We sat up till three in the morning, discussing the future. That night I resolved to dedicate my life to the cause of co-operation. And I think I can honestly say that from that hour I have never swerved from the path I had chosen. There have been ups and downs, there have been failures, there have been dark times, but in the blackest hour I never lost sight of the vision that came to me that night in my father's room. You will understand then why I am deeply stirred when I look out over this great gathering and realize who the men are who compose it and why they have come here to night. For I see before me the fulfillment of the hopes of a lifetime. The dream, I repeat, has come true. it is indeed hard for me to believe that this mighty organization has developed from such tiny and insignificant beginnings. For of course we began in a modest way. First, a small and enthusiastic group in my home town. Then as our principles, and still more our results, became known, similar groups sprang up in towns near by. Soon the big men in the cities began first to notice us and then to imitate our methods. And so it went. The main stages in our growth must be still fresh in your minds. At last we found ourselves where we stand to-day.

And

"Progress, of course, was not always as fast as it might have been. The professional mind is notoriously conservative and we were no exception to the rule. Not so long ago it was no uncommon thing to find members of our profession in cities as close as Syracuse and Rochester carrying out a policy of cutthroat competition among themselves, or to find men in San Francisco operating with antiquated methods, in bland ignorance of the epoch-making developments in technical knowledge and skill on the part of the men in Chicago and New York who ought to have been their colleagues.

"In the last ten years, however, we have been advancing by leaps and bounds, largely because co-operation

has become the policy of wise and farseeing men in all departments of life. It is, so to speak, in the air, and we are being borne along on the current of a world movement. To-day I think we can say that we, as a profession, have learned the lesson-so obvious once it has been learned, but so difficult, apparently, for men to grasp and apply, that union is strength, that competition means waste and weakness and defeat, while co-operation spells power, efficiency, success. In laying this lesson to heart and making it the very nerve and corner stone of our common professional life, we are simply following the example of the world around us. In government, in industry, in business, in finance, in science, yes, even in religion, wherever men are progressive, you find the one great principle at work, the principle to which all of us here are dedicated. What is the idea behind the League of Nations? Co-operation. Behind the Washington Conference? Co-operation. Behind the Manufacturers' Association? Co-operation. Behind the labor union? Co-operation. Behind the Inter-Church World Movement? Again I answer, co-operation.

"Yes, gentlemen, co-operation must be the slogan of all live men to-day. It is the key which will unlock all doors, the panacea for all our ills, the passport to the frontiers of the future. The future! I have used the word with deliberate intent, for I should not like any of us to leave this room to-night with the feeling that this occasion marks the attainment of our goal and that we can now lie back and contemplate what we have done. The greatest task lies before us. Just as the process by which families combined to form the tribe, and tribes united to form the state, will reach its proper end only in the world state, so we cannot rest content until our organization is not merely nation wide but world wide, until we can look into the eyes of our fellow workers of whatever creed or color or nation they may be and greet them as brothers. Do

"A BRAVE LITTLE WOMAN”

BY PHILIP CURTISS

AMONG feminine types there is one

woman.'

which, to me, at least, is singularly exhausting. This is the type which is commonly known as "a brave little "A capable little woman" was the term formerly used, for either phrase signifies nothing more than the willingness of the woman concerned to do her own housework, and it is only in recent years that this in itself has been recognized as an act of unusual heroism.

Peggy Marshall is the "brave little woman" of our town and quite appropriately, for "brave little women" are always named Peggy or Betty or something of that kind. The name, in fact, seems to be the real origin of their reputation. There is something startling in the idea that a girl named Peggy or Betty could ever be anything except dainty and useless. A girl named Hannah Scroggs, for example, might be as brave as Leonidas, as capable as Henry Ford, and as little as Col. Tom Thumb, but no one would ever think of calling her a brave little woman."

66

Peggy Marshall's claim to this title lies wholly in the fact that she keeps a

worse!

A Poet should write in the freest of verse.

The Poet declaimed of the Soul and its Woes In fetterless lines of irregular prose.

The Critic affirmed that the book was a crime!

For Verse must have Melody, Rhythm, and Rhyme.

The Poet implored, "In your critical view, What, O Critic divine! is the thing I should do?"

And the Critic replied in his critical wont, "Why, the thing you should do is whatever you don't!"

So the Poet dissolved in a river of tears, And the Critic lay down in the shade of his

ears.

on an income of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. Within our town limits there are, I suppose, at least three or four hundred women who do all their housework and raise from one to nine children on less than three dollars a day. There are, indeed, right in Peggy's own set, a dozen women who do just as much work as she does and do it exactly as well, but none of them ever gets even honorable mention.

