attendant upon any classification. The solution of the problem does not consist in an attempt to destroy what is indestructible, but in sympathetic understanding, in intelligent use, and in wise guidance of a fundamental human trait.

I have heard a young man excuse himself for not having gone West or to the city on the ground that his aged parents needed him; when the real reason was his lack of ambition and virile life, and his aged parents would have heaved a sigh of relief any time they could have seen him start for anywhere. By putting the responsibility for a lowly and circumscribed life upon the life itself; by opening up avenues to the able, Democracy has cast a stone into quiet waters, or rather we might say, has broken down the dam and has transformed a pond into a rushing river. This transformation has its bright side and its dark side also.

For a man to be able to say,

"It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll;
I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul."

is a glorious experience for a strong social swimmer. But for him who is other than strong, this democracy awakens ambition only to quench it in defeat.

Democracy extracts from society a maximum of energy and efficiency: it acts like the release of a spring. When we observe that we may obtain, some force - perhaps desire for distinction, or rivalry, or fear of isolation — drives us to double our efforts to attain; and society, charged with this new energy, increases its momentum.

But prog

ress has its costs. The pace is fierce. The contest is a gruelling one. The prizes are alluring. The contestants are numerous, and among them are found an increasing number whom the hurly-burly of opportunity and choice and strain has over-mastered. Unstable, untrained, unfit, such as these become bewildered, and through dissipation

or debauchery, or perhaps even through dogged overwork, or worry, travel the road which leads to destruction. Not the least among the problems of a democratic people is to care for the increasing burden of its narcotized, its alcoholics, its drug fiends, its insane-beaten soldiers in the armies of progress.

The caste system seems to have been a development normal to the middle ages. Out of the confusion and strife of that troublous period it grew up as a kind of crude means of protection and order. One might say that it was indigenous to the soil at that time. But its day has passed. Whatever of service it has been capable of rendering to western peoples has now been rendered. Its existence anywhere now betokens the stranglehold of privilege upon a docile people; and yet the great modern power of Germany not only adheres to the caste system, but has erected it on high, as something like a national ideal. Her spokesmen, her philosophers, have elaborated it with vigor and precision. She has, moreover, undertaken to force it upon the remainder of the world, and seems surprised and hurt at our reluctance to adopt it on her recommendation. William H. Seward characterized our civil war as an irrepressible conflict. So is the present conflict. The central powers have mobilized all the modern arts and sciences in a way that we admire; but they have done it to impose upon us a medieval system we abhor. That narrow ribbon of blood-soaked soil which runs from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier called "No-Man's-Land" does much more than divide two armies, whose raiding parties plunge across it nightly: It separates two profoundly different systems of thought and of society. For the masses, one represents hope, the other despair; one represents optimism; the other cynicism; one plans to make the world better for all men; the other to make it better for a few;

peace is the ideal of one, war the ideal of the other; the one with all its faults believes that somehow men are brothers and it worships a God conceived of as a Father to all people; the other is dedicated to the proposition that men are not brothers and it worships power, plunder, blood and iron.

Such

The president of the United States in one of his speeches said that he who compounds with Germany compounds to his own destruction; and Russia attests the truth of his assertion. There are some who attempt to befog the issues of the great war. They demand a restatement of war aims, talk of freedom of the press; of freedom of speech, academic freedom. They are little people. They forget or never knew that freedom herself is being fought for on the plains of Flanders, in the Vosges and the Alps. talk is, as I conceive it, a kind of domestic compounding with the enemy. It is as if the master of the house discoursed to the crowd upon the defects of the fire engine while the house burned down about his ears. What he ought to do is fight fire even with a bucket. Discussion will not bring peace. As a general proposition it may be true that the pen is mightier than the sword; but just at the present moment printer's ink is no match for liquid fire. The only thing that will bring peace is a rising German casualty list and hunger along the Rhine.

THE DREAMS OF YESTERDAY

The American Economic League sends out a list of reforms, with the suggestion that a political platform urging them would have seemed highly Utopian 30 years Some of the reforms suggested are still far from accomplishment and probably never will be taken on by the country as a whole. Here is the list:

ago.

1. Substitution of a leasing system for sale or gift of public land.

2. Government operation of railways.

3. Direct federal taxation.

4. Direct election of senators.

5. Woman suffrage.

6. Australian ballot.

7. Direct primaries.

8. Initiative and referendum.

9. Recall.

A few stanzas culled from the Biglow Papers pithily put the whole matter:

Words, ef you keep 'em, pay their keep,
But gabble's the short cut to ruin;
It's gratis, (gals half-price) but cheap
At no rate, ef it henders doin';

Here's Hell broke loose, an' we lay flat
With half the universe a-singein'
Till Sen'tor This and Gov'nor Thet
Stop squabblin' fer the garding-ingin.

