"I say, Tizzy," called the voice, after a brief pause, "you'll need your sweater on; it's cold. Can I get it for you?" The answer was an indistinguishable murmur, but evidently enough for the owner of the voice, for I heard the trunk being opened again, and a gay "Here it is, Tizzy. Can I get you something else?"

"No, thank you," came a faint feminine response; and I knew then that Tizzy was his wife.

"Did you arrange with the stewardess about your bath-hour," queried the voice solicitously, "or would you like me to see about it?"

"I did," was the brief rejoinder. "And when is it to be?" came the voice, evincing what I, in my solitary estate, considered a very flattering interest in the

matter.

"Eight-thirty," answered Tizzy colorlessly, and I felt myself growing indignant at her indifference. He was such a cheery soul and seemed so anxious to please her, and she seemed so unappreciative. And as I lay there for I was scheduled for second breakfast, and they were preparing for first-I could not but feel this more and more. The thin partition between us, with its opening at the top for ventilation, made it impossible not to hear every word spoken in the next room, and altho I tried by various jinglings and judicious coughings to make them aware of my presence, it was quite futile. The voice kept up the same cheerful stream of conversation and ejaculation, while the owner of the voice splashed and shaved and rubbed himself, and shook out his clothes, and the voice of Tizzy, weak and curt, replied in occasional monosyllables.

"Odd," I mused, as I began my own morning toilet, "how sunny men like that always marry low-spirited women. I wonder what's the matter with Tizzy?"

However, I had no means of determining, for I did not see my next-door neighbors that day or for several days. As I have said, there were four hundred of us in the first cabin, and I could not pick out the young man to whom I had credited the fresh young voice, or the listless girl whom I had pictured as the unenthusiastic Tizzy. As they used a different corridor to approach their cabin, they never passed my door, and altho I heard them night and morning, nearly a week passed before the voice and its echo found their habitation. And in that week many things happened.

It is rather a curious situation to find oneself a third in a conjugal relationship -an invisible member, as one might say, of a marital partnership; and yet every morning I heard the voice call out, "How are you, my dear?" and then proceed through the matutinal preparations.

"Here's your tea, Tizzy," it would say affably. "How is it? Here, let me add a little water. That's right." And then, "Time for your bath, Tizzy. Here are

Such unceasing, unwavering consideration I had never heard in my life. I was amazed at the minuteness and persistence of his attentions. He always asked her what dress she was going to wear, helped to get it down, and finally buttoned her into it. And he was equally friendly about his own affairs. He confided in her his daily plans, what the weather was like, what suit he was going to wear, what he had discussed with the men in the smoking-room, all in a frank, boyish way that was very attractive to me. I fancied they had been married a year or two, and it pleased me to think that his thoughtfulness still kept the ardor of courtship days. And, for some reason or other, I found myself thinking of Ernest. He was very much the same type of man, he had the same interest in little things,

the same solicitude over details.

"That's what really counts," I reflected, as I struggled with the hooks on my dress -Tizzy was being hooked at that very moment by efficient fingers-"some one who really cares about you every day; who looks after you in all sorts of trifling matters as well as in bigger things"; and I looked at the flowering azalea more favorably.

It took me a long time to understand Tizzy. Her husband was vivacity itself, but she seemed sulky. He was chatty, bright-tempered, obliging. She was taciturn, unresponsive, indifferent. He was interested in everything, particularly in her and her affairs; she was interested in nothing-least of all in him and his affairs. I used to wonder why she never talked, and it was a long time before it dawned on me that she never had a chance.

Mr. Tizzy, for so I called him, was like a merry water-rill that runs on and on and on and on. His cheerfulness was commendable, but it was also unendable. It was persistent, insistent, incessant. Every idea that entered his head immediately left it by way of his mouth. His solicitude for Tizzy, I realized with slow realization, was only a habit. His questions concerning her health, her occupations, her dress, and her desires were actuated by an evanescent yet perpetual curiosity, by an insatiable mania for collecting facts. I began to feel compassion for the girl, whom I pictured as no longer a bride, but still young enough to chafe under the inexorable dominion of a tyranny of kindness. I was conscious that she was already drooping under the resistless battery of attentiveness as a flower would droop under the merciless glare of continual sunshine. And the sturdy azalea which Ernest had bought because it would last all the voyage began to look hateful

to me.

