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to do this," says some man. Perhaps not. Men haven't displayed an alarming amount of intelligence in the use of the ballot. When we look about us it strikes us that women couldn't do worse. The chances are all in favor of their doing better.

In any case, the suffrage question is an economic question, and as such should enlist the serious attention of every workingman and woman.

The great army of women who have been forced to leave the home and go into industry are lowering wages, crowding men out of positions and creating fiercer and ever fiercer competition for jobs.

Women are more tractable than men. They are much less apt to organize and strike for better conditions. The crowning virtue of women in industry, however, is that they are cheaper than men, and more profit may be made from their labor.

Manufacturers have been quick to realize all this, and wherever possible women have been put at the machine in preference to men.

Quite recently Professor Scott Nearing has given us some astounding figures in regard to wages in the United States, the most significant of which are perhaps those relating to the wages of women.

According to Professor Nearing's carefully prepared tables, three-fifths of the working women in the United States earn less than $325 a year, and nine-tenths earn less than $500 a year.

Men must compete for jobs with this army of underpaid women, and this competition grows more tense with each passing year.

This competition is unquestionably one of the contributing causes to the fact brought before us by Professor Nearing that one-half of the adult males in the United States are earning less than $500 a year.

With these facts staring them in the face, how can workingmen go stupidly on saying: "Women shouldn't mix up with politics. Their place is at the home!"

The long neglected factor, woman, is making her presence felt. She is making demands. Workingmen will do well to heed those demands.

The ballot for women will be a means of education. Through it workingmen will learn that which workingmen are slow in learning, their class interests.

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New York city responded as follows to the toast:

"THE AMERICAN ABROAD." Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: When man is young he wants to reform the world, that is, form it to his own menial mould. So recently as on the last Fourth, I still loved to hear my voice on the momentous questions of ethics, politics and the high cost and short cut of dresses. Now I realize the futility of noble endeavors. After my talking for years, unappre eciative mankind still wags on its old way. It is disheartening. Experience has lassoed my high horse and left me out of the world saviours' class.

Our distinguished friend and minister foreseeing my return to earth, suggests I speak about the American abroad. To begin with here is a new field for reformers. Let them stop harassing poor billionaires and drop the equal distribution of wealth, woman suffrage, protection, free-trade, initiative. referendum, pearl necklaces for penniless voters, and all their other nationsaving appliances. Let them simply advocate the recall, not, however, of judges, but the recall of after-dinner speakerswith imprisonment added, I would like to ask by what moral and legal right some talk too much at a banquet while others must ruminate in silence? It is unfair to both. After-dinner eloquence, I surmise, was invented by some loquacious druggist who owned a remedy for indigestion.

At least, on top of a feast like this (worthy of our anthropophagous ancestors, if not in the kind, certainly in the quantity of food), one should not select a dry subject; it might interfere with the gastric juices of the many Americans abroad here. And would it be wise to add to dryness with bottles s tantalisingly near a dry American subject?

Being one of the Americans abroad, modesty forces me to hold back the flattering things I could say of this American, and I do not intend to divulge the incriminating facts I know about you. Therefore I shall speak only of those who are so unfortunate as not to be with us today. Matter shal! not be wanting to prove their activity in any part of the globe. Pandora's box symPolizes their soul. Everywhere you go, somehting American is sure to pop out: Edison lighting, Morgan buying, Rockefeller oiling, cocktail mixing, pens, pills, perfumes. razors. desks, kodaks, phonographs and other evidences of our push stare at you from every forcign window and journal. Circling the earth is a sewing machine run by an American beauty, here in the garb of of a Russian peasant, there. bedecked as a Fiji Islander. Now springs the vision of a Gibson girl caressing a typewriter, then follows the sight of our 'long, lean lank' in his high water 'pants' ploughing Freedom's soil with Chicago implement. You will observe the nice use of the synonyms vision and

sight, a distinction which evidently escaped a foreign friend who having heard me say of a beautiful woman, 'She is a vision,' told her: Monsieur Lombard is a great admirer of yours. He said you were a sight!'

