brains and "getting" characters. A college education is a useful tool, but millions of successful men have proved that it is not an indispensable tool for money-making. Indeed, it is open to question whether a college education is not a positive handicap for a man whose sole ambition is business success. It takes at least four years of life lost to learning the ways and the "feel" of business, and it forms habits of theory and of reliance upon "book learning" that are definitely opposed to the sensitive experimental dealing with human nature that is the greatest asset of the business

man.

All this is not to say that a college education is not worth having, any more than it should be read to say that money and success are not worth having. Both are worth getting, because both may be used to provide a richer life to the man who gets them. But neither is the

cause of the other. On the contrary, both are the effect of a common cause, and that cause is innate capacity. This inborn gift of brains, ambition, and character makes its possessor capable of getting a college education, business success, or anything else that lies within the range of that gift. In other words, Dr. Lord's figures are really a measure of the relative natural endowments of three classes of men. One necessary set of figures is missing, namely, the number of men comprised in his three classes. They can, however, be supplied from other sources. Thus supplied, a correct statement of his figures and their meaning would read somewhat as follows: "On an average, of every 100 men in America, 65 are inherently capable of achieving not more than a common school education and a total earning of $45,000 by the time they are sixty years old; 15 are inherently capable of achieving not more than a high school education and $78,000; and 20 are inherently capable of achieving a college education and $150,000."

This "inherent capacity" is inherited. Not every man who inherits it gets a college education or a fortune-time or place or circumstances may prevent. But no man who does not inherit it can get either a college education or a fortune. This may sound harsh, but it is as clearly proved as anything else that is known to man. Nobody is foolish enough to argue against encouraging college education. But it should not be encouraged by specious arguments about its money value. If society wants more college graduates and more successful men, society should take measures to encourage men and women of fine inheritance to have more children, and measures to re

duce the fertility of men and women of lower innate intelligence. To get a prosperous and intellectually rich nation is not a problem in college education but a problem in eugenics."

Life is Sweet-and So is Death

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O MUCH has been heard recently about diabetes mellitus, chiefly because of Dr. Banting's development of Insulin, that a popular impression prevails that this Canadian physician has conquered one of the most ancient enemies of human society. Yet certain statistics assembled by Dr. Haven Emerson, and published in the Survey Magazine, indicate that this disease, as an every day fact, is almost as new as the remedy which has brought so much relief. Sixty years ago diabetes mellitus was simply interesting as a medical curiosity. The medical profession seldom came in contact with it. The earliest accurate vital statistics kept in New York City, beginning just after the Civil War, show one death from this cause for every 2,400 from other ills. In 1923 there was one for every 51 from other causes, but it must be remembered, in drawing this comparison, that the mortality from all other diseases during this period shows a great decrease.

The explanation is simple enough. American life in the last sixty years has grown more and more sweet-in a physical sense. The increased use of sugar in the daily dietary is as significant of modern American progress as is the use of the automobile and the telephone, and is due to the same cause-the growth of individual wealth. As a man or woman becomes more prosperous, the first thing he does almost instinctively is to add more meat and sugar to his food. In times of penury human beings eat from necessity, in times of prosperity they eat for pleasure. And among the gifts of modern progress, sugar, in its various. forms, is apparently one of the most esteemed.

And this vice, if it is a vice, is a new one. History does not record the time when men have not used alcohol. The ancients had the same passion for it as

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the moderns, and practically every savage tribe has discovered its use in some form or other. But the Greeks and Romans knew nothing of cane sugar; their nearest approach to it was honey. Sugar, indeed, is only about five hundred years old. That universal succulent-candy-was unknown in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. Sugar in any form was not largely used until after the Civil War. The present vast consumption of candy and soft drinks and miscellaneous delicacies in which it is an important ingredient would have amazed the earlier generation. In moderation, sugar is an excellent food -in a physiological sense, it is only another name for energy. That the increase in its use, however, is the cause of the rapidly mounting death rate from diabetes, is a fact on which so eminent an authority as Dr. Haven Emerson is willing to stake his reputation.

lini has said that he wants to get away from government ownership and adopt the American system.

The idea that one American can fill any public office just about as well as any other was the discovery of the Jacksonian Democracy. It was the justification of the "spoils system" and led to the habit of periodically ousting one set of office-holders to make place for a new. It was an absurdity in the comparatively simple age that heard its promulgation, but it has become an outrageous distortion in the more complicated society in which we now live. The ideas that control science and business and professional life are, above all, applicable to public affairs, and it is one of the reproaches of democracy that it has most inadequately learned this lesson. The trained man is indispensable in practically every field. Specialization is the rule in all the professions. Medicine, the law, engineer

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of Democracy

ROFESSOR MICHAEL PUPIN, of Columbia University-a scientist whose work has had a practical application, for it has made the long distance telephone a reality-has recently put his finger on the sensitive spot in democracy:

The weakest point in democracy has always been lack of appreciation of expert knowledge. Railroads, telegraphy, telephony and radio broadcasting, electrical lighting and electrical transmission of power are certainly public utilities, but the intelligent people of the United States will never consent that these things, requiring an enormous amount of expert knowledge, be placed under government ownership. The machinery of our government or of any other form of government known to man to-day is utterly incapable of handling technical problems which require the highest type of training applied to the highest type of intelligence. All of these public utilities are full of complex technical problems which cannot and never were intended to be handled by any government. In Europe we see that where there is governmental ownership the utilities are being run at heavy deficits. And only recently Musso

the mind that concentrates on one department, and masters it in all its details, is in demand. Yet training and experience in public life are even yet not regarded as indispensable.

