier, who held a very responsible position in a certain large manufacturing company in the spring of 1919. He had risen rapidly to this position, and perhaps the fact that he was receiving $5,000 a year, where a year or two before he had been receiving $2,000, had rather turned his head. That and the "balloon" jobs that were floating all around him.

One day, just after luncheon, he walked into the office of the president of his company and said:

"Mr. Wallace, I have just had luncheon with the president and three other executives of the Blank Company [naming a concern in the same field as his own company], and they have offered me a job as head of one of their departments at $12,000 a

year.

"Now, I certainly am not the man to turn down a raise of $7,000 a year if I can get it, but I want to know the views of some other persons besides myself and the men the offer comes from before I do anything about it. I am asking this question of men both in this organization and out of it whose opinions I respect, and I would like to have you tell me what you think."

"Well," said the president, "you know me well enough to know that if I thought you had gone as far as you could go here, and I knew that there was a real opportunity for you to get further somewhere else, I would tell you so. And with that as a basis, let me say this: Twelve thousand dollars a year to a man who is getting $5,000 is a legitimate temptation, if it is genuine. By that I mean, if you examine the job carefully and feel that it is worth $12,000, and then you examine yourself carefully and determine that you are capable of filling a $12,000 job, it is the thing to do to take it.

"But remember this: there are just now a lot of jobs paying $12,000 that under normal conditions wouldn't pay $5,000, and there are a lot of $5,000 men in phony $12,000 jobs who, when the time comes, will have to prove, by the accounting department figures, which are very cold and unsentimental things, that they are actually earning $12,000 on a job that is really worth $12,000, and which will pay a profit to the company on the basis of a $12,000 investment -and a lot of them won't be able to do it."

The young man then went directly to the man who had offered him the job and asked bluntly: "Do you think that my experience in the work I am now in has equipped me sufficiently to step into a $12,000 job with you and be worth $12,000 to you on it?"

"Perhaps not immediately," the president replied, "but you have the fundamental grasp of general principles underlying both businesses that would soon put you on your feet with us." The young man thanked him for the complimentand declined the job. (Continued on page 28)

W

"What Is the Future in This Job?"

THAT do you say to the man behind the desk when you ask for a job? In a long and active lifetime the great American engineer, John Hays Hammond, has hired, directly and indirectly, more than a hundred thousand white men. Some have been college men, seasoned experts in many different things. Some have been wholly without education and experience. Many have applied for important jobs-chief engineers, superintendents, heads of expeditions. Many have wanted smaller jobs at desks or machines. Out of it all Mr. Hammond has arrived at just one safe rule for sizing up his man.

"I have learned never to engage anyone," he says, "who asks me: 'What is the future in this job?"

e

Look back now for a moment at the men whose "balloon jobs," as Mr. Martin calls them elsewhere in this issue of Collier's, have been collapsing none too gently around their feet.

They have been men, without exception, who dreamed that they could take more out of the job than they put into it. They have not tried to do $10,000 worth of work for $10,000 in salary. Big men among them have gone down-men whose personal example infected their subordinates, and so on down through the office or factory, until in every room and at every machine there was some man or woman who was trying to get something for nothing.

It can be done. But the man who does it, always in the long run, has to give that something back!

The war used up vast resources, material and human, and left the world suffering, and somewhere starving, and somewhere poor, and somewhere drunk with easy money.

As a nation, we are doing something to relieve distress in Europe and elsewhere. As individuals, we are doing something to protect ourselves from the distress that quite naturally followed our toosudden prosperity. We have said before, and say again, that a great part of everything the war cost us can be charged to education. What has it taught us, as individuals?

It has taught us that men, and not things, are what count; that human conduct and human wisdom are the forces that overcome depression; that personal effort and personal accomplishment weigh more in the end than do any resources of material or of money.

Twenty years ago a man left a Washington job-and not an especially important one-to work for a bank in New York.

Putting the business on a cash-in-advance basis would keep out a lot of undesirable trade

have in America is one of accomplishment." It was this man whom the late J. P. Morgan selected for president of one of the largest corporations in the world. The reason is interesting. Several men were thought to have the necessary ability; but Charles M. Schwab was the only man who would certainly be more interested in doing the work than in trying to live up to the dignity of the position and spending the salary that went with it.

The president of the bank, James Stillman, could not have told this man what the "future" was in that job. Strictly speaking, there was no job at all. The man had to make one for himself, and to build it up into a department, and to let it demonstrate its value to the bank. Eight years later he became president of the bank. His name is Frank A. Vanderlip.

A good first lesson for every business school would be this: Money follows accomplishment, but accomplishment rarely follows money.

Another man, who many years ago took a job driving stakes at $1 a day without asking the foreman whether there was a "future" in it, wrote recently in Collier's that he has never been interested in money, but in accomplishment.

And a second lesson might be put in these words: Never ask a prospective employer "What is the future?" or "What are the prospects for advancement?" The man who does this fails to see that all the prospects, in any position, depend upon himself and not upon. what somebody else may give him.

"Men who work for money alone are merely beach combers," he said. "They never hold permanent jobs, or head large constructive enterprises. I do not pretend to despise money," he added, "and I believe in aristocracy, but because the only aristocracy we

Over the long haul a man gets what he earns and no more. Regardless of wars, and the aftermath of wars, this is true.

"It would seem to me the finest world that any man could want," said a Welsh laborer to Whiting Williams, "to get up out of bed every morning and know a job was waiting for you."

If there is anything that Williams learned in his long months as a laborer, it is that regular jobs are what men pray for and what they stand ready to fight for.

Strikes, lockouts, and layoffs follow bad thinking on the part of management and of employees. They will grow less only when every employer and every leader of a trade union learns the value of keeping men and money at work all the time.

Down at the bottom the problem is an individual problem. A successful man is not made by outside conditions. He makes his own conditions.

He is not the man who asks: "What is the future?" He is the man who has sized up that question for himself before he meets the man behind the desk. He does not simply expect to take something out he has determined to put something in.