While we all are good patriots, yet some of us delight in being taken for Europeans. I once saw a typical Uncle Sam reading Baedecker before the Venus of Milo while his daughter drawled out of her Salvation Army poke bonnet, 'Shut that er book of you'rn, Pa, or they'll take us for 'furners'." Everything suspected of being art work, we buy at any price. This is not because many of us are bad judges. Any good business man will see at once that we do this simply to assure our corner on art. As a result. a jealous Berlin critic was recently forced to admit: 'In his life time, Rubens painted about eight hundred pictures, two thousand of which are in the United States.' On the other hand, I have heard it said of a Berlin collector that the sole original work in his collection was himself!

In Paris one day we offer a flying machine to a government that does not want it and in the same breath we build a hospital. We support churches in the Far East and Moulins Rouges in the Near East. Today we die to get presented at court, tomorrow we may refuse a small loan to a king, yet the next instant we might boast of many noblemen wanting the hand of our American girl--for the valuable rings thereon. Each mornnig we read in the European press the telegraphic news of our own dailies jumbled, translated (heaven knows how!), and of course, uncredited. And what is worse, we believe what we read. I could say a word about numerous fellow citizens who take consulates to be tourist bureaus established by Congress: I heard one of our "free and brave" ask his consul at what time the 1 o'clock train would go, if it went on time!

At home we have all we can do to stop the habit of "treating." Out of God's country, being asked if I smoked, and upon answering, "No, I thank you," was quickly told: "Oh, dear me, no. You misunderstand me. I only wanted to ask for one of your cigarettes!" Let us be just, however. Everybody here is not like that. Some are very large in their ways: see the size of the bills they present us. In fact, we pay New York prices everywhere. We are taxed the limit for wearing nasal twang and letter of credit. Nevertheless we remain charitable and return every summer to discover and explore this little continent, to teach its aborigines hygiene, cake-walk, and prodigality. We are a great people: mayhap child-like, never childish; plucky and sometimes plucked, occasionally capricious and inconsistent, but ever brainy, tolerant, bighearted, in a word, the very salt of the earth. (He that bloweth not his own horn shall not have his horn blowed).

In anaemic lands they blame us for the

popularity of Brigham Young's theories, in short, for our frequent "Brighamy." It should be to our credit that soon after marrying the "sweetest girl in all the world," we can meet right in our own country dozens of other "sweetest girls in all the world." Instead of decrying our numerous divorces, the irresistible charms of our women should be warbled from the tree tops. Those same natives disdainfully point to the number of our lunatics, as if it were not the most flagrant proof we have more brains. Before you can have a diseased brain you must first have a brain. Let other nations claim more idiots, if they like; we have reason to be proud of our lunatics, and I'll prove it:

In one of our asylumns, patients were building a wall. Among those bringing bricks, Bill Jones was pushing his wheelbarrow upside down. "Bill," shouted the superintendent, "your wheel-barrow is upside down." "I know it, Doc!" Well, why don't you turn it right side up?" "D'ye think I'm such a fool? Why, if I did they'd fill it up with bricks!"

Allow me now to end this nonsense by remarking that the Old World is changing its patronizing air toward the young one. 1 is finding out that not every one of us is a money-maniac, just as we are observ ing all Italians are not camorrists, all Frenchmen roues, Englishmen snobbish, Germans uncouth, Russians brutal. No continent has a monopoly of morals and manners. The "stay-at-home" of any land may think his own perfect and overlook the beam while seeking straws in others' eyes. Daily the American abroad either learns or teaches something. The good he does or gets is not limited to exchanging his dollars for pleasure or his ideas for pounds. As tourist, student, merchant, banker, public official, and even as wealthy malefactor he discovers much that is worthy of emulation. Thus his sphere of knowledge widens and his sympathy toward all races expands. Coming in contact with foreigners he helps them appreciate the vast amount of original and beneficent work produced yearly by our nation. And if a country is to be judged by its contribution to the wealth, the happiness, the progress of mankind, ours should certainly stand first.

