Farms, mines and forests, all natural resources, have poured forth a stream of wealth that flowed into our factories and floated them high upon the tide of success. The rapid development of American manufacturing is due then, in part, to the variety, character and amount of resources placed at the disposal of our business men. In part it is also due to the extensive building of railways.

Before 1860 our railroads barely reached the Mississippi River, but since then, three transcontinental lines have been built. The great middle west, too, has added road after road until that section has as dense a railway net as can be found in an equal area anywhere. The eastern states have not been behind in building feeders to the trunk lines, and developing interurban transportation. Hence a whole continent has been spread before our manufacturers; every part of the nation is accessible to a factory no matter where the factory is situated.

Since 1860, therefore, the words "domestic market" have included every part of United States, and the size and extent of the country has made this market without a peer. The mere size of the United States has insured variety in population, differences of climate, unlikeness of resources, and divergencies in the stages of economic development. Every one of these things has stimulated manufacturing, for the variety of peoples has called for a variety of products to fill their needs; differences of climate have demanded different clothes, food and shelter created by different factories; unlikeness of resource has assured unlikeness of occupation, hence giving a basis for trade; and divergencies in stages of economic development have meant that the more advanced must supply the wants of the less advanced. Railroads with unrestricted interstate commerce over a wide area, have brought about this condition so favorable to manufacturing.

A great country with a common language gives unusual opportunity for advertising. Our business men have not been slow to seize this advantage, and it in turn has reacted upon the success of plants by bringing a flood of orders to those that captured the public's good will. National advertising has been no mean influence in establishing American manufacturing upon a solid basis of prosperity.

Another influence at work since 1860 to promote manufactures, an influence ranking in some minds with that of resources or railroads, is the tariff. Since the Civil War, we have had an abnormally high rate of import duties and this undoubtedly has called into existence or protected in their infancy, many manufacturing industries. Well versed manufacturers, however, claim that a tariff makes little difference to them whether it be high or low, so long as it is permanent. A stable low tariff would be as good as a continuously high tariff, if a manufacturer could be assured that changes would not be made. Our actual tariff history with its frequent fluctuations, therefore, is said to have been principally influential in promoting instability of industry.

Almost as important as any factor in accounting for the success of American manufactures, is the fact that the directing officers are the men who established the business. A concern in the first generation has a greater chance to succeed than one that has been held in a family for some time. There is a trite saying that a man gets out of any association, what he puts into it. Since the founder of a business gives it a full share of his energy, his time and his brain, the chance of success is increased, but inasmuch as the man who inherits a going concern usually has acquired interests outside of it, or in any case, can not share in the joy or pride of its creation, the business suffers. To such a man, the business is not his own child but only one he has adopted. Heredity also plays strange pranks. There is no guarantee that a successful father will have a successful son because the boy may inherit, say, his mother's artistic instincts rather than his father's business acumen, or if both father and mother are the business type, the son may revert to a previous ancestor whose abilities turned entirely in another direction. So there is always a great risk when a concern passes from the control of the man or men who made it. The fact, then, that our American enterprises have been in the hands of the men who brought them into existence, has been a decidedly strong influence in their favor.

One of the principal advantages derived from this first generation aspect of our business is the freedom with which experimentation has been conducted. Our business men have not been shackled by tradition; they themselves were pioneers, hence were

not afraid to try new things. This willingness to learn and change has kept business plastic and hence permitted its growth. In other words, our industry has not hardened or crystalized but has kept itself free to find new profit in novel ventures. New methods, new machines, new products have a strong appeal to Americans because they are a new people in a new country.