And then, one night, the unexpected happened. It was one of those evenings, nearing the end of the trip, when a few

termed euphemistically an "entertainment" in the saloon dining-room. Against my wish I was borne thither, and, ensconcing myself in the seat of the scornful, I surveyed the people who had already assembled. There were four ladies playing cards in a corner near me, and when the entertainment commenced three of them started to lay down their cards; but the fourth, a starved and faded little creature of fifty-five or thereabouts, clung to hers tenaciously, and not only insisted upon playing but on whispering throughout the whole performance. I glared at her reprovingly; could she not talk in some other time and place? Why must she disturb an entire company with her eager, breathless undertones? And just then a fresh-faced, stoutish man, immaculate, hearty, beaming, appeared at the door.

"Here's your coat, Tizzy," he called in the cheerful tone there was no mistaking and with the firmness there was no dodging. "I thought you ought to have it in this draughty room. Here, slip it on"; and the process I had so often heard I now witnessed, as her lord and master and possessor wrapped Tizzy up in her coat and his prattlings.

Не

So this was Tizzy! This worn, repressed woman who had whispered so greedily throughout the entertainment. Ah, I understood now that she had to make the most of every moment! was so cocky, so noisily eupeptic, that I had pictured him as young and Tizzy as a little younger. I saw now that he was not young; that his good humor was not even to be downed by age, and that Tizzy was like all exhausted creatures, without age, without color, almost without sex, and for some unaccountable reason it flashed through my mind that perhaps one did not even spell her name with a capital.

For a moment my eyes were riveted upon them-those two people in whose most private life I had participated morning and night without volition, and then I turned my face away. Considering my peculiarly intimate knowledge of them, it seemed indecent to survey them in the flesh.

That night, after we had all retiredI to my stateroom and Tizzy and Mr. Tizzy to theirs-I lay awake, thinking. I was trying to recall some man of my acquaintance who was silent, morose, uncommunicative. I regretted that Trappist monks were vowed to celibacy; surely a Trappist would be an ideal husband. At all events, the only possible companion for life must be one who would be willing to let you live your life while he lived his. Neglect would be infinitely preferable to being smothered, stifled, and overwhelmed with perpetual advice, optimism, and attention.

And I got up, flung my coat about me, picked up the flowering azalea, and, tiptoeing my way to the deck, threw it over the rail.

T

THE POETRY OF THE MONTH

HERE has been a rush of poets into the firing line, as the European War has progressed through its initial stages. Many of them have turned pamphleteers and their verses are neither convincing nor inspiring.

On one side we have had Viereck and Lewisohn, on the other Watson and Noyes and Bridges and Phillips. There has been fervor in their poems, but, in most cases, it is not poetic fervor and it does not communicate itself to the reader. We print below a number of the war-poems that really seem worth while, several of them by littleknown writers. The most notable of the group is Mr. Le Gallienne's. It appeared in the N. Y. Evening Post misprinted. We give below a corrected version:

street

Of drum and fife, and I forget
Wet eyes of widows, and forget
Broken old mothers, and the whole
Dark butchery without a soul.

Without a soul-save this bright drink
Of heady music, sweet as hell;
And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching with the marching street,
For yonder, yonder goes the fife,
And what care I for human life!

The tears fill my astonished eyes,
And my full heart is like to break;
And yet 'tis all embannered lies,
A dream those little drummers make.

O it is wickedness to clothe
Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks
Hidden in music, like a queen
That in a gården of glory walks,

poetry, yet make a very effective appeal:

But his is the dying-and rottingThe poor little guy!

Let us pray for his kine in the stable,

275

For his ox and his ass and his swine, For his chair and his plate on the table, For his cornfield and orchard and vine, For the tilth where the women are plying, For the bed where he never shall lie, For the ache that is worse than the dying

The poor little guy!

A pitiful pawn of Vienna,

Of Kaiser, of King or of Czar,
He is pushed to the pit of Gehenna,
To the slide of the Great Abattoir.
He goes as the wailing denial,

As the infinite, travailing cry
Of the Peace to be born from his trial-
The poor little guy!

The Peace of the pure consummation
When nation shall strive not with nation,
Foretold in the ages before
Nor shall they learn war any more.
But, Jesus!-the carrion faces

That glare at the pestilent sky
And the trench at the foot of the glacis-
The poor little guy!

ALONE.

BY KENDALL BANNING.

Na door in Picardy a lonely woman stands.

Somewhere, under alien skies, beyond the gleaming strands

Of alien shores, the banners flaunt, resplendent, in the sun,

Above the grim, defiant ranks, that bristle, gun to gun.

