that young man. It did not, it seems, achieve all at once the diseased egotism and unbalanced truculence that afterwards became one and indissoluble with the upward stabbing mustachios and incredibly uniformed and arrogant person that always faintly suggested a prosperous mummer gratuitously continuing to act his part whether upon the boards or not.

WILHELM IN MISCHIEF

ALREADY

RITING in

W 1885 to the Tsar

in the hope of stirring up serious discord he naïvely points out that "The language and the cartoon on Russia in the latest Punch are insolent in the last degree!" And later, "We shall see the Prince here in a few days. I am not at all delighted by this unexpected apparition, because, excuse me, he is your brother-in-law, owing to his false and intriguing nature he will undoubtedly attempt

marriage in 1863, Sir Sidney records the welcoming stanzas of the Poet Laureate, Tennyson. With excessive tolerance the biographer terms them "a fitting expression" of the joyous acceuil that greeted Alexandra. greeted Alexandra. Doubtless at twentyone the Prince of Wales had not yet developed the critical instinct concerning literature that thirty-four years later led

in one way or another to push the Bulgarian business (against Russian interests). May Allah send them to Hell, as the Turks would say! Or to do a little. political plotting behind the scenes with the ladies."

This when the wretched youth was still two moves from the throne of Germany. As his uncle Bertie continued to regard him merely as a sort of prococious Rodomont, Willy became positively maniacal. Even the Prince of Wales began, as Sir Sidney in his most moderate fashion expresses it, "To regard the young man's future career with anxiety." Three years later this clock-work warrior, as the Emperor of Germany, was in a position to cause his uncle even darker periods of perplexity.

On the occasion of Albert Edward's

him to write to Lord Salisbury touching the first effusion in his official capacity of Alfred Austin, the newly appointed Laureate, and pointing to 'the trash that the Poet Laureate writes." Mr. Austin, in addition to bad rhyming, was guilty of a serious blunder in judgment. His jingles were in praise of the Jameson raid, whereas Tennyson's verses, not a whit better in substance or execution, were nevertheless happily dedicated to a young and very beautiful Princess. Still

For Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,
We are each all Dane in our welcome of Thee,
Alexandra!

has a lolloping lilt to it that might have recalled to the memory of the royal bridegroom the days when under the basilisk charge of Stockmar he gained his first experience of lights and laughter under "the big top" of Astley's Circus. How the revered Mr. Tennyson satisfied his conscience for the commission of this bit of rhymed clog-dancing one does not know, save that perhaps the handful of silver and the ribbon to stick in his coat had fulfilled their venal functions.

Perhaps the outstanding quality of Sir Sidney Lee's biography is its suave courtesy and good taste in its apportioning of

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those incidents each in its true value, in the life of Edward VII, to its proper relative position in the development of character and ability. The biography is essentially an official one; it regales with no brisk anecdote or naughty inference; the breath of the lex majestatis is hot upon every page, but on the other hand it preserves what a less bridled volume would certainly have failed to: its sense of balance and value.

Sir Sidney has, somewhat to our disap-pointment, no doubt, given us no intriguing picture or piquant footnote that illustrates the Prince of Wales of the Jersey Lily or the golden hours of Sandringham. In point of fact had he done so his work would have forfeited the right to be called intrinsic biography. For such little histories as those, there is a large and deservedly popular type of literature known to the French sometimes as chroniques scandaleuses and, when they preserve even less accuracy or truth, œuvres badines. It includes in a chrysalis of a wit sometimes salacious, sometimes chaste, and always genuine, the infinitely trivial incidents in the lives of men and women whose distinction was the result of achievements to which the trivialities were not in the least germane. Sir Sidney may perhaps be a little too formal now and then, a trifle unnecessarily the apologist, but his volume is a true biography.

The present volume covers the life of Albert Edward only to the period of his accession to the throne that he had waited

sixty years to mount. A second volume which is in preparation will cover his short reign and his death in 1910. Of this first volume it is the extraordinary industry displayed by the biographer that continually stirs our astonishment and admiration. The result is a marvelously inclusive and informative document no less valuable as an intimate history of Europe and the great figures of a type of royal autocracy now almost completely extinct, than as a calculatedly unbiased chronicle of the life of a prince to whom his due was not accorded in his lifetime and to whose memory it has been only during the last decade that statesmen have turned with genuine respect and admiration.