The last fifty years have witnessed a marked change, therefore, in American manufacturing. The betterment of transportation, the size of the domestic market, the value of tariff protection and freedom from tradition, all these have acted together to stimulate manufacturing into a leading place among American industries. The result is that in 1910 eighty persons in every thousand were engaged in manufactures, whereas in 1870 only thirty-three were so employed. Agriculture, meanwhile, has shrunk from the commanding position where it employed one hundred and fifty-two out of every thousand people, to requiring the services of but one hundred and thirty. Put in another way, in 1870 there were four persons working on farms to every one engaged in a factory; in 1910 there were 1.6 farm employees for every one engaged in a factory. A comparison between the United States and the rest of the world before the Civil War would have portrayed American manufactures in a sorry plight, but a contrast today would show the United States as the leading manufacturing nation of the world. A third of the world's manufactured products are made within our bounds; no other nation has more than a sixth. This is not often appreciated appreciated because we manufacture for ourselves, whereas other nations make goods for export. Our reliance upon a home market will not long continue. When we reach out for foreign markets, a new era in the history of our manufacturing will commence. Then this nation which had little if any manufacturing before the Revolutionary war, which became partially independent in cotton manufacture before 1830, which began to feel its powers in all branches of manufacture by 1860 and which since the Civil War has swept forward with a rush to control a continental market, ought to be able to continue its progress in manufacturing until no other country on earth equals it. We have the resources, the people, the energy; all we lack is the will.

Pupil Self-Government.

HENRY LINCOLN CLAPP, MASTER EMERITUS, GEORGE PUTNAM

T

SCHOOL, BOSTON.

HE most important school question that can be raised at the present stage of our democracy is, "Why should school children have many more opportunities than they now have to form habits of self-help, self-reliance, self-expression, self-development, selfeducation, and self-government by means of their own self-activities of mind and body?" I judge this question most important because of my experience with pupil self-government during twenty years without interruption, and on account of its indescribable benefit to delight in learning, certainty in remembering, fluency of speech, readiness in composition, altruistic relations, excellent discipline, good manners, good motives, and good citizenship in the making.

I do not mean that it is feasible or desirable to entrust to pupils of any grade the entire government or discipline of any school or class. I hold no brief for the customary monitorial method. But every school should be made democratic in the best sense, whereas now schools are autocratic in several senses; but "the powers that be" do not realize it, otherwise schools would be much different and much better, and more as Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Francis W. Parker wanted them, more as President Eliot and Dr. Flexner want them to be.

Why should pupil self-government to a large extent be practiced systematically under guidance, of course, in all elementary, high, normal, and secondary schools? Because the character of our citizenship and the nature of our government require it. Who can prophesy what beneficient or sinister changes in our constitutions and laws will be made?

Mr. Brooks Adams at an informal dinner March 13, 1917, said: "The country is in the midst of a social revolution whose end we cannot see, but which will require a drastic readjustment, if we would pass through it with relative safety." That cryptic state

ment may mean one thing to laborers and another thing to employers, one thing to recently naturalized citizens and another to the steadygoing descendants of the old New England stock who understand what our institutions and laws signify.

Will the ideas of our present and future citizens determine the character of our institutions, including our schools, or will our schools and other public institutions determine the character of our voters? In spite of our schools the revolutionary tide seems to be setting against us, as Mr. Adams intimated. Did he mean that business men and the directors of great industries should make the adjustment, or, if they did not, labor and government would? Well, we have seen one part of the affair come to pass, and we are now awaiting the next move.

How are the principles of a true democracy to be inculcated in our public schools? By letting them severely alone? Few teachers have the temerity to meddle with them however gingerly, when they hear the frequent injuction, "Give the people what they want!" What kind of people and possessed by what revolutionary notions? Democracies announce uncommon beliefs and policies and abound in volcanic craters that may erupt if a chip is cast into them. One party disbelieves in private property; another believes in unrestrained license to replenish the earth with children and make the public, especially the rich and childless, responsible for the support, instruction, and general welfare of their numerous, advertised, and photographed progency; and high authority for such a belief is not wanting. Some people read in the daily papers lately with much satisfaction that a Harvard professor and a member of an important commission expressed his opinion "that employes who were not efficient enough to earn this (minimum) wage should leave the industry and be supported by charity." By the passage of a law to that effect what a rush there might be to get married and then lapse into a state of inefficiency.

The "closed shop" strenuously opposes equal rights to work and so violates the vital principles of democracy, loyalty, and patriotism. A hither-to unknown kind of government, if it deserves the name, neither autocratic nor democratic, and based on unintelli