The martial trumpets summoned, and lo! the armies came

To write the records of their fame in hurtling sheets of flame. Somewhere the drums are casting their stern, exultant spell

To drive the battling hosts into the gaping throat of hell!

And somewhere, on an alien field and under alien skies,

A soldier of the legion sleeps with stark and bloodless eyes,

Unstirred by clank of sabers, unwakened by the roar

Of rattling guns and crashing hoofs that he shall hear no more. Unmindful of the summer's rain, unmindful of the snow,

Unmindful, yea, of peace and war, he shall not even know

The heart cries of the vanquished, the victor's proud commands.

In a door in Picardy a lonely woman stands.

I

A HANDFUL OF DUST.

BY JAMES OPPENHEIM.

STOOPED to the silent earth and lifted a handful of her dust.

Was it a handful of humanity I held?

Was it the crumbled and blown beauty of a woman or a babe?

For over the hills of earth blows the dust of the withered generations; And not a water-drop in the sea but was once a blood-drop or a tear,

And not an atom of sap in leaf or bud but was once the love sap in a human being;

And not a lump of soil but was once the rosy curve of lip or breast or cheek.

Handful of dust, you stagger me;

the dead,

Dream of the ages-a vision dimMartyrs have burned and died for him; Prophets have preached him, unafraid; For him we have wept, we have prayed." A man cries out in the wilderness, And the lightning's wrath is in his face. A man cries out in the wilderness, And he pleads for the human race. For I tell you, a race shall come to

birth,

Godlike, glorious, on this earth, As far in advance of present man As the heavens that we only scan.

Did we dream it could breed from low desire?

Did we dream it could rise from bestial mire?

Could the beautiful, celestial thing
From lust and lechery spring?

A man cries in the wilderness,

And his heart is raw to the world's distress.

With terrible truth his feet are shod. "Make way-make way-make way for

the sons of God!" ·

The field of Waterloo is close to some of the scenes of carnage enacted in Belgium a few weeks ago, a fact which injects a grim sort of sarcasm into the last line in Stephen Phillips's notable poem in the Poetry Review:

F

THE SITE OF WATERLOO.

BY STEPHEN PHILLIPS.

ORBEAR!

This plain is still too

deaf with cries,

This soil too sanguine for thy stucco

lies.

Shall Earth where reeled The Guard thy villa pen,

Where nations groaned be heard the cackling hen?

A mansion mark where in the gathering murk,

Those terrible horsemen so did work?

Here wilt thou dare to live, where such

men died

And on that memorable dust reside!
Here only ever let the solemn moon
Uninterrupted weave a spirit-noon;
Here only falter down a pensive dew
From skies too wistful to be purely blue,
But shouldst thou build on consecrated
ground,

Then be those houses filled with spectral · sound

Of clashing battle and the ghostly war, Of charging hosts against the battered door!

Let solemn bellow of hollow cannon boom, His soul is seared with the people's A dreadful cavalry invade the gloom! shame,

And his message brands like flame.

Oh, his breast is scarred and his hands are torn!

Until in awe of those who fell or fled The living flee from the more living dead! That silence now too conscious is for sound,

He has blazed the trail through hate and It broods upon itself and is self-bound.

T

HE United States District Court has found that the International Harvester Company is a monopoly in restraint of interstate trade under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and has ordered it to dissolve into not less than three separate corporations. The peculiar feature of this case is that the court is not able to find any act on the part of the Corporation, since its original organization, or immediately thereafter, which is considered to be illegal or contrary to public policy. The Courts duly admit that its acts since its organization have been fair and reasonable. It has not indulged in any of the methods of unfair competition in order to crush any other competitors; it is not overcapitalized and it has not used its monopoly power in control of eighty-five per cent. of the harvester business to raise prices to the consumer. The courts held, however, that the combination of five competing companies into this one gigantic trust was a restriction of competition and clearly in violation of the Sherman Law. The fact that they considered the management of the corporation has been guilty of no unfair and illegal practices in recent years has nothing to do with the legal point to be decided under the Sherman Law. Mr. Perkins and Mr. McCormick, Directors of the International Harvester Company, claim that this is a moral victory for the corporation. It certainly tends to show that the management was guilty of no practice which we would consider immoral and

of no practice which they could know to be illegal, since their combination went unchallenged from a legal standpoint for ten years after it was organized. Many business men have a tendency to feel that this decision is based merely on legal technicalities and amounts to a sort of political persecution of business men. It seems clear, however, that the combination of five companies, which had been engaged in bitter competition, into a single corporation, controlling eighty per cent. or more of the entire industry, is just that sort of thing which the Sherman AntiTrust Law was aimed to prohibit. The fact that this particular corporation was so enthusiastically commended by judges of the court on other grounds, may tend to influence public opinion

toward the view that it is foolish to try to eliminate all combinations, but that we should instead regulate them in such a way as to take advantage of the good points which they offer.

