these see to it that few who cannot pass come here. The laws against "contract labor" are strict, and a skilled man is much more likely to be suspected of having arranged in advance for work. The safe

and simple thing to do is to deny all skill, to be just a laborer. So everyone does it. The one exception is with the Jews from Galicia and Poland. They are "schneiders" so unanimously that one suspects all eastern Jews live by making each other's clothes.

The first great fact that stands out about the new immigration is that it is almost all "assisted." According to Ellis Island officials, only about 1 per cent of the steerage is paying its own way nowadays. The rest of the people come over on borrowed money. Sometimes the money is forwarded, sometimes the ticket itself, but in any case it is paid for with American dollars.

There was one characteristic of the old immigrant

fore and can lend, So he is less valuable, less hopeful, less anxious to become a part of America. He is an exile, not a home seeker.

Go to Ellis Island on any day-the days are all crowded, with steamers dumping their loads as fast as they can be handled-and watch the long files pass through. There is just enough of the old flavor to remind you where you are. A fair number of immigrants wear the dress you expect, brilliant national costumes or picturesque but evilsmelling rags. But there is also an astonishing amount of good and stylish clothing that comes out of the steerage. There are men with fur-lined coats costing more than most people in America can afford; women in extreme Paris styles, short dresses and high-heeled, high-laced boots. There are thousands who would have attracted no attention if they had walked out of the saloon. An Englishman who had a million-dollar rug and carpet business in England passed through Ellis Island recently on his way to California. His business was ruined by strikes and the general disordered labor market, so with $25,000 saved from the wreck he has come here with his wife and four children. It is his intention to start again in business in America.

And, while at Ellis Island, watch the hands! In our old immigration it was the hands that counted

most. They were what the employers wanted and the workers feared. To-day, with labor holding immense gains as a result of war conditions, it again fears that they will cut down the living standard, as able economists declare alien hands did between 1896 and 1910. Capital hopes exactly what labor fears. It is on this ground that most of the fighting over the proposals to limit immigration has taken place.

A few hours' watching will show that this battle can result in only an empty victory. The hands that are coming in now, with the exception of those of a single race, are not fitted for hard or cheap labor. Their owners may call themselves laborers, but the hands give them the lie. The inspectors can do nothing about it but take the immigrant's word. There is no law requiring a man's hands to back up his tongue.

The watching will show a change in national types, too. In the old days there came, besides the Jews, mostly Germans and

Italians, with a heavy Slavonic element. To-day the Italian alone is left of these in any important numbers. He has been joined by many Spaniards, rather undesirable as workers, and it is these two races that furnish practically all of the husky ignorance that is entering now. But with them came thousands who are not laborers, and largely from countries which before the war gave us only a trickle-Armenians and Greeks. There are also more British than for many years back, many Scandinavians, French, Czechoslovaks, and Jugoslavs.

Tw

The Great Proportion of Women

WO things stand out. First is the number of women. Before the war it ran to only about 35 per cent of the total; now it is a full half. Partly this is because most of the war countries are still nervous, and forbid the emigration of possible fighters. But mostly it is the wives and children of men caught in America by the war. Then there are young alien men in this country who, finding themselves at a disadvantage in the competition for wives, and finding too that American women are less patient of discipline than are the women of their own countries, are sending home for helpmeets. Officially, of course, these couples have always "known each other in childhood." The records show this. But, behind your hand, most of these matches are arranged by means of photographs.

The other thing that stands out is the number of Jews. Here again there are no statistics, for the law considers Judaism to be religious and not racial, and incoming Jews are entered under the nationality of the country from which they come as Poles, Austrians, Rumanians, and what not. But the stream of Jews which began twenty years ago as a trickle has become a torrent. Nearly half of the newcomers seem to be of that race. Mostly they are from Galicia and Poland, but there are swarms from Rumania and the Levant; many, too, from almost every European country.

These Jews are chiefly of the working classes, the unskilled eastern types who fill the East Side of New York. People very different from the western Jews most of us know. And these Jews, as we have learned, avoid the out-of-door occupations calling for hard labor. So here again, with nearly half of the immigration, we find that the traditional threat to workers and promise (Continued on page 27)

I

N attempting the selection of an All-America Acting Eleven for the season of 1920-21, a writer might begin humbly with the admission that he does not know much about the theory of acting. But if he also happens to believe that neither does anybody else, he may proceed boldly to name what seem to him the eleven best performances seen in New York this season.

