THIS

HIS is the time--about one year before the presidential candidates are nominated-for all sorts of

trial balloons to be sent up in the air in the efforts to "start something." All the possibilities of politics are being aired or soon will be. From the Panama Journal

comes the nomination of General Goethals for the Presidency. From St. Paul comes the rumor of a coming alliance between President Wilson and Senator

La Follette, based, apparently, upon nothing more tangible than the fact that "the two men are personally very friendly." From New York city comes a rapturous shout for "Theodore Roosevelt for President of the United States on the Prohibition ticket." From Louisiana comes word that a "Protection Party" is in process of organization. From Washington, where all echoes gather and are reverberated back over the country, come the names of more than a dozen Republican possibilities: Beveridge, Hadley, Cummins, Johnson (of California), Mann, Brumbaugh (of Pennsylvania), La Follette, Herrick, Weeks (of Massachusetts), Fairbanks, Borah, Burton, Hughes, Taft, Root and Roosevelt. If we have missed any, we apologize. From the N. Y. Times correspondent we learn one day that Root. is the first choice of the leaders in spite of his age (he is now seventy) and his reluctance. From the correspondent of the N. Y. Evening Post we learn on another day that the name that comes most persistently to the front is that of Theodore E. Burton. From the Boston Transcript's correspondent we learn on still another day that the contest is simmering down to one between Borah, "candidate of the West," and Weeks, "candidate of the East." Of Democratic candidates there seems to be little or no gossip. There is only one name seriously considered and its initials are W. W. The only food for conjecture lies in the possibility of his refusing a second term.

Chicago Holds an Election and
Discusses Prosperity.

THIS medley of names is taken as a sign of revived

Republican hopes. There is no doubt about the reality of such a revival. It rests upon two main props -the rapid return of the Progressives and the slow return of Prosperity. Much is made in Republican quarters of the municipal election last month in Chicago. A Republican mayor was elected by the unprecedented majority of 139,000. The Progressives failed to make any

nomination and seem to have supported the Republican nominee, tho the Chicago Tribune refused to take sides. The Democratic leaders explain that the result was due to "local issues," especially to the fight between Harrison and Sullivan, rival Democratic leaders. The successful candidate-William Hale Thompson-attributes his victory to the "vote of the unemployed and the distressed business men who are tired of this depression." He adds jubilantly, "The country can get ready for a return of prosperity." The election the same day of a Republican board of aldermen in St. Louis is hailed as another indication of the prevailing discontent. Detroit Free Press sees the country turning away from policies of destruction and now demanding policies of construction. That is its interpretation of the Chicago election. It says:

The

"It [the country] has wearied of theories and visions, of feeble attempts by critics to equal what they blithely criticized in others. It has seen the harvest of muckraking and faultfinding, and the harvest is all chaff. It is groping about for guides to lead it to actualities, to gripping with facts and bringing real and abiding prosperity again. It is heartily tired of a prosperity it must hypnotize itself to see."

The Springfield Republican refuses to take that view of the Chicago election. The result was not due, it

thinks, to the "prosperity" campaign but to the fact that "the Progressive party of 1912 has absolutely ceased to

The Growing Reaction Against the Curbing of Business.

part to the vote of the women, who divided about as the men did, and who, without changing the results, added to the aggregates.