Peggy, in short, has two infallible qualities for capturing public attention. First, she is pretty and small-that is to say, she looks quaint and piquant in the part; and, second, she has the priceless dramatic gift of making a given feat appear more difficult than it really is. For bringing roars of applause from the audience, these two qualities are just as

effective in the household as they are on the vaudeville stage.

Peggy Marshall captivates the public imagination as a housekeeper for exactly the reason that Georges Carpentier captivated the public imagination as a prize fighter poth of them look so unexpected in the role. A stiff punch from a man who "looks like a gentleman" is much more dramatic than one from a man who looks like a slugger. One mediocre potato from Peggy's white hands is much more arresting than two perfect beauties from the red hands of some Hannah Scroggs.

So far as this quality goes there is much to be said for "a brave little woman.' If all of us could have cooks in our kitchens as dainty as Peggy Marshall, we should, I am sure, be content with quite moderate rations. Peggy, however, like most "brave little women," has gained her reputation as such largely by use of a more deadly talent-the talent for making her audience share her sufferings while she goes through her performance. Peggy, in her home, is like some great emotional actress on the stage. All the time chatting diffidently, she nevertheless subtly allows her audience to know that, beneath the surface, body and mind have about reached the point of collapse. She is like one of those football players, known to every college field, who always manage to get a little more mussed than anyone else, who can always be seen, after crucial moments, "limping gamely". back into the play. It is not conscious "grand-stand work" on Peggy's part any more than it usually is on the part of such players. With both it is a native instinct to dramatize the heroism of their grim parts in the battle.

I would not leave the impression that Peggy ever complains or allows herself to bear signs of the daily struggle. No, indeed. It is part of the public wonder that her own appearance is always as fresh and immaculate as that of her perfect domestic establishment; but as you sit in that perfect establishment you are

always conscious of the frail little woman whose shoulders are carrying the whole burden. Somehow, at the Marshalls' the conversation never gets very far from that perfect housekeeping and how wonderful Peggy is to bear up under the strain, until you yourself get to feeling brutish and unjust for sitting there and not doing anything about it. Several times in an evening Peggy's husband or one of the women present will turn to where Peggy is sitting wistfully in her armchair and ask, "Tired, dear?" The answer, of course, is always a faint, long-drawn, "N-no," which makes everyone present feel more brutish than

ever.

Peggy never asks any one of her guests to do anything, but every time that she gets up from her chair every man in the room instinctively knows that she is about to do something beyond her strength and leaps up to do it for her. The result is that, in an evening at the Marshalls', no friendly discussion ever quite reaches its climax, no story is ever quite told, no cigar is ever quite finished. The entire company spends the whole evening in making things lighter for the brave little woman.

Of course, from one point of view, the means are justified by the end. Peggy really is "a magnificent housekeeper." Her "dainty little dinners" are all that her fame has announced them to be, but, after watching her going through all the ceremony of preparing one of them (brave and efficient) and after seeing her at the head of her table (now just a little tired, but still smiling) and after hearing her out in the kitchen. washing the dishes (after having gamely beaten back the offers of the entire company to help her), I confess that personally I am absolutely exhausted. Without having done a stroke of work myself I have, nevertheless, quite the effect of having sat through one of those frightful vaudeville turns in which the music stops abruptly, the snare drum begins to roll warningly, and the spot light suddenly concentrates on the figure of a

Mrs. Harrigan started life in quite a fixed attitude. The letter of the law appealed to her tremendously, and in that particular her conception was more like Newton's absolute doctrine. But Einstein, no less than Mrs. Harrigan, undoubtedly began from accepted standards. In the end, to be sure, Mrs. Harrigan's advanced relativity and her conservative absolutism, came at odds, for it is a yet unupset principle that two contrary forces cannot continuously occupy the same space or person.

In her capacity as laundress Mrs. Harrigan slops soapsuds over the kitchen floor, and when, as cleaner, she powerfully attacks the rest of the house, she leaves every picture awry and a toll of breakage. Nevertheless, her conversation is so charming that we cannot give up her weekly visits. Although fat, smiling, and easy-going, by nature she is a moralist, almost a puritanical one. The series of taboos in which she is

incased, as it were, makes the life of primitive man seem free and unrestrained by fears. "I daresn't" is constantly on her lips, and she has a way of rolling her eyes which shows complete abhorrence when wrongdoing by neighbors and friends is under discussion. It is her own proud boast that never, since taking her first communion, has she tasted meat on a Friday or during Lent. Moreover, she has, since the age of eighteen, burned candles regularly before patron saints, but, as punctiliously as a modern feminist, she always chooses

women.

