furnish a ready-to-use farm and give the farmer long time for payments out of its production.

Incidentally, Professor Mead indorsed the Crosser Bill, now pending in Congress, but the resolution reported by the Resolutions Committee, of which Professor Mead was chairman, was radically modified on the floor, so that in fact the Crosser Bill provisions were condemned, although the need of some measures to assist bona-fide settlers in acquiring and developing farms was recognized.

The Crosser Bill was not indorsed because it proposes that the Government shall take a tract of public land and employ workers, on wages, to develop and work it, but the workers are to be given no opportunity ever to buy any part of it for individual holdings. The resolution, as adopted, recognizes the need of Government aid in farm development, but it says:

The introduction of the Crosser Bill in Congress shows that this need is being recognized, and we indorse the general purpose of this measure. But we are opposed to any system of perpetual bureaucratic control of Government promotion, which would establish a dependent peasantry.

The question of the high cost of living centered mainly around the demand for a Government investigation of the live-stock

markets.

The Conference resolved:

We hereby protest against, any legislation by Congress interfering, by embargo or export

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duty, with the distribution and sale of food. stuffs in the markets of the world.

Another resolution condemned the Shields and Myers water power bills, which fail to protect public interests in giving away water power rights. The resolution also called for personal credits legislation to finance farmers.

These Conferences were made possible four years ago, not only through the initiative of Colonel Frank P. Holland, but through the actual aid of Sir Horace Plunkett, the leader of organized agriculture in Ireland, who came to America for the express purpose of raising funds to put farm organization on its feet financially.

Sir Horace succeeded in interesting one of the great foundations, which gave $20,000 or $25,000 for the cause. This fund has now been exhausted, and hereafter the movement must stand on its own financing. This does not refer alone to the Conferences, but to the general movement, which has produced not only the annual Conferences, but a year ago produced the National Agricultural Organization Society, officered mainly by men identified with the Conferences. This National Agricultural Organization Society undertakes to give skilled advice and service in directing the organization of all kinds of co-operative farm societies and enterprises, auditing and criticising their efficiency of management. Details of farm co-operation, however, were not discussed in this year's Conference. PAUL V. COLLINS. Chicago, December 9.

of her public utilities, nor a Workman's Compensation Law, nor prohibition, nor much of anything else among those measures of advance which the West has come to associate with moral and political development.

The dam broke during last summer in the Republican primaries. Nephi L. Morris, the Mormon ecclesiastic, a "stake" President, led the young liberal Republican Mormons in an onslaught upon the Reed Smoot machine, and came through with the Republican nomination for Governor. He defeated the regular Republican Governor Spry for renomination, although Spry was an able

man and had shown commendable poise and determination in insisting, against great and dangerous opposition, upon the paying of the full murder penalty by Hillstrom, the Industrial Workers of the World poet and enthusiast. But Spry would not see the light upon the issues which had at last gripped the public thought of Utah. Morris was the gubernatorial nominee and leader of the forlorn hope of the Progressives in 1912. And Morris easily won in the 1916 primaries.

Of course Morris was defeated on last election day. Utah had its 1912 four years later, and the Republican party vote was split in twain, a considerable percentage of it going to Wilson and the Democratic nominee for Governor. The new Governor is a Jew, Simon Bamberger, a leading business man of Utah, who manages mines and railways. Of course Utah is heavily Mormon, and so is Idaho, next door. And now each one of these States has a Jewish Governor. Idaho has Moses Alexander, this year re-elected. And Utah has Simon Bamberger. It would be an interesting quest to ask why, when Mormons fall out among themselves, they seem to prefer a Jew in high place rather than a Christian non-Mormon. But let that

pass.

And let nobody think that the junction of Jew and Mormon represents any deterioration in the quality of the Commonwealth of Utah, or any retrogression. Quite the contrary. The overshadowing issue in Utah this year was prohibition and efficient human progress in general. Utah is intensely interested in prohibition, and the people of the State felt that the Republicans had had their opportunity to pass such a law for years and had failed to listen to the rumbling of the awakened conscience of the Commonwealth. And they decided to give the Democrats a chance at it, particularly as Simon Bamberger was most emphatic and clear in his stand upon the issue. Mormons are naturally total abstainers. There never was a saloon in Utah until the non-Mormon population entered the Commonwealth.

That the general cause of progress has gone forward by the election of Simon Bamberger, Jew and Democrat, is evidenced by the declaration of the new standard-bearer to the people of his State :

Utah is going dry August 1 next. That is what the Democratic platform says, and you can bet our pledges will be carried out to the letter. We are going to have a public utilities commis

sion, too, and that will be just as soon as the law can be framed and passed. Utah will also have a workman's compensation act. I am going to have a businesslike budget system, and apply the same principles to the office of Governor that I have found to work in running a mine or a railway.