Senator Root's "Keynote" Speech. THAT 'HAT there is a distinct reaction from the agitation against business is acknowledged on all hands. The Republicans claim it as a revolt from the policy of their enemies. The Democrats claim it as an indication of their success in restoring harmony between business methods and political principles. President Wilson calls it "the new freedom." Republicans call it a "return to prosperity." Just how far this reaction is to carry us will be the most interesting question to be answered in the next election. What is called here in the East "the keynote" of the Republican campaign was sounded sevcral weeks ago by Senator Root. In it he calls a halt on the regulation of business by legislation. In the five years just prior to 1914, the Senator tells us, 62,000 statutes have been enacted by the state legislatures and 45,000 decisions have been handed down by courts of last resort. In the election of McKinley in 1896 and in 1900 the business men controlled the election. To-day the Senator finds the railroads trembling before the Interstate Commerce Commission, the banks trembling before the new Federal Reserve Board and the controller of the currency, the express companies fearing the Postmaster-General, the industrial establishments fearing the new Federal Trade Commission, manufacturers of food products viewing the Department of Agriculture with alarm. The reason why business does not start, he declares, is that "way down in the heart of Americans there is a doubt as to what is going to happen at the hands of a hostile government." The men who are running the government to-day, he thinks, have fought the railroads, the trusts and the tariff so long that "they can't rid themselves of an underlying hostility to American enterprize." Measures affecting business both great and small have been framed and put into effect under influences that have rejected the voice of those most immediately affected. "Knowledge of the business affairs of the country has disqualified men from taking any part in the conduct of the increasing participation of the government in the control or direction of business affairs." This feeling is not accidental nor individual. It is a development of the feeling of the whole country. It is due in part to "the old hatred of wealth," which is "more than half the mere vulgar worship of wealth," and in part to the almost entire failure of understanding of the complex processes, requirements and results of modern business. He calls upon the business men to assert themselves and to put upon foot a campaign of education and end the "new sectionalism" which has resulted from the envy and misunderstanding of the greater wealth of the East and the North. "Merely electing a Republican President ought not to be enough"-the misunderstanding itself must be eliminated. "We are honest, free and true Americans, and we must not and we will not live in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. We will not be governed by men who look upon us as unfit to participate in government."

ances. The Philadelphia Ledger, which under its new management seems at times to be almost as reactionary as the Los Angeles Times or the N. Y. Sun, declares that the Democratic party is attacking the very structure of business itself. The Republican party has been affected by the same germ. But the country has had enough of this sort of thing, and no candidate for the Presidency will have any chance of success "unless he makes it clearly understood that he proposes to use all his influence to build up American business and extend American enterprize, instead of tearing it down and hampering it in every possible way for a narrow mind to conceive." The Financial Chronicle finds that public sentiment is ripe for a movement to curb the powers that have been given for the regulation of industry and it calls for "a concerted attempt" to take away from the Interstate Commerce Commission its right to fix rates for the railways. The Houston Post deplores the multiplication of laws, which has greatly increased the cost of government, created countless commissions and boards, restricted the liberty of the individual and placed an embargo upon the real progress of the nation. "Is there no cure for this growing itch for legislation?" asks the Chicago Herald, and, as it considers the number-31,427—of bills and resolutions introduced in the late session of Congress, it adds: "Certainly no remedy is in sight at present." But the N. Y. Evening Post sees no reason for being downcast. The country, it thinks, is to-day more nearly in the middle of the road on the questions relating to business' than it has been at any other time since the first Bryan campaign. We have made a "prodigious advance" since the days when state legislatures were "owned" by railway interests. If the business interests have been silent of late, it is because, when they were at the front in politics, "they furnished so much reason for the aspersions as to make an aggressive defence very hard indeed to undertake." Business is now on its good behavior and the agitator is unpopular; but it hopes Mr. Root's advice will not result in "rampant reactionism."

Stampeding the American People
Back to Hannaism.

THE appeal which Senator Root makes seems to the Montgomery Advertizer a dangerous one for the Democratic party at this time, tho it stoutly denies that the party, as a party, has made any war on business. The Buffalo Courier reminds us that Mr. Root himself was an aider and abettor of the Rooseveltian agitation "that did more than anything else to bring about what Mr. Root now calls the misunderstanding between the farmers of the West and South and the capitalists of the East and North." It insists that the relations to-day between business and government are quieter than at any time in either the Roosevelt or Taft régime. The N. Y. World devotes a series of forcible editorials to the Senator's addresses. It declares that "the Wilson administration is not warring on business, but business is warring on the Wilson administration in an attempt to stampede the American people back to Hannaism." It adds: "When the government at Washington is confronted by the most delicate and perplexing problems that have beset any administration since Lincoln's, and the country itself is distracted by the disturbing con

sequences of the greatest war in history, plutocracy thinks it sees a chance to reestablish itself again in Washington for another reign of dollar-despotism." Not in twenty years, the World asserts, has business had so little to fear from government as now.