Ladies and Gentlemen: let us drink to the Envoy of the New Civilization, to "The American Abroad."

AERIAL SERVICE ESTABLISHED. Washington-Aerial mail service is here. On July 5 the first letter sent by the United States aerial mail service was received by a New York Newspaper from South Amboy, N. J. The envelope was stamped with the South Amboy stamp and also the announcement that the letter came by way of areoplane on special route 900,006. A BurgessWright hydroplane-aeroplane was the machine used.

JOINT PROTECTIVE BOARD C. & O. RAILWAY.

Top Row, left to right-C. C. Clift, Local 208; J. H. Thompson, Local 185; V. G. Reese, Local 151; A. S. Nolan, Local
181; J. H. Williams, Local 331.

Middle Row, from left to right-J. P. Rapp, Local 82; T. J. Townsley, Local 105; J. A. Clingman, Local 416; J. O. Peyton,
Local 65; W. R. Childres, Local 455; W. W. Minor, Local 262.

Bottom Row-E. Dunnick, Local 466; J. P. Lee, Local 120, Vice Chairman; D. C. Ponder, Local 65, Chairman J. P. B.;
M. B. Wilhelm, Local 183, Secretary-Treasurer J. P B.; Ed. Raybu, Local 150.

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TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION-APPLICATION OF THIS PRINCIPLE TO PUBLIC SERVICE CORPORATIONS.

By A. A. Graham, Topeka, Kas.

The ancient despotic governments collected taxes at will, and this remained the rule until the organization of governments, in medieval times, among the theretofore savage hordes of Central and Northern Europe, where freedom had become a habit, and the government was only the operation of a contract between the feudal lord and the lord paramount, of whatever title or authority, to whom he did homage-a contract usually for the rendering of military services or payments in the nature of taxes voluntarily assented to.

The feudal lords, then corresponding to what we understand by citizen now, in public or state assemblies, "enregistered decrees," or otherwise gave their assent to the payment to the king of such revenues or taxes as had been agreed upon.

Restricting ourselves now to Great Britain, and referring specially to colonial times, we find, to quote what I once revered as the highest and most respectable authority, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, where, in the

earliest

editions, he states that the common law is the heritage of every Briton, following him over the globe, and residing in his domicile wherever affixed under the sway of his native land.

The American colonies shortly rebelled, chiefly for the reason that the mother country had violated the sacred tradition of consent to the payment of a revenue, and insisted on "taxation without representation," as the phrase then went.

In an attempt to justify the action of the British government toward the colonies, Blackstone then changed his text, declaring that the common law never had extended to the American colonies.

This mutability on the part of a great judge to meet everchanging political conditions is well illustrated by the action of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Standard Oil and Tobacco trust decisions, recently handed down. This is a digression, but I know, without asking, that I am pardoned already.

The rebellion of the American colonies soon became a revolution, resulting in the establishment of our government and the vindication of the traditional, ancient and ever subsisting right, always insisted on by the Europeans and their descendants in America, that there should be no taxation without representation.

Having thus briefly stated the tradition, the history and the practice, now crystallized into fundamental law in relation to the operation, from a financial standpoint, of our government, we are ready for the

application of the principle to our public service corporations:

Public service corporations are in the exercise of a part of the governmental prerogative, a franchise. The sovereign has parted, for a time, with a portion of the inherent and fundamental powers of the state, and for a consideration, the consideration that the corporation will serve the public needs in some particular direction, has granted to such corporation the right to transact such business, and to charge therefor a reasonable rate for the service rendered, to cover, first, a fair return on the capital legitimately invested, and, second, the cost of proper and efficient operation.

At this point we strike that much vexed question, a mixed question of fact and law, as to what, under the circumstances, is a reasonable rate of charge.

The answer to this question depends entirely upon three antecedent questions: (1) The amount of capital legitimately invested. (2) What rate per cent is a fair return. (3) What constitutes proper and efficient operation.