TH

Why the Company Was Dissolved. HE fact that the present management has been sufficiently enlightened not to use their tremendous power to any social disadvantage is recognized as no criterion that such power in existence may not be transferred to an unscrupulous management, who can use it and will use it to perform acts of disadvantage to the public.

The Springfield Republican, in recognition of this point says:

"The Sherman Act is based on the

theory that benevolent monopolies of industries are likewise unworthy of public confidence. So the law prohibits them, good or bad, and the Courts are making an end of them. The present law may be too drastic. A good trust, so called, may be capable of achievements, particularly in the foreign trade, that small companies cannot match. The Germans have long thought and acted on that idea in developing their foreign commerce. But if experience finally demonstrates that these advantages can be secured in no other way than through great combinations, strict Government regulation will be the inevitable accompaniment of a change in the law, whereby greater freedom and combination could be lawfully enjoyed."

T

Change Our Trust Policy.

shall finally decide that mere bigness and the mere elimination of competition, unaccompanied by unfair and unjust dealing with competitors or the public, is forbidden by the Sherman act, it will remain for the people to determine whether such a law shall continue to be the foundation stone of their trust législation.

"We do not believe they will so decide. For we do not believe that the court's decision in the International Harvester case is sound public policy.

"In this day of the world combination in business is as inevitable—and as desirable-as competition at an earlier stage of the world's development. Competition was and is good as a protection of the public interest. But it is no thing sacred in itself. To make a fetish of competition is to exalt a means into an end, is to erect an altar to a false god."

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION LAWS

TH

HE New York State Workmen's Compensation Law, which became effective on July 1, 1914, has already brought about an investigation into its workings by reason of the alleged discrimination against married men and physically defective men. The employees of the General Electric Company at Schenectady threatened a strike unless the Company abandoned its policy of requiring a physical examination of all men employed. The Company considers that the danger of accidents is greater in the case of men defective physically, and for their own protection they should reject such men. The results of the investigation tend to show that actual discrimination against

HE Independent editorially takes married men and physical defectives has been greatly exaggerated and does not exist to any considerable extent. Many employers, nevertheless, have

the stand that this case offers evidence that we should change our

trust policies from elimination to regu

lation.

"That question is, in dealing with big business shall we punish mere size, or shall we reserve punishment for conduct that is detrimental to the public welfare?

"Here, then, was a good trust, if there can ever be one. Here was a combination honorable in its dealings, fair in its treatment of rivals and the public. But it had a fault it was big; it had by the very terms of its existence committed a heinous crime-it had eliminated competition. Therefore, says the court, honorable and fair and decent as were its acts, it must go.

"Whether the decree of the court is

good law or not will be decided by the Supreme Court and the rest of us must await its word. But whether it is sound public policy or not is a question for no court to decide. It is a question for the American people. If the Supreme Court

been greatly alarmed by the provision

of the law which requires the payment of 30 per cent. of the wages of a workman killed in their employment to his widow during the remainder of her life, unless she remarries, and 15 per cent. additional to each dependent child under 18 years old, and for each dependent brother, sister or parent. In this provision for dependents the New York Law is more liberal than other compensation laws. This liberal provision for dependents will, of course, tend to increase rates for compensation insurance. It will not, however, react with especial severity on those employers who happen to have an exceptionally high percentage of married men except in the case of the plants which carry their own insurance.

The rates for individual plants in an industrial group will be varied by the Commission only according to the degree in which provision is made to guard against accidents. For this reason discrimination against married men would be in most cases futile and would not reduce rates unless all employers in an industry discriminated against married men to the extent of driving them out of the industry. Public opinion would certainly not tolerate such a preposterous attempt. Such a policy would also be poor business judgment, since it is generally recognized that married men are more steady and efficient than single men. The loss of efficiency that would result from the rejection of married men would largely outweigh any reduction in the insurance rate.

T

The Cost of Compensation.