The eleven selected are well balanced between oldfashioned favorites and newcomers, or, if not newcomers, actors who have played truant from the school in which the public has been accustomed to find them. As a diligent reader of Mr. Walter Camp's All-America football teams, I cannot remember a year when at least one of his selections had not in it something sensational and surprising. On my eleven Clare Eames fulfills these conditions. Previous to her appearance in the leading rôle of John Drinkwater's "Mary Stuart," she had made only two appearances on Broadway, and one of these was in a decidedly minor rôle. Miss Eames was first seen by New York theatregoers four or five years ago in a one-act play in a Greenwich Village theatre. Several seasons later she was with Miss Ethel Barrymore in "Déclassé," and her small rôle was quite blotted out by the brilliance of the star. There was more chance for her this year in "The Prince and the Pauper," in which she played Queen Elizabeth. This performance gave her the larger opportunity, for the author and the manager of "Mary Stuart" spent many vain weeks in searching for an actress who could seem royal without too much stress and strain. One of their scouts happened in upon "The Prince and the Pauper," and observed that the young woman who assumed the rôle of the Princess Elizabeth of England carried her royalty with spirit and grace. Accordingly it was only a short step to cast her as Cousin Mary Queen of Scots. However, the rôle now intrusted to her demanded something more than royal manners. She was not being asked simply to be a queen, but to be a particular queen, one of the most persuasive and winning in the history of the world. Miss Eames met the test at every point. She was able to carry through with great effect a scene in which she denounced the poor king who happened to be her unworthy husband, and from this she could turn and play a scene of fitful but fierce passion with a more favored suitor. And, best of all, at no time in the performance was the audience allowed to forget that here was a woman who, in addition to everything else, was capable of thinking.

TH

Well Played

HIS ability to stay in the scene without the aid of lines or violent business was the great charm of Miss Laura Hope Crewes in A. A. Milne's "Mr. Pim Passes By." Miss Crewes proved herself an excellent listener. During several long stretches she was assigned to do nothing but sit on a lounge and sew. She made her needle eloquent. It might have been a baton, so surely did she make it move to direct the unfolding of a tale of emotion ranging from frivol and fun to something close to heartbreak. To be sure, there is no element of surprise in putting Miss Crewes on the All-America, since she has been recognized generally as the foremost of America's comediennes.

It is possible, however, to find an actor to match the actress. Frank Craven's artless art is of a piece with that of Miss Crewes. He has specialized to some degree in rôles of panicky and embarrassed young men. Such rôles are generally played by actors who make their points by falling downstairs, backing into furniture, and every now and then dodging suddenly as if they expected to be kicked

violently from behind. Frank Craven could seem far more harassed without so much as stepping off a silver dollar. He has eliminated all waste gestures and has proved that an actor can make a slight movement of the hand, a turn of the head, or the smallest bit of business much more truly amusing than a somersault. Where somebody else would seek to emphasize the fun of a situation by falling upon his face, Craven is content to blow his nose. There is in "The First Year" only one scene of violence. For the rest the actor has designed his story and acted it with a keen eye for being nothing more than just human, trusting that such a quality is humorous enough for everybody.

Quite different is the comedy method of Gilda Varesi, who, like Craven, found that she had to become dramatist as well as player to get the opportunity she needed. Cast for several seasons as insane old women or younger furies, Miss Varesi cut loose from this tradition by making herself a most fascinating opera singer. The same electric energy which she had put into

scenes of tragic intensity in other seasons she now used to animate comedy. If asked why one actor is praised for being absolutely easy and another for a definite violence of vivacity, I can only say that one plays a young small-town American and the other an Italian prima donna. But, as a matter of fact, the answer should go deeper. To tell the truth, there is no one single right way to play a rôle. Any method wil do if only the practitioner takes pains to excel in it.

