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which has finally made Denver and the Western route therefrom a practical suc

cess.

We are undecided as to whether our Los Angeles correspondent has, like her Maryland colleague, read Ernest Greenwood's article, for she rails neither against it nor against us, she contributes no discussion of it and omits it from the list of articles in the WORLD'S WORK that have pleased her. We must, somewhat regretfully, conclude that as yet "The Little Read School Marm" has not met her eye and we can only hope that even after it has, her opinion of the magazine will remain the same. But will it? Greenwood's is a forceful pen and it was employed upon a subject bound in any case to arouse discussion in no way free from prejudice and lusty bias. It would be the soundest tribute to his article if in addition to the things remarked upon in this letter "The Little Read School Marm might secure honorable mention, and we await with more than a little interest

library carries may periodicals on its subscription list, including the WORLD'S WORK. But there is a vast difference between reading a magazine in a library and literally tearing it to pieces in the classroom-and I mean just that.

For instance, the marvelous Russian prints are now mounted and on my bulletin boardsurrounded, between periods, by many lovers of vivid color. After seeing them fairly gloating over these lovely copies, one could not justly say that our youngsters are interested only in the suggestive cover designs and contents of some of our more sensational magazines.

My eighth grade civics classes are simply delighted with "City Streets of America." And why not, as we are at present deep in the fascinating subjects of civic beauty and city planning? To these same classes I have read Edward Bok's "The Greatest Word in the English Language," and I wish that the alarmists of the day could have seen the serious expression on the majority of the faces and heard the enthusiastic and intelligent discussion that followed. It is in just such an article as this one that we find to a certain degree at least the counter-irritant of the dance palace and the cheap show.

My ancient history classes have received

ONE OF THE RANK AND FILE

To the Editor, WORLD'S WORK.

Sir: I do feel so sincerely that the WORLD'S WORK is filling a very big place now in current history and citizenship that may I take your time just to review what these last two issues have done for me and my classes? I am teaching history and civics in one of the junior high schools of Los Angeles. Magazines of your kind do not find their way to any great extent into the homes of my pupils-though our

excavations at Ur and it has given ancient history a new and modern tinge which delights their most up-to-date souls.

Even the journalism classes benefited from the issue as I sent "The Canons of Journalism" over to the teacher, who posted it on her board.

And lastly, my little B8's completed the surgical operation by cutting out the colored ads, the eagles on the covers, and one of the Russian pictures, for the scrapbook which they are making for the children's hospital as their Christmas gift this year.

NEVITABLY the present situation at Washington brings to mind that of twenty years ago. President Coolidge, like President Roosevelt in March, 1905, has finished the Presidential term for which another man was elected, and now begins a four-year reign of his own. With this resemblance, however, the likeness between the two men and the two periods apparently ends. In mental attitudes and in training and personality, no two men could be more dissimilar.

On the one hand is Roosevelt-impulsive, intuitive, jumping at conclusions; a quick thinker, and an even quicker actor; progressive, even radical in his methods. and in his programs; always having an eye keen for abuses to correct, and a mind that comprehended all that was interesting and important in the several phases of American life, political, social, literary, and artistic; an appreciative, if possibly not a profound student of the American story, and a statesman who had framed his own exalted conception of the place America was to play in the world-and, on the other, Coolidge, quiet and silent; a man not especially gifted with imagination; taking few men into his confidence;

not aggressively combative, yet not lacking in determination and an effective energy-on the whole, however, especially as compared with the open, expansive, even garrulous Roosevelt, much of an enigma. These are the only two VicePresidents in our history who have succeeded by popular election to the office to which the death of their predecessor had called them-and each bears a particular relation to his era.

The election of Roosevelt in 1904an election as overwhelming as that which placed Mr. Coolidge in power in 1924was essentially a radical demonstration; he came in, with a rush, as a popular protest against the conservatism of Cleveland and the "standpattism" of McKinley. The preceding twenty years, especially the decade from 1895 to 1905, had created the belief that the democratic masses were not getting a square deal. The American inheritance had become too exclusively the province of energetic gentlemen, who, in the expressive words of Senator Dolliver, "knew precisely what they wanted," and the evidences were plentiful that the agencies of government were being used to further their private ends. An immense amount of material

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proving this fact had accumulated in the few years preceding Roosevelt's accession. Our forests were being denuded; our public lands abstracted; our resources wasted; the railroads, almost unhindered by the Government, were practicing all sorts of discriminations and extortions; the "trusts," a difficult and complicated problem at the best, were openly disregarding the laws made for their regulation; the United States was almost the only country, except Turkey, that had no compensation laws for injured workmen; child labor was rampant; municipal and legislative corruption were almost the prevailing rule; United States Senators were elected by legislatures, frequently under the most scandalous conditions; there being no income tax, millionaires and corporations were paying little into the Federal Treasury; and the extent of the prevailing corruption in financial quarters had just been illustrated by the revelations-the work of Mr. Hughes, now Secretary of State of the way in which the funds of the life insurance companies were being used to promote private purposes.

A Period of Quiet and Conservatism

F

OR this state of affairs, individuals and political parties were only secondarily responsible; it was the inevitable result of the rapid exploitation of a new continent; yet American life certainly did need a house-cleaning, and this conviction found its champion in Roosevelt. The succeeding twelve years-with the interregnum of Taft, which manifested certain tendencies in a backward direction-were thus a period of "progressiveness," even radicalism, for Woodrow Wilson came into power on the same issue, and, at least in his first term, put many essential reforms on the statute book. Only the extreme optimist can believe that all the public evils have been remedied; yet many of the worst abuses have been corrected; the nation's capacity for emotion has been almost exhausted by participation in a great war; the American genius for political order has

been shocked by the extreme to which socialism has gone in other countries; the desire for change and for new things has passed; and the pendulum has swung again in the direction of quiet and conservatism-a condition that finds its most appropriate prophet in Calvin Coolidge. Mr. La Follette's performances in the campaign disclosed that the politicians have not yet grasped the fact that America is once more a conservative country. Yet the result of his campaign is a sufficient sign that this is the truth.

The "keynote" of the next four years will therefore be a rational, painstaking, unhysterical treatment of public business, and for this work Mr. Coolidge is as ideally fitted as was the hortatory Roosevelt for the extremely valuable work of his generation. This, in the historic perspective, is the meaning of the new deal in Washington, that begins on March 4th. It is not the kind of conservatism that caused little less than a political revolution twenty years ago. It is rather the national yearning for a period of calm in which the great questions facing the country must be quietly faced. The future of America, and the responsibilities lying before it, were never so great as now. Compared with the issues, foreign and domestic, that confront Mr. Coolidge's administration, the interests of the Roosevelt period seem almost parochial. It was the fashion, in 1905, to insist that the Spanish War had made the United States a "world power," but the expression has a meaning to-day that makes insignificant the new national pride in Roosevelt's time.