hero, and is always repre sented as being unnecessarily raucous, except by Aristophanes, who, in "The Frogs," makes Charon remark to Bac chus as they start their river journey: "Thou'lt hear sweet music presently of frogs with voices wonderful as swans'." But see what company Charon had! To the scientist, the voice of the frog is just as sweet as it was to Charon, even when Bacchus is not present. Without the frog, the polliwog, and other marine and there are very few in this country. The station at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is largest; that at Cold Spring Harbor, under the auspices of the Long Island Biological Association, members of which are prominent residents of the vicinity, is the second largest; and there are smaller stations at the Tortugos, Florida, Mt. Desert # A PRECOCIOUS SALAMANDER Normally a year is required for the growth of this species of animals, the study of the endocrine glands would be much more difficult, and the sudden and widespread extermination of the frog would retard the solution of many of the problems confronting medical science. In the study of cancer and some other diseases, the mouse is favorite; the guinea pig also is a good servant of science. But the frog is leader. For that reason the maintenance of marine biological stations, such as Dr. Harris directs, is important to science, Island, Maine, and Hopkins To these stations hundreds of graduate students, teachers, and research men go every summer to study the various marine animals, which by their abundance and variety determined the loIcation of the stations. If Metchnikoff had lived in this country he could have been found at one of these stations, and there, possibly, the heirs of the Metchnikoff tradition are poring over the problems of the endocrine glands. Dr. Harris himself, a graduate of Brown University, is working on these problems; so are many other scientists, including some of the staff of the Biological Laboratory and of the Carnegie Institution at Cold Spring Harbor. And not to forget the help of the polliwog, which is working on the problems in its own way. Colonel A. B. Barber, Traffic Expert S ECRETARY HOOVER has been dubbed by some of the newspapers as "the Conference Wizard of the Administration." Altogether, the Secretary of Commerce in four years has conducted about five hundred conferences on important subjects relating to the public welfare. The conferences range in subject from radio to railroads; from unemployment to street and highway safety. Street and highway. safety was the last big conference, and, though it was only one of several hundred, the preliminary work was begun nearly a year before the meeting, under the direction of Colonel A. B. Barber, a former Army officer and traffic expert who is manager of the Transportation Department of the United States Chamber of Commerce. COLONEL A. B. BARBER Colonel Barber is not only a traffic expert, but also one of Secretary Hoover's "conference experts," and he knows not only how to organize preliminary work on the Hoover efficiency plan, but he knows also how to conduct the conference when the members meet. A Hoover conference is unlike most meetings. of its kind, because the Secretary and his associates give the conferees something to confer about the second minute after the conference opens. No vague program is laid out; the program is definite and concise. No skeletonized outline of debate is laid before the conference. tion Conference of last year the expert was Colonel Barber because he was an authority on the subject; and in the recent conference on street and highway safety, it was Colonel Barber again, not only because he was an expert on traffic of all kinds, but also because in the Transportation Conference he had proved SAFETY SLOGANS Some of the warnings of traffic experts have been widely copied. Some of them are: Instead, the results of months of research by the foremost experts on the subject to be discussed are presented to the conference, and the experts themselves are present to lead the discussion. The delegates are forced by the circumstances to get right down to business. At the recent conference on street and highway safety, Colonel Barber handed to members the reports of eight expert committees - enough material to fill a book of about five hundred pages. "Say it with good brakes and save the flowers."-From a placard of the National Team and Motor Truck Owners Association. "Steep Grade with railroad crossing at the bottom-A good place to commit suicide."-A roadside warning now used in many places. "Drive Slow and See Our TownDrive Fast and See Our Jail."-Another roadside warning. "Famous Last Words-'I'll pass him on the next turn.""-From a windshield paster. When Secretary Hoover conceives the idea for a conference he drafts experts right and left, and encourages them to think and work for months on causes and cures. No one can tell just when the Secretary conceives an idea. When he tells anybody about it he is fortified with statistics and facts sufficient to convince his hearers of the importance of the subject. Then he tells his story to one person or a dozen in short sharp sentences, meantime either drawing queer diagrams on small pieces of paper on his desk, or punching holes in weird designs in his blotter. It is easy to understand his words because he is concise, but the illustrations don't mean anything to anybody but himself. that he was an expert at carrying out the idea of a Hooverized conference, which is that the work of the gathering shall be begun months before and continued months after the meeting. Three days of talking, a sheaf of elaborately phrased resolutions, and three or four days of newspaper stories do not measure the Hoover idea of a conference by any means. Hoover wants action, con tinuous and long sustained, but with only enough language to stimulate the action and some quiet thought. Always before Colonel Barber or an expert conference director is called in, Mr. Hoover has formulated a thesis for the work. His thoughts on the vast loss of life and property in street and highway accidents coalesced in an unusual manner. He was requested by Ernest Greenwood, then Associate Editor of the Insurance Field, to write an article on the subject of "fair automobile safety regulation," and Mr. Greenwood started his talk with a statement of facts and statistics intended to convince Mr. Hoover of the critical situation. "He interrupted," says Mr. Greenwood, "and from then on he did the talking. In five minutes he had brushed aside my carefully organized arguments, assumed the existence of a crisis, reached the heart of the problem, and stated a thesis for which eight carefully organized 264 Scientific Study of Traffic Accidents committees composed of leaders in their respective lines