We have now the whole proposition before us, and the demonstration does not seem at all difficult. These three antecedent questions call for facts, which, when ascertained, the main question then becomes one of law, expressible in mathematical terms, and able, so to speak, to take care of itself; and we also see that all the controversy heretofore waged over the reasonableness of a charge has been without a foundation to rest upon.

By reason of stock jobbing, mismanagement and corruption generally: (1) The amount of capital legitimately invested depends upon the physical value of the property. (2) What rate of per cent is a fair return depends upon the money market, and is ascertainable as a fact, the market value. (3) What constitutes proper and efficient operation is the only question presenting any difficulties.

At first, these corporations, in all matters, were permitted to do as they pleased, except to exceed a maximum charge, and not all of them have had even this limitation placed upon them.

At present, the rate of charge may, very generally, be fixed by the interstate commerce commission, the public utilities commission of the various states, or the local municipal commissions, as the case may be.

The true source of the difficulty, however, arises from the fact that the rate of charge is fixed by the public commission just named, while the expenditures are determined by the corporations themselves. If, now, these expenditures are not legitimate and honest, if the corporation is paying salaries of $50,000 to $100,000 a year to officials incapable of earning anything, or, what is worse, are an absolute detriment, or is paying subsidies or gratuities for consent to stock jobbing schemes, or for re

bates, and the like; if, I say, the operation is to be burdened with these unjust charges, the rate of charge for the services rendered must be correspondingly high, and the public must be taxed topay these iniquitous amounts, too often in the nature of loot to the man on the inside, and in no manner even for a laudable purpose, such as the raising of a revenue for the home government, as in our colonial illustration.

Our ancestors raised a revolution, because they objected to paying a few cents tax on tea, when they had no voice in the levying; but now we pay millions, millions, millions, as a tax to our public service corporations by reason of mismanagement, extravagance and loot, not objecting to any, not knowing the existence of many, and with no voice in determining the legitimacy or the honesty of purpose of the charge.

You now see the difference between taxation without representation in revolutionary times and now, cents to millions, and the difference, also, between the spirit of independence then and now. Then our ancestors would not pay from principle, would not pay a cent illegally or unjustly demanded, but we now pay millions without objection or thought even.

The voice of liberty is either dead among us, or we are but the degenerate descendants of a noble ancestry. I am inclined to the latter view, because, like the overburdened ass, we bear the load with great stolidity.

In my judgment, we have no choice of remedies for this unfortunate condition. The public must, through the commissions above named, become the operator, by a well directed control, of all public service corporations, limiting their expenditures within proper and legitimate bounds, applying their income to maintenance and betterments, and then the fixing of the rate of charge will become an easy matter.

EIGHT HOUR CLAUSE STICKS. Washington-During the consideration of the naval appropriation bill in the House the Hughes eight-hour bill was inserted as an amendment, for the reason that while the House had passed the eight-hour bill the Senate had not yet taken action. In order that the Senate might be compelled to act upon this legislation it was incorporated in the naval appropriation bill as an amendment. The Senate finally concurred in, with slight amendments, with the Hughes eighthour bill, and it has been signed by the President. However, the Hughes eight-hour bill does not become effective until Jan. 1, 1913. In the consideration of the naval appropriation bill in the Senate an effort was made to eliminate the eight-hour amendment on the plea that the eight-hour day was already established by law. It was contended by the friends of the eight-hour amendment that its effect was to make the eight-hour provision effective, SO far as

naval construction was concerned immediately, and that if it was stricken out contracts could be entered into prior to Jan. 1, 1913, which would not extend the provisions of the eight-hour law to contractors and sub-contractors, on this naval appropriation bill, and which is a salient feature of the eight-hour law that goes into effect in 1913. An amendment was finally adopted that carries the eight-hour law into effect immediately on all contracts provided for in the naval appropriation bill. The amendment follows: "That the provisions of the act of Congress entitled 'an act limiting the hours of daily service of laborers and mechanics employed upon work done for the United States, or for any territory, or for the District of Columbia, and for other purposes,' approved June 19, 1912, shall be in force as to all contract made under this act from and after it passes."

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