This is a part of the whole process of Americanization which is transforming Utah. It would speedily transform the whole country if we had everywhere the spirit and the brains in National and State leadership which this Jew is eager to put into action in this Mormon commonwealth. It is one more lesson to political Bourbons. Nothing can stop the inherent forces of advance in the American population, not even in that State in the Union which we have come to regard as one of the most difficult to move.

ure.

Always side by side in the Mormon population of Utah two influences have been struggling for the mastery. The original Mormon pioneers were by no means immoral people. There was among them in an aggravated form that reversion to primitive traits and a primitive theology which has been observed again and again when pioneers get far beyond the outposts of civilization. Polygamy was their besetting social and National failBut in the early days it was no evidence of deep-seated immorality. Side by side with the practice of polygamy the original Mormons exhibited a thrift, a sobriety, a business acumen, a deep reverence for education and religion, which cannot fail to be the marvel of all those who examine the subject. And side by side with a bitterness towards the Federal Government as the result of the early conflict with that power over the form of marriage relation there was growing all the time a natural instinct of patriotism. In 1847, just before the Mexican War, the Mormons of Utah sent five hundred men down to help hold California against Mexico. Their early settlement was on Mexican soil, but they claimed it for the flag of the United States. The first telegram that ever reached Salt Lake City was from President Lincoln to Brigham Young, who promised Lincoln in reply to keep the highways open with Mormon pioneers so that the Government mails could move without the aid of the army.

In the early period polygamy was a religious tenet, and therefore did not have anything like the full effect of an immoral practice. I was talking a short time ago with one of the finest elderly Mormon citi

zens in Utah. His father had two wives, who lived in separate houses near each other, and both the wives and the children were as friendly as if of one household. And all their lives long the children of both families have enjoyed the closest friendship and intimacy. Each of the groups of children called the other mother "aunt," but they have regarded each other all their lives long as brothers and sisters. It is because of the concepts and complex responsibilities of that earlier generation that public opinion has been lenient toward some existing instances of polygamy still in the State of Utah. A friend of mine in Salt Lake City told me that he had seen the five wives of Joseph Smith not very long ago ride downtown in the same carriage. They were all elderly women, past sixty or seventy; and the public opinion of Utah and the country, knowing the immense amount of tandem polygamy which prevails in certain more Pharisaical centers of the East as well as the West, has refused to grow wildly excited over the open declaration of President Smith that he intended to fulfill

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his financial and household obligations to these elderly women to the last.

But the primitive moral virility of the pioneers did not survive in the polygamy of the second generation. The younger generation was in danger of being utterly debauched by it, and in the midst of a great show of fanaticism the Federal Government, the Supreme Court, and finally the Mormon Church itself, set the seal of disapproval upon a primitive practice which the higher life of the world has happily outgrown, but which still more or less secretly contributes to the survival of the lower life of the world in many parts of America besides Utah.

In the face of the long-continued blight of this earlier anti-social practice, the Americanization of Utah goes resistlessly on. And the forces of idealism and social amelioration in Utah having now broken the political barriers down, the American people may look forward, in my opinion, to a Mormon advance, National, patriotic, moral, efficient, that will be an honor to the country and to mankind.

Mr. Ernest H. Abbott,

December 5, 1916.

Secretary, The Outlook Company,

New York City:

Dear Mr. Abbott-I have just received the letter which you wrote to me yesterday, and I should like to tell you why I was pleased at your editorial. My article was first sent to the I had several pleasant and complimentary letters about it from Mr. He rejected it in the end because it was too long, and he thought it unfair to me to shorten it. Then I consulted with my pro-Ally and pro-German friends to whom to send it next. Every one doubted your acceptance because you have the reputation of being "bitterly "anti-German-yes, venomously so, some said-in your edito

rials. As I never had read your magazine, I had to take their word for it. However, I did not expect to have my article accepted, and made arrangements to send it somewhere else. To my surprise, you did accept it-and the astonishment and delight of my friends was great. But, as you accepted and had the reputation of being "bitterly," yes, "venomously" anti-German, I expected bitterness in your editorial. Instead of that you state your opinion in such a way as to make the reader feel your kindness and help towards the writer and her undertaking all the way through. I think you will do a great deal of good with your editorial because you refrained from bitterness. You and I are of different opinions, but I can't help thinking that we both wish to help bring about good