Ther's critters yit thet talk an' act

Fer wut they call Conciliation; They'd hand a buff 'lo-drove a tract When they wuz madder than all Bashan.

Conciliate? it jest means be kicked,

No matter how they phrase an' tone it; It means that we're to set down licked; Thet we're poor shotes an' glad to own it!

A war on tick's ez dear'z the deuce,

But it wun't leave no lastin' traces, Ez't would to make a sneakin' truce Without no moral specie-basis.

This weighin' things does wal enough
When war cools down, an' comes to writin';
But while it's makin' the true stuff

Is pison-mad, pig-headed fightin'.

Set the two forces foot to foot,

An' every man knows who'll be winner, Whose faith in God hez ary root

Thet goes down deeper than his dinner; Then't will be felt from pole to pole, Without no need o' proclamation, Earth's biggest Country's gut her soul An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation!

10. Preferential vote.

11. Proportional representation. 12. Home rule in taxation.

13. Exemption in whole or part of labor products from taxation.

14. Municipal ownership and operation of utilities.
15. Commission government for cities.
16. The city manager plan.

17. Self-government for cities.

War has been responsible for the most radical change, government operation of railroads, but an unmistakable desire for self-government and responsible and genuinely representative government has been responsible for others, such as direct primaries, home rule measures and ballot reforms. Edward Bellamy was a wild dreamer in the '80s, but he is fast attaining the classification of one far ahead of his time in thought.

Intimately connected with, although not a part of the State government and its affairs, is the modern hotel. There is no more interesting evolution of business than the rapid change of what may be regarded as a distinctly American institution - the up-to-date hotel. Only the traveling public realizes the wonderful improvements, the added comforts and facilities offered for public meetings afforded by these hostelries. Not many years ago telephones in hotel rooms were unknown, as were hundreds of other facilities now placed at the hand of the guest. One of the latest manifestations in the growth of the business is a chain of hotels. Frank A. Dudley, author of this article, who is a lawyer at Niagara Falls, N. Y., is president of what is said to be the largest and most extensive chain of hotels in the world. Under the name of the United Hotels Company of America, there is conducted a chain of fourteen hotels in different parts of the United States, including Toronto and Hamilton, Canada. In New York State the well-known Ten Eyck hotel, the Onondaga at Syracuse, and the Utica at Utica are part of this group. The Ten Eyck, at the State capital, has come to be regarded almost as an integral part of the State government. Because of the meetings there of the members of the legislature and State departments, it is known perhaps better than any other one hotel in New York State.- EDITOR.

T

HE process of evolution has so taken hold of all kinds of business that what we style modern today may be out of date tomorrow, yet certain fundamental essentials bravely refuse to be modernized and can readily be recognized as the backbone of successful business. The change is one of dress more than one of substance. So in the hotel business, the corpulent genial faced innkeeper of Colonial days would hardly recognize in the modern fireproof hotel, completely equipped and furnished and carrying a staff of a half thousand employees, a successor to his modest establishment, yet the principle of service to the guest, feeding him. and making him comfortable is the aim of the hotel proprietor today just as it was centuries ago. Intensified civilization involv

ing improved methods of living have created the demand which the hotel proprietor has met in the modern hotel. We imagine we have lost in sentiment the romance which surrounded the old time Inn, with its crackling log fire, its turning spits and its mugs of musty ale, but I also imagine if the gallant of those days had been given the option of a modern fireproof hotel with a warm room and a bath, food from the markets of the world cooked and served in the most enticing manner he would have been found with the rest of us in the modern hotel.

Hotel operation has always been closely allied to transportation and today no transportation system would be complete or meet the demands of the traveling public without its complement of hotels located at terminals and convenient points. The modern hotel contributes much to the comforts and pleasure of travel. Even the pleasure of motoring is enhanced by the knowledge that night will find us comfortably housed in a fireproof hotel.

The modern hotel has proved an important factor in influencing motoring for pleasure and has largely determined the routes of the motorist. Improved roads have followed rather than preceded hotel development.

The public generally have been slow to understand the importance of the hotel industry in the development of the country or its relative importance to other industries. Authorities classify the industries of the United States in order of their importance as follows: 1, Agriculture; 2, Transportation; 3, Manufacturing; 4, Hotels. If this is a correct classification, when we consider the relation of hotels to transportation

we must recognize their growing influence on our national development.