This brings us to Lionel Atwill's "Deburau," in which the actor tries not to be of the common flesh and blood of us all, but a person of rounded gesture and romantic moods who moves through the play speaking the choppy verse of Guitry and making it sound like persuasive poetic eloquence. There is

something of this same admirable artificiality in Ben-Ami, who brings to his florid rôle in "Samson and Delilah" excitement and glamour which we are willing to accept in the theatre even if we never saw such a man and never expect to. We should like to, and that is enough.

This, too, is what makes Holbrook Blinn such a captivating bandit in "The Bad Man." The probabilities are all against the existence of any Mexican robber half so humorous and romantic. But there ought to be such a bandit, and as long as Mr. Elinn remains in the part there is. Holbrook Blinn has been a well-known actor in the American theatre for some years, but he comes to the All-America Team this time through a piece of work somewhat outside his usual range. Audiences have come to know him as a violent villain or a more subtle one in a high hat. Blinn could be the president of the trust or the leader of the union with equal ease. He could be almost anything which required what actors know as "authority." When he began to play in "The Bad Man," however, he found that the audiences were laughing now and again at incidents which neither player nor producer had thought of as funny. Blinn was wise enough not to try and iron these possibilities for humorous reaction out of the rôle, and, instead, he met the laughter by making the portrait a little broader until at last the play was received as a triumph in satire for both author and actor. The success of Charles Gilpin in "The Emperor Jones" belongs among the sensations of the season, for this negro actor had been seen only once before on Broadway, although (Continued on page 26)

Don't Wait For a Tidal Wave

HIS Government is a business, and it is our business. People are warming into an interest in the way the Government is being managed. We want to put Government on a business basis." That is a quotation from an article written for Collier's nearly a year ago by Irving T. Bush, merchant. It comes into mind now, and with it comes this plank from the platform that Collier's has printed again and again: "Take the Government out of business that it was never intended to do, and cannot do well."

A slogan of the hour, flung far by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, reads: "More business in government, and less government in business." We read that slogan with pleasure; we hope it will make a dent in the mind of every man who hears it. Too many people can't hear it because-unless Lincoln was wrong at Gettysburg-the government is the people. The government is yourself, and ourselves, and John Smith, and (now that we have equal suffrage) Minnie Brown. Unless we keep this in mind, no slogan and no kind of machinery, no amount of laws, not even presidential shepherding, will correct the evils of which we all complain. In plain English, the public has fallen down on its job. The people have refused to govern. They have abdicated. They have been not only content but anxious to "let George do it," because many of them have been too concerned with the stock ticker, the latest divorce case, the eighteenth hole, and the score by innings. "George" has done it; perhaps the best he can, possibly not.

People get just the kind of government they really want. You get out of government just what you put in. When you do not want to bother about politics or economic problems, you have a “letGeorge-do-it" kind of government. Having put nothing into the government, either of thought or work, what right has anyone to complain if he gets nothing out of it? Neglect of the taxpayer and voter is the golden opportunity of the tax grabber and the payroll lounger.

"More business in government" means but one thing, if it means anything at all. It doesn't mean that we can manufacture, out of stock, a 100 per cent efficient administration. It means that more business men must pay attention to public affairs. It means that they must exercise as much concern over what is going on, day by day, at Washington and at the State capital and at the City Hall as they do over what is going on in Wall Street and the ball park and the golf links.

The only reason there is so much government in business, now that we are on a peace footing and the last excuse for a Papa Government has vanished, is that there are too many Georges on the job, placed there by the pressure of business men who fancy they are too busy to take a hand in running their Government. Every time something has gone wrong they have created a new bureau and hired a new platoon of Georges to run it-after which it has been expected to work out its own destiny. The net result is a piling up of useless bureaus and offices, many of which do nothing but interfere with business, and all of which are paid for out of the pockets of business men and their customers.

So we say there cannot be "more business in government and less government in business" until the business man-and every other citizen-gets back to the knowledge that in a republic eternal participation and activity in public affairs is the price of good and economic government.

You may delegate your authority, but never your interest, in public affairs.

It took a tidal wave at Galveston and a flood at Dayton to shock the business men in those two cities into a realization that they were the government, and that the only way to get more business in government was for them personally to take more interest in their public business.