"What the country needs is not a business men's agitation against Government, as Mr. Root thinks, but a little more public spirit on the part of private business in adjusting itself to the country's standards of economic justice. There is now practically no hostile agitation against business. All that has ended. Government by denunciation has ceased. Not in twenty years has the demagog played so small part in political affairs or wielded so little influence. Mr. Root believes that the country is ignorant of business, and hence all this trouble. The actual fact is that business is still ignorant of the country and is terrorized by ghosts." The Boston Transcript (Rep.) finds reactionary leadership coming to the fore in the Republican party in many states at an alarming rate. Barnes and Penrose and

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panding activity" in general trade. The April crop report gave promise of another great yield of winter wheat. The advance in the price of cotton was noted as even more vital to the restoration of good business conditions. And the way in which foreign offerings of American securities have been taken care of on the Stock Exchange indicates to the Review that this country has been fast building up "a commanding financial independence." The normal excess of exports over imports for this country is $50,000,000 a month. For the last four or five months the average has been about $150,000,000. Since last September the aggregate balance of trade in our favor is well over $800,000,000. "The reversal in our international trade movement since the war," the Newark Evening News remarks, "has been of the most spectacularly improbable character."

The Tide Turns Toward Prosperity.

IF THE issue in the next election is to be, as one correspondent puts it, "whether the Professor can stop the leak in the dinner-pail in time for dinner," then the tone of business during the last few weeks must be regarded with considerable satisfaction by the Democrats. Even the N. Y. Evening Sun admits that a more hopeful note pervades business discussion and that "many observers believe that the tide of industrial depression has definitely turned." The N. Y. Evening Post notes a "very extraordinary turn of economic affairs in favor of this country." "Calamity for the sake of next year's politics," remarks the N. Y. World, "seems to have met with a check along its whole 3,000mile front." The facts that give this buoyant tone to recent utterances from all over the land are numerous. The sensational advances in the stock market last month were at first attributed to manipulation, but this theory lost ground rapidly. The Wall Street Journal, one of the most reliable of the financial journals, declared, after expert investigation into this theory, that "probably no more legitimate advance in the stock market has taken place in ten years or more than the present upward movement, following a period of genuine accumulation after the Stock Exchange reopened." New York City has now, according to the Springfield Republican, "the only stock market in the world where shares can be bought and sold without restriction." In spite of the fact that business failures for the first three months of the year were 45 per cent. in excess of those for the same period last year, it sees in the gradual increase of bank clearings a sure tho moderate exPansion of general trade, tho it thinks it very doubtful whether a general and broad revival can come until peace is declared. The N. Y. Times notes that "the experienced wager-makers at Lloyds are betting even that the war will be over by September and offering large odds that peace will be declared before December." By the middle of last month Dun's Review was able to announce "an unmistakable trend toward ex

NATU

Democratic Leaders Hail the Advent of Prosperity. JATURALLY the Democratic leaders are doing anything except weep over this turn in the tide of business and are jubilantly predicting its continuance. Secretary Lane, of the Interior Department, after a trip to the Pacific Coast, declares that good times have already come and better times are on the way. In six months an unemployed man who wants work will, he thinks, be a curiosity. The Secretary of the Treasury adds to the song of joy by giving to the public a summary of the reports of bank examiners, who describe "a permanent improvement in business," with Maine as the only state where real depression still lingers. The Secretary of Commerce is not backward about joining the Glee Club. He reports agricultural conditions "generally excellent," commercial lines "enlarging their activities," manufacturing "on the increase," and the market for steel rails, cars and structural iron expanding. The Washington Post several weeks ago noted that of the $750,000,000 of emergency currency issued in this country after the war broke out, only $15,000,000 was then outstanding. On 102,398 miles of railroad a gain in net revenue was shown for the short month of February of more than $4,000,000-an average of about $40 a mile. Everywhere the Post finds “a realization of the favorable conditions for our domestic business that certainly will cause expansion in trade in every state of the Union." Other factors in the situation were set down as follows in a circular letter issued the first of last month by Spencer Trask & Company:

"Besides the general considerations as affecting the foreign outlook, the results of decisions recently made in this country have all been along lines indicating a return of impartiality towards corporations. The Supreme Court has decided in two cases that States have not the right to force transportation companies to carry freight at unremunerative rates; the Interstate Commerce Commission has agreed to grant express companies an opportunity to prove that their present rates are unreasonably low, and two United States Courts have rendered decisions on broad lines, one in the prosecution of the United Shoe Machinery Company, the other of the officials of the National Cash Register Company. We are satisfied that all these decisions show a fairer spirit and the effect of the change in heart which we noted in the Administration at Washington several months ago."