"If you want to get what you pray for," she explained, "don't ask them men saints. It's the blessed women that look out for other women."

Her great favorite is Saint Anne, who, she says, has never once gone back on her, and small wonder. "Some folks are stingy when they ask for things. I never miss a Sunday that I don't give her ten cents for her own use, the sweet thing."

Mrs. Harrigan had a flat on Third Avenue, which she occupied with a boarder, named Jack. He was a sailor in the open season, but in cold weather he butchered. Jack was a generous donator of choice steaks, the makings of glorified Irish stews, and, on holidays, fresh-killed fowl. Also he had domestic inclinations, and often, when Mrs. Harrigan returned from work, she found a good dinner all prepared. In her eyes Jack had but one failing. During his many years as a seaman he had learned to while away time by making patchwork. And although she admired the quilts he fashioned into marvelous designs of stars and octagons, she was never quite happy when he brought his sewing bag from the chest of sea treasures.

One Sunday evening last winter, after a quiet and comfortable day of carpet slippers and newspaper supplements, Jack took out his patchwork.

"It's Sunday," protested Mrs. Harrigan, remembering her fixed laws.

“What's that to me?" said Jack, who had always been relative in his morals. "It's wrong to sew on Sunday," declared Mrs. Harrigan, firmly.

"Quit your kidding," Jack replied. This was the simple and totally unexpected beginning of a tragedy. One word led to another, the argument grew intense. Finally Mrs. Harrigan issued an ultimatum. Jack could choose between sewing on Sunday and leaving her house. He chose to go, and went immediately, taking with him his little bag of odds and ends of bright-colored calico and gingham.

Mrs. Harrigan told me the story next morning, between sobs. She was heartbroken. Jack was the romance of her life, and although-here practicing her relativity-she lived with him without benefit of clergy in what is popularly known as a free union, it was to her a mating. She did not believe in divorce, and by ill luck Jack had a wife, although, geographically speaking, he did not know where she was.

"I don't feel like I could ever go back to the flat," she said, tearfully. "It's that lonesome. He was a lovely man. But I can't take him back. I am a good woman and I won't have no one-not even him-sewing in my house of a Sunday. It's wrong! I daresn't!"

Only a follower of Einstein can fully grasp Mrs. Harrigan's view of virtue. It is based entirely upon the new doctrine, and none but an uncompromising believer in set standards can sense her moral struggle. It has made me realize how difficult it would be to write an authoritative textbook on the new morality. There is the matter of telling the truth, for instance. In Sunday school it is taught that falsehoods are wicked, but everybody knows that there are times and occasions when even the best people feel that a lie is necessary. Mrs. Harrigan summed it up in this way: "What I say is this-it's all right to lie when it's necessary. But there ain't no use making up lies just for fun. That's wrong."

Consider the problem of honesty. A textbook of current practice would have to be made up of exceptions, footnotes, and appendices. There is Mrs. White, whose husband is a Baptist minister in Connecticut. She frequently visits New York, bringing her little girl, who is old enough for a full railroad fare, but small for her age. Mrs. White always buys a half-fare ticket for Muriel. She knows that it is cheating, but she believes that she has a right to defraud the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad because her husband is underpaid, as are most moral leaders. Besides, she says the little girl doesn't occupy any more space than a younger child. Then, I have a Socialist acquaintance who has a remarkable technic for avoiding fares on the Fifth Avenue stages. She does it as a matter of principle, to get even with the capitalist system. Another person, who came from New England, where consciences are popularly supposed to grow, swears off enough items on her income tax to pay her contribution to a day nursery.

In the matter of high finance, where morals are most obviously pragmatic, the situation has been summarized in a song which has many verses about a certain rich gentleman, with a chorus. which runs something like this:

He goes to church on Sunday, and passes round the contribution box,

But catch him in his office on a Monday, he's as cunning and as cruel as a fox.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday he's doing everybody that

he can,

But he goes to church on Sunday, so they

say that he's an honest man.

It is this same question of virtue in relation to relativity which makes it so difficult for our literary and dramatic censors. Perhaps that is why the societies seeking to suppress vice in novels and plays are chiefly cognizant of sin as portrayed in bedrooms. They are concerned with episodes rather than with the whole effect. It may also be