The planning and building of subways in a great city like New York calls for special knowledge of the most intricate kind, yet for seven years this pressing necessity has been the victim of the most ignorant political demagogues. It is a curious but illuminating fact that Mayor Hylan, the man who now pretends to dictate in the matter of the transit of seven million people, was himself, only a few years ago, a locomotive engineer on the King's County Elevated Railroad, and was "fired" for incompetence. So far, by his own unaided efforts, had he risen as a transit expert! It is an extreme illustration of the extent to which a democracy disregards experience and skill in the management of great public enterprises.

As government becomes more enlightened, more and more the value of knowledge is respected. Probably one of the reasons why our Federal Government is so vastly superior, in efficiency and

honesty, to the states and municipalities, is that at Washington the educated specialist is an important element in administration. He is found in all the bureaus, and, not infrequently, in Cabinet posts; certainly Mr. Mellon is an expert on finance and Mr. Hoover on

commerce.

Children and Prohibition

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HERE is a constantly growing belief that the use of intoxicants by minors has been increasing in the last two or three years. In all parts In all parts of the country any traveler will find persons who tell of regrettable incidents at high school or college parties, or at affairs attended by minors. The truth of these observations is confirmed by several authorities, notably Judge Ben B. Lindsey of the Denver Juvenile Court, who says that he has noticed an increase of the use of intoxicants among children of high school age. He is careful to specify the words "high school age," because not all the drinking is done by high school students. He finds it prevalent to a large degree among boys and girls who do not attend school, but work for a living. Similar confirmation, based on observation, is available at many other official

sources.

Those who have noticed this condition blame prohibition, but perhaps that is the wrong word to use; perhaps they should use the word "bootlegging." In the days of legal liquor selling, it was against the law to dispense intoxicants to a minor, and most saloonkeepers observed that law; most of them did have some conscience in that respect, though if they did not they could be punished, because, unlike the bootlegger, they had fixed places of business. It is different now: the bootlegger is a conscienceless, lawless vagabond who observes few human decencies and who has no fixed place of business. He does not care who consumes his "stuff," and the potables sold as liquor sometimes now pass through so many hands from maker to consumer that it would be difficult, even if there were the

desire among these traffickers, to keep drink from minors.

Before this "age of sophistication" of the younger generation, it was considered a disgrace for any young man or young girl to show any evidences of intoxication at a party or dance. Now many of them consider it "smart"; liquor and tipsiness have become "the thing," no matter how hard parents and chaperones may try to "police" their parties and dances. A lively argument might be started anywhere in the country on the question whether this is one of the causes or one of the results of this so-called "age of sophistication." There is evidence on both sides, though no authoritative statistics are available to show even an increase in drinking among minors. Observations are the only evidence, but those observations are too general to be ignored.

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A World Without Disease?

T THE recent centennial of Lafayette College one of the speakers, Dr. William S. Nichols, gave a picture of the world fifty years hence, of a somewhat more cheerful aspect than has become the fashion in meetings of this kind. The horrors which modern chemistry is likely soon to heap on civilization have become a familiar story. Electric rays that can destroy an army or a city at a distance of a hundred miles, new gases a single whiff of which can wipe out a hundred thousand men-such are the blessings which science, according to recent prognostications, is preparing for the next generation.

According to Dr. Nichols, however, there is another side to the picture. In fifty years, he predicts, the world will be a world without disease. The most terrible plagues that now afflict mankind will have been conquered by modern chemistry. Even the most baffling will become only the more tragic memories of humankind. A world without disease! Here is a spectacle as interesting to the philosopher as to the scientist. For such a world would necessarily mean more than a world from which sickness had been abolished.

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Dr. Nichols really foresees an early time when man will obtain and preserve physical perfection, when his powers of body and of mind will always be maintained at their highest efficiency. It would probably be impossible to find to-day a single human being who is not ill in some way and to some degree. Life and civilization and current history are really the achievements of invalids-of men and women, that is, whose bodies, and consequently whose minds, are far from realizing 100 per cent. of their possibilities. To foresee what life will be, with all physical disabilities removed and the human organism given free scope to exercise its will, fairly staggers the imagination.