Without tidal wave, fire, or flood, let us try to get the same thing into the head that Providence has placed on every pair of American shoulders.

Here Is an Example

THE HE hundred or more senators and congressmen who attended a joint conference in Washington a few days ago to hear what the American Farm Bureau Federation proposes to do in its newly established Washington headquarters were treated to the surprise of their life.

They heard James R. Howard, Iowa corn grower and national president of the Federation, say that the Washington representatives of the two million farmer members of the Federation had no idea of trying to tell Congress what it should do.

"There will be no lobby," said Mr. Howard. "What we propose to establish here is a national clearing house of agricultural information for the use of Congress. As important issues arise, we will submit them to referendum among our members throughout the country and submit to you the result, without comment and without recommendations."

This, truly, is a departure. Class representation in Washington heretofore (some of it, unfortunately, in agricultural organizations) has smacked too much of the bulldozing, lambasting, bellowing variety. Congressmen and senators are human enough. They resent being ordered about by class representatives, with questionable credentials, who base wild demands on half facts luridly presented.

If the Farm Bureau holds to the Washington program of its president; if, as he said, the Farm Bureau has not fanatics in it; if, as he said, the Farm Bureau does not seek class legislation, but only legislation which will be of direct benefit to all the people, and if, as he said, the Farm Bureau asks only of Congress that it clear the road to intelligent national agricultural cooperation in order that processing and distribution costs between food producers and food consumers shall be cut down-then Collier's predicts that the Farm Bureau's Washington bureau will be a great benefit to the nation and to itself, and a joy such as never has been experienced to senators and congressmen.

Thus is good will manufactured.

One other point that Mr. Howard made is worthy of note. Speaking of the national machinery the Federation is undertaking to establish for the more economic marketing of farm products (but not at all with the idea of controlling or fixing prices), he called attention to the fact that the chief function of the Department of Agriculture since the Civil War has been to educate farmers in matters of production, not of distribution.

"The business man, the food processor, and the manufacturer," said Mr. Howard, "have had all the help in this matter. Farmers have been compelled to undertake the untangling of their marketing snarl on their own hook."

These men of the Farm Bureau Federation are all working farmers; all for years have been active members of their respective county Farm Bureaus. The national organization is the fruit of more than two thousand taproots, the county Farm Bureaus, which have been gradually growing together throughout this country for the last twenty years.

In addition to James R. Howard of Iowa, these are the men who stood out against the background of the Federation when it came into being as a national organization at Chicago two years ago: O. E. Bradfute, vice president, is a farmer and stock breeder near Xenia, Ohio; senior trustee of Ohio State University, and past president of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.

S. L. Strivings, past vice president and now a director, is a farmer near Castile, N. Y., and president of the New York State Farm Bureau Federation.

C. H. Gustafson, chairman of the Federation's Grain Marketing Committee of Seventeen, is a farmer near Mead, Neb. He is presi dent of the Farmers' Union of Nebraska, one of the largest and most successful grain-marketing organizations.

The list is long. The movement is promising. Let them go on building good will and good marketing machinery. As long as they do that, Collier's will go with them.

"AS

A Postscript for Salesmen

S prophets," writes Bruce Barton, "too many salesmen are a loss. They have been going into small towns and filling the towns full of gloom and depression."

From a merchant in Kokomo, Ind., comes a statement that will interest Mr. Barton:

"I am sure that business is on solid ground once more. I am buying carefully, but far more extensively than at any time during the past year. But there is one little complaint to make. I am sick and tired of the salesmen who come into my store, and spread their silly grins about, and tell all kinds of nonsense about business booming.

"If they would only give me some real facts-if they would only put some meat into this good-cheer hash they are slinging aboutwhat a difference it would make."

Isn't there something in that?

Any merchant to whom it is worth the salesman's time to talk knows that conditions are better. He reads the newspapers too. Why not come down gently from conditions to facts?

He knows you can secure facts from your contact with a large number of merchants like himself.

Tell the merchant in Kokomo what other merchants are doing. Tell him how your factory is running. Tell him what you have learned from your raw-material dealers. Tell him what you have learned from people in the day coach as well as in the Pullman car.