HE National Civic Federation in its report on Workmen's Compensation Laws says:

"Employers who feared the legislation with its increased cost have freely stated to the commission that, although the law

costs them more than the old law, they were mistaken in their original opposition to its enactment and would oppose any effort to repeal the law. A similar change of feeling is found on the part of the workmen. In some States where work men were inclined to oppose the enactment of the law, feeling that a wide-open liability law with the employers' defenses removed would be better than a compensation act, they have changed their opinions after their experience with the Law."

Effective compensation laws supply the money to relieve the effects of in

.dustrial accidents at the time when the need is greatest. Litigation is so slow a process that the worker cannot obtain relief in many cases during the time of his disability. To provide for this period is the object of compensation, and so, even if the worker secured more by litigation, which he usually does not, the object of social justice would not be attained. The costs of litigation are also vastly in excess of the costs of administering the compensation fund. It is also in accord with the ideas of social justice that the cost of compensating workers for injuries incurred through the hazards of their occupation should become part of the cost of production of the industry and be passed on to the consumer of the goods in the price that he pays for the goods. These costs generally are not greatly in excess of the expenses involved in litigation where compensation laws do not exist.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of compensation laws is the pressure they bring on the employer to use all available devices and precautions to eliminate accidents. This effect is already shown

N

The Increase of Malingering. O laws are so effective as to be incapable of abuse in unscrupulous hands. The report of the Industrial Accident Board of Massa

chusetts notes the increase of malingering and fraud in connection with the operation of compensation laws in Europe, where they have been in force longer than in the United States. It says:

"European doctors are accused of using irregularity in the workmen's compensation acts as a form of revenue; some of the workmen are accused of exploiting their accidents-a process so human and easy to understand that it is a proceeding quite normal and psychical. It does not follow that these cases of simulation are wholly fraudulent, because there is nearly always ground for making the original

claim."

The Board does not consider that this evil has reached serious proportions in Massachusetts as yet, but it sees signs of an increase and is determined to find an effective preventative. It says in this connection:

"The object of the act is to return people to industry; one of the effects of

the act is that people refuse to go to work while they are in pain. Before the act went into effect the uninsured workman with a broken leg, whose muscles became contracted and partially atrophied because of the fracture, was forced by necessity to go to work, and did go to work. Every day he found that the pain was less and less, and it soon disappeared. The injured employee receiving half or more of his average weekly wage under a compensation act, and who for any reason is not ambitious, may, and sometimes does, refuse to go to work while there is any pain in the injured part. The longer such injured employees stay away from work the harder it is for them ever to go

to work; and unless prompt and stringent means are taken to force them back into employment it is not long until the atrophy becomes permanent, and the injured employee becomes a charge on the law up to full period of total disability, and subsequently on private or public charity."

It proposes as a remedy for malingering:

"First-The establishment of a definite medical policy regarding injuries, so that, as far as possible and human, all injuries shall be judged on a uniform basis. Every time the board is outwitted by a malingerer the precedent is important. The board needs a medical adviser whose duty it will be to pass on the medical problems which rise out of industrial injuries. A competent medical adviser will assist the board in fairly and uniformly administering the law, and, while benefiting the employee whose injury is genuine and disability honest, will prevent the malingerer from getting benefits which are not deserved.

"Second-To give the Industrial Accident Board authority to hire or establish one or more wards in hospitals, located to serve the industrial centers of the Com

monwealth, where doubtful cases of disability may be sent, at the discretion of the board, for observation and study, the cost to be assessed pro rata on the insurance companies.*

IS BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY BECOMING A JOKE?

ness.

NSISTENCE upon the inherent al- tance, a psychology of business depresliance of business and psychology sion. The exponents of the new busithese days is becoming general. ness psychology insist that all business We are told that business pros- men should familiarize themselves with perity or depression is "psycholog- all its details. Now comes a psycholical." Efficiency experts are pointing ogist who scolds psychologists for atout the value of experimental psychol- tempting to teach business men busiogy in increasing profits. Such wellknown psychologists as Hugo Münsterberg and Walter D. Scott have written at length in support of the claim that every department in all great industries ought to be under the supervision of a psychological expert. There has grown up a psychology of employment, a psychology of advertising, a psychology of salesmanship, a psychology of windowdressing, a psychology of farming, a psychology of investment, a psychology of prosperity. and, not least in impor

In his recently issued "Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology" (Richard G. Badger, Boston), the eminent Dr. Boris Sidis declares that "business psychology" is purely imaginary. He insists that "any intelligent business man knows infinitely more about business and how to obtain the best results out of certain conditions than all the psychologists with their laboratory experiments, their artificial statistics and puerile, trivial experimental arrangements, giving results