from all over the United States have been for months constructing a background." "Why not call one of your famous conferences?" suggested Mr. Greenwood. That suggestion appealed to Mr. Hoover, and Greenwood left with instructions to talk the proposal over with several persons, whose names were mentioned by the Secretary. "I know what I think ought to be done," said Mr. Hoover, "and I want to see if you get the same idea." The editor did get the same idea and a week later, last March, a group of experts were invited to the Secretary's office. They agreed that in street and highway accidents, 85 per cent. of which are caused by automobiles, the nation faced a critical problem. Greenwood was immediately drafted as secretary of a temporary organization, a steering committee was formed, and Colonel Barber was called in as a traffic and conference expert. Secretary Hoover is a master organizer, as he demonstrated in the Belgian and Russian relief work before he became Secretary of Commerce. He likes thoroughness and care in the preparation of plans and, therefore, he likes the Barber method of preparing for a Hoover conference. By this method the best minds and the best ideas of the country are mobilized, and an authoritative group of reports and studies is laid before the conference, which, therefore, cannot avoid doing some good work. Like Secretary Hoover, Colonel Barber is an engineer. He is a West Point graduate who served several years in the Engineers Corps. Shortly after this country entered the war, he went to France with the Railroad Commission, and in the war served on the General Staff. After the Armistice he joined Mr. Hoover's American Relief Administration as executive in charge of the transportation and distribution of supplies, and, later, he was technical adviser to the Polish Government. All of which shows that he is a traffic expert, and also that he knows some of the efficient Hoover methods. Most of the appalling facts gathered by the Barber-Greenwood organization on loss of life and property in automobile accidents have been made public. Their country knows that about 22,600 persons were killed in 1923, and about 678,000 seriously injured, with an estimated economic loss of $600,000,000. It knows also that the figures for 1924 probably will show an increase of 15 per cent., and that, unless there be fundamental changes, the year 1935 will see at least 50,000 fatalities, with at least 1,500,000 cases of serious injuries, and an economic loss running into the billions. TRAFFIC JAMS IN ANCIENT ROME TR RAFFIC congestion is not a new problem. One of Colonel Barber's experts dug out of history some facts about congestion in Rome in Cæsar's time, when the "staggered peak" system was adopted, whereby certain classes of traffic moved only at certain hours. Heavy commercial vehicles in ancient Rome, for instance, moved at night. Many persons remember the traffic jams in our cities, particularly New York, in horse-and-wagon days. Tie-ups lasted for hours, and O. Henry made a traffic jam the motif of one of his short stories. The swifter automobile merely made traffic conditions better for a few years, but the saturation point is here again, and more trouble. Colonel Barber and his experts attack the problem as scientists study a major disease, and, indeed, in death toll this is a major disease. They study all the causes as a scientist studies a dangerous microbe. There is no guesswork in their method. Because of careful scientific studies of this kind the Hoover conferences are invariable successes. The reports of the expert committees form a new literature for use wherever the special problem affects the public welfare, and, therefore, the conference directly and indirectly exerts a wide influence by showing both cause and cure. Prohibition As It Is I. HOBOKEN-BUFFALO-DETROIT Beginning a 3,000-Mile Trip on Which the WORLD'S WORK Investigator Makes Some Observations on How Far the Dry Laws Affect These United States N BY ROLLIN LYNDE HARTT TEITHER as a "dry" nor as a "wet," but simply as a reporter anxious to learn how America is behaving under prohibition, I have lately traveled three thousand miles. When people asked me, "What are you trying to prove?" I answered, "Nothing," and I am not trying to "prove" anything now. I shall merely record things seen and heard by one roving New Yorker during the space of a month. As I stepped ashore at Hoboken, New Jersey, toward evening, at the outset of my journey, two drunken men reeled by an extremely rare sight in these days. Then I noticed saloons, counting seventy-two in eight blocks. come from overseas. As he believes, Hoboken, and not Rum Row, has been the great enemy of prohibition; while we are spending millions to embarrass Rum Row and other petty smuggling fleets, big liners dock at Hoboken "with the cus The author of this series on prohibition enforcement was selected by the World's WORK because of his wide experience in investigating controversial situations. He wrote articles for the magazine in 1923 and 1924 on the church war between modernists and fundamentalists, the Negro migration from the Southern states, and the divorce question. A native of Ithaca, New York, and the son of a Cornell University professor, he was graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary in 1896 and became a Congregational minister, bolding pastorates in Helena, Montana, and Leverett, Massachusetts, during the two ensuing years. He has written for magazines and newspapers regularly, and has been on the staffs of the Boston Transcript, Chicago Tribune, and the Literary Digest. Among his books are "Understanding the French" and "The Man Himself-the Nazarene."-THE EDITORS. Among them glimmered the sign of a superb German, restaurant, and there I dined. The restaurant, embellished with tall steins, seemed not to have changed since pre-Volstead days, nor had the beer, which is so fine a product that Mr. Hugh Fox, Secretary of the United States Brewers' Association, thinks it must toms officers fixed, the Volstead agents fixed, the local police fixed." After dining, I visited saloons. They had the same swing doors, the same bars, the same brass rails, the same foaming seidels, the same German wallmottos, the same pictures of pugilists and nude women, the same boisterous laughter, the same ejaculations of "Hoch!" as before prohibition. Any stranger could purchase beer and whisky. Policemen passed in and out, not objecting. Two crowded sa loons, of the viler sort, had enormous freelunch counters and offered beer at five cents a glass. Others demanded ten. A few asked fifteen. In one, I questioned the proprietor regarding Mr. Fox's theory. In so far as whisky was concerned, he indorsed it, adding, "They bribe even the gatekeeper." Alighting at Buffalo next morning, I |