A modern hotel should not be built without a real demand exists therefor which measured by known volume of traffic will profitably sustain a first class operation. In many of the smaller cities in the United States are found hotels which would grace Fifth avenue, New York city. Such hotels usually reflect the dream of the successful promoter or the ambitions of a trade organization to outdo a neighboring city. Where a community feels the demand for increased or better hotel facilities instead of convening the board of trade and resolving to build a million dollar hotel, much better results could be secured by turning over the entire matter of community needs and the kind of hotel to meet them, to experts in hotel operation and construction.

No business I am familiar with requires a greater diversity of talent than successful hotel operation. The traveling public sees The traveling public sees and knows very little of the workings of an efficient hotel organization. They are apt to see a great deal of an inefficient organization. Satisfactory service means efficiency in organization, but efficiency in organization cannot be indefinitely continued without profit from operation. I believe fully fifty per cent of hotels built as the result of community ambitions are defective in arrangement and mechanical layout, and are too large and costly to be profitably operated.

Notwithstanding hotel architecture is as distinctive as factory architecture, I have seen plans and specifications for hotels prepared by local architects at a large cost, which if carried out would have produced a hotel monstrosity which the greatest hotel genius of America could not have profitably operated wherever the hotel was located.

Location is important. Many hotels have failed to make good because of poor location in a city fully able to sustain them. In the desire to help out some stranded land owner,

or please the whim of the leading citizen an undesirable location is chosen, with the result of a fifty per cent business compared with the right location.

The right selection and installation of the mechanical plant and appliances is also important. A misplaced dish washing machine may add considerable to the labor charge and breakage of china and glassware. The larger hotel organizations are obliged to develop and utilize such material as comes to them in the ordinary course of employment in the making of a manager. The successful manager must have a knowledge of mechanics and applied electricity. Under his supervision are the power, heating, lighting, refrigeration and laundry plants. He must be a judge and know the value of food products. He must have a knowledge of accounting. He must know how to handle. and coordinate the labor of the various departments and finally, in his relations to the public, must possess the diplomatic ability of an ambassador. I have never known a manager able to measure up to the requirements of the position. If he is fairly well qualified the organization with which he is connected must supply the deficiency. Hence individual hotel operation can hardly be expected to produce as favorable results as organization operation.

Luxuries, excessive drinking and eating are no longer in fashion. A wholesome reaction is taking place in favor of temperance and the use of nourishing foods.

Modern hotel organizations are encouraging this change rather than retarding it. The hotel of the future, to be a useful factor in the natural development, must through an efficient organization give to its patrons, thoughtful service, wholesome, well prepared and neatly served food, a safe and comfortable place to stay, a measure of entertainment, an elevating influence must be reflected in the operation. To such treatment the public will respond with liberal patronage.

T

HROUGH thirty-five years in New York daily journalism, it was my privilege to be thrown into more or less intimate editorial connection with such newspaper owners and editors as William Henry Hurlbert of the World, Whitelaw Reid of the Tribune, Joseph Pulitzer of the World, and James Gordon Bennett of the Herald, who died in France recently. Of these personalities, contrasted as they were, that of Mr. Bennett always seemed to me to be the most difficult to understand from any ordinary viewpoint. Sometimes during my years of service on the Herald I flattered myself that I had learned to understand the "Commodore," as he was always called in the Herald office, but always was I brought sooner or later to the knowledge of my error. In fact, I doubt whether Mr. Bennett ever understood himself.

From the viewpoint of an old journalist, I do not think Mr. Bennett measured up as a great newspaper man with any of the others I have named. That he had good news sense there can be no question. He proved the possession of this early in his ownership of the Herald by the Stanley-Livingston exploit, the Jeannette expedition, and the development of the Herald's shipping news and weather reports, but these feats were not repeated in kind, and as the years passed his energies were apparently

more and more devoted to the trivial side of human activities and life- the extensive chronicling of society happenings and the effort to increase the Herald's circulation by sensational devices, eccentricities of type display, bizarre treatment of the news of the day, etc. Ability he had, flashes of great ability, but he was so changeable, so mercurial, so actuated by suspicion of others, so carried away by the whim of the moment, that often his enterprises turned awry.

Employees here and in the Paris Herald lived and worked in and for the moment, not knowing what an hour would bring forth, nor whether or not their positions would

last through any day. Life in the Herald offices had the quality of adventure, with the "Commodore" present, if only for the few days between the arriving and "steaming" of a transatlantic ship, or with the cables working between Paris or some other more remote point and New York. The only respite from suspense was when the "Commodore" was out of touch with the cable on some long cruise in his yacht.

In charge for some years of the daily cable news from the Herald office here to the London Telegraph and the Paris Herald, my work necessarily came under the "Commodore's" observation and close supervision. The rule was to send the important American news to London and the