And this; Dr. Nichols insists, is to be the work of chemistry. The physicians will probably not disagree with this statement. The chemist, not the doctor in the old-fashioned sense, is to unlock the still unsolved mysteries of the human body. Indeed, one of the ironies of medical progress is that the man who laid the basis of modern medicine was not a medical man, but a chemist. In most great medical research laboratories to-day the name chiefly honored is not Hippocrates or Galen or Vesalius or even Harvey, but Pasteur. It was Pasteur's studies in the fermentations of beer and wine that led to the conquest of such human plagues as tuberculosis, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever, and countless others. The human body is a highly complicated mass of chemical reactions, and physiological chemistry is the basis of medical science. In the opinion of perhaps the most daring experimenter of this generation, Jacques Loeb, chemistry would ultimately accomplish all things. He believed that the time was not far distant when it would create life itself. He himself succeeded, by chemical means, in introducing the vital spark into the eggs of sea-urchins and tadpoles. The prophecy of Dr. Nichols is no more startling than this realization, though possibly he may have been a little optimistic in declaring that his great physical transformation was to be realized within half a century.

The Death of Laughter

OUIS LUDLOW, the Washington correspondent, says in his recent book "From Cornfield to Press Gallery," that when former Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall was presiding for the last time over a session of the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge moved around near the rostrum and told him that he did not know how Congress would get along without him. No presiding officer had ever before dared attempt to relieve the tedium of the proceedings with a little humor, as Vice-President Marshall had done so

many times. Some of his remarks reached the staid Congressional Record; but many of the best did not, either because they were uttered in so low a tone that the stenographer passed over them or because they were personal.

It has become traditional that politics and intentional humor do not mix; most politicians try to be intensely serious so that the public will take them seriously. Former Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana never smiles or becomes facetious in a political campaign; he represents one end of the scale of seriousness. At the other is Job E. Hedges, who, according to the general opinion among New York politicians, lost the Governorship because he told too many jokes in his campaign speeches; his appeals for votes were gems of utterance in that epigrammatic philosophy which has made him almost as famous as Chauncey M. Depew as an after-dinner speaker.

Americans are beginning to take themselves, their civilization, and their politics so seriously that they forget to laugh, and that encourages politicians to become pompous. That gives them a better chance of success, because it has been known throughout the ages that you can kill with laughter a cause that would thrive with increased vigor on serious argument or opposition of the most violent kind. Dr. Charles Gray Shaw, Professor of Philosophy at New York University, says that "the laugh is going fast" and that "the life of laughter cannot be saved." It may be that the age of laugh

ter will be succeeded by an age of humor that can be appreciated with a smile, but Dr. Shaw apparently does not think so, for he says:

Does one ever hear the scientist laugh or see the socialist smile? Are Einstein and Trotsky famous for their jokes? Would Lincoln have been humorous if his administration had been like that of Taft? Those who are so advanced as to see their way through all incongruities never stop to laugh at anything. When all men are fully evolved, laughter will die a natural death. Indeed, it is safe to predict that war and laughter will depart hand in hand.

Professor William McDougall of Harvard believes that if man, naturally sympathetic, was inclined to weep over every small misfortune, the vitality of the race would be lowered. Nature knew this and bestowed upon man the royal gift of laughter, which raises the spirits and stimulates the flow of blood. "This is the biological function of laughter, one of the most beautiful and delicate of nature's adjustments."

Professor Shaw may be right. It may be true that the causes of laughter are vanishing, even in politics, but the man who makes that observation runs the risk of being laughed at.

An Epidemic of Cancer Cures

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NE of the distressing signs of the times is the extent to which socalled discoverers of cancer cures are exploiting their achievements in the public press. This has been a feature of American journalism for half a century, but the current demonstration is unusually active. To experienced students of this problem the "discoveries" carry their refutation on the surface. The so-called experimenters tell of the isolation of the cancer germ," the development of a "cancer serum," and present the usual array of statistics, specifying the cases that are "cured" or that show "improvement," and holding forth promises of complete success.

The mere fact that these announcements are made in itself discredits them,

even though it does not indicate dishonesty in the men responsible for the newspaper publications. An experimenter who should really find the "cancer germ" would not find it necessary to take the reporters into his confidence; he would at once be awarded the Nobel prize, for he would have made the greatest discovery in medicine since the days of Jenner. All who have looked into this subject know that one of the greatest medical controversies of the time is the existence, or the non-existence, of a 'cancer germ"; there is no assurance that this strange disease is stimulated by an extrinsic cause. Another fact well known is that the injection of almost any foreign proteins into the body of a cancer patient causes a diminution of the growth and sometimes its disappearance. Such changes, however, are only temporary. A few years ago a much respected pathologist of Roosevelt Hospital in New York, Dr. Hodenpyl, found that the introduction of dropsical fluid into a woman mortally ill with cancer caused her ailment to vanish like magic. It was one of the most startling moments in the medical annals of New York. The achievement was widely advertised; Dr. Hodenpyl was hailed as the man who had solved the most baffling mystery of medicine; yet in a few weeks the cancerous growth made its reappearance in more virulent form than ever, and Dr. Hodenpyl died of a broken heart.

This experience is a common one. It is not improbable that the cause and cure of cancer will some day be found: it is, indeed, extremely probable. But, after the initial discovery, it will take years of observation and experimentation before there can be any assurance that it is definite and permanent. Any man who rushes into print with his announcement, without these years of experimentation to support him, is nothing less than a quack. He is a terrible menace to society and the greatest enemy of the sufferers from this disease. At present cancer, in its early. stages, can be cured, usually by operation. The discovery of all persons in this early stage, and their prompt submission to