If the business depression has indeed been a "psychological depression," all these hopeful utterances certainly indicate that the psychology is rapidly changing.

Square Garden as a mental equilibrist." Our conduct, he asserts, "has been a cause for ridicule and criticism throughout both of the armed camps of Europe." He alleges "obligations" rather than rights under present "unparalleled conditions," and says further:

"Our Government has entered the war on the side of the Allies. It has allowed the Allies to draw upon our factories for the munitions of war which they could not supply themselves with. We have been as much a party to the war as Great Britain or Germany. We see now the point to which this course has brought us. We are friends of none: the enemy of all. Those whom we have befriended most are the most ready to run over us. Our 'petitions' to Great Britain have been received by the British Government with promises and by the British press with petulant protest. They have borne no fruit. And when a friendly nation points out to us the inconsistency of our procedure and intimates that it would like fair play our anglicized press demands that its ambassador be given his passports!"

THE

Appeal of 374 Editors Against Supplying War Materials. HE American sense of humor appears to be struck by the fact that an appeal against supplying munitions of war should come from the country of the Krupps and their international armament scandals. "Boiled down to its bones," the scheme of an embargo on arms, according to the Chicago Journal, "means that the United States would make Germany a present of an equivalent to the British fleet." We are not to blame, says the Boston Post, for a situation in which Germany's navy is bottled up and does not come out to fight. "Nor are we called upon to make up for its weakness by putting a tremendous and unneutral weapon into Germany's hands-the weapon of the embargo." It comes with peculiarly ill grace for Germany to ask us to, adds the Post-"Germany, that has munitioned every war that has been fought for the last thirty years, that has supplied all belligerents alike if they had the money." Aside from the recognized legal right of citizens of neutral nations to sell arms to belligerents subject to war risks, the necessity of our preserving the means of national self-protection in future wars, in which we may be dependent upon neutral nations for munitions, is emphasized by American papers. This phase of the situation was made prominent also in editorial replies to a recent appeal which appeared as a full-page advertizement in perhaps 200 American newspapers. The names of 374 editors or publishers of newspapers issued in foreign languages in the United States were printed as signers of this appeal, which was addressed "to the American people, industries and workmen," and which urged us "not to manufacture, sell or ship powder, shrapnel or shot of any kind or description to any of the warring nations of Europe, or Japan." The "patriotic" character of the reply of the New York American is typical: .

"It is vitally necessary that the United States should do nothing to destroy or weaken the right of a belligerent to buy munitions of war from a neutral nation. For we have no Krupps, nor are we likely to develop any institution of like character. We have always entered upon war illprepared, and certainly this is not the moment to cherish the hope that we shall not continue to do so. The right to arm ourselves from neutral stores must be jealously guarded. It can be best defended by recognizing the right to-day of belligerents to seek needed arms from us."

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Giving John Bull Some Positive
Views on Rights of Neutral
Nations.

OUR State Department's protest against the British

order-in-council establishing a new type of blockade has been generally praised as a temperate, skilful presentation of the legal status of neutral rights. For specific infringements of these rights the note assumes that full reparation will be made. We could not, it is admitted, protest against an "effective blockade" against enemy ships, and we recognize the right of visit and search for contraband; but we protest against a "block

ade" of neutral ports as an invasion of sovereign rights of neutral nations on the high seas. "It is confidently assumed," so runs our note, "that his Majesty's Government will not deny that it is a rule sanctioned by general practice that, even tho a blockade should exist and the doctrine of contraband as to unblockaded territory be rigidly enforced, innocent shipments may be freely transported to and from the United States through neutral countries to belligerent territory, without being subject to the penalties of contraband traffic. or breach of blockade, much less to detention, requisition, or confiscation." We assume also that in maintaining the socalled blockade commanders of warships will be instructed not to impose undue or unlawful restrictions upon neutral trade. The Philadelphia Telegraph says that under the actual war conditions the United States can do little more than to declare its position and make clear its own understanding of its rights as a neutral. "There is small prospect that it will secure full recognition of those rights while Great Britain and Germany