Sir Sidney Lee possesses the qualities of the distinguished biographer: a consuming industry, a genuine interest and respect for his subject, and an unfailing sense of values. His Edward VII emerges from the pages of his biography an individual whose tremendous energy and ability in pursuing three careers at once and all of them successfully-that of a devoted son, a popular and debonair prince of pleasure, and an infinitely tactful keeper of the peace between hotheaded royal kinsmen in whose hands lay the destinies of Europe-stir at once the imagination and the mind.

We are grateful that now, more than a decade after this prince's death, he has posthumously been so fortunate in his biographer.

'N ONE of the old army posts in the West a cavalry rookie went down to the stables to pick out his first mount. He told the stable sergeant that he wanted a nice, gentle horse. The sergeant said:

"What is the matter, haven't you ever ridden before?"

"No," answered the rookie.

"Well," replied the sergeant, "Here is the very animal for you. He has never been ridden before; you can start out together."

This story was told last summer at Billings, Montana, to picture the relations of Northwestern shippers to the Northwestern railroads, for until recently the shippers and the railroads that dealt with each other every day were strangers to their common interest. The story was told of the first meeting of the Northwest Regional Advisory Board of the American Railway Association, where the shippers for the first time were placed in the saddle. The forming of this and the other similar advisory boards in other parts of the country is one of the clearest signs of a new era in railroad conditions in America. The idea underlying the advisory boards is as simple as all great inventions. It was merely to have the advice and coöperation of the users of the railroads given to the managers of the railroads. It is a very simple and obvious idea and yet to carry it out means that the railroads are willing to show their customers the inner workings of their business. Not so many businesses have reached the point where they would welcome such scrutiny from their

dice against combinations and monopelies. Then a central control was established over all the roads of the country. There was unified command over the movement of cars. When operation of the roads was later taken over by the Government, this unified command was continued under the DirectorGeneral. Then, when the Transportation Act was passed, providing for the return of the roads to their owners and operators, specific provision was made in the law for continuation of this central control. The Interstate Commerce Commission, having no machinery to accomplish this, simply directed the roads to continue to operate the car service division which the American Railway Association had built up. Furthermore, this new railroad law removed the shadow of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law from over the roads and directed that they be consolidated into a limited number of systems.

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How James J. Hill and E. H. Harriman, whose Northern Securities' "trust” and Union and Southern Pacific Railroad merger were disrupted by the courts, must smile at this in the Great Beyond, possibly wishing that they had not lived so soon! Few people realize the significance of the new era that the enactment of this legislation is ushering in.

With the power to operate every freight car in the country, regardless of ownership, under one authority, there was, of course, the danger that this unlimited power might be abused and arouse the resentment of the shippers. Before this danger developed the shippers themselves were put in the saddle. The idea of doing this originated with Mr. Donald D. Conn, manager of the public relations section of the car service division of the American Railway Association. Mr. Conn was the Mr. Conn was the traffic representative for large shippers before he went with the American Railway Association; that may help explain why he thought of the plan. He appreciated the force of Charles Lamb's remark that he did not want to meet a certain man because he disliked him and if he met him he feared he would lose his dislike. When Mr. Conn was asked if he would become manager of the public relations section, he replied that he would

meeting of the Minneapolis Traffic Association and suggested the formation of a shippers' board that would furnish the necessary forum for shippers and railroad men to get together on all transportation problems. On January 16, 1923, the Northwest Regional Advisory Board, composed of shippers, state railroad commissioners, and farm bureau officials, from Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, northern Wisconsin, and Michigan, was organized, the first board of its kind in the country, and it immediately began work. Since then nine other regional advisory boards have been organized, and to-day the shippers in every section of the country except around Pittsburgh, in New England, and in the Pacific Northwest are coöperating through these boards with the railroads. It is a voluntary service on the part of the shippers and each one of them pays his own expenses to attend the meetings of these boards. Some 5,100 shippers are now coöperating in this way. Railway representatives are present to advise with the shippers and learn their needs but they are not members of the boards and have no vote in their proceedings.

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S FREIGHT CAR!

OW

opportunity to bring the railroad men. and the shippers together so that they would lose their dislike for each other.

THE

ENEMIES FACE TO FACE

HE first real opportunity to do this came in the Northwest in the fall of 1922. There was a shortage of cars to move the wheat out of that territory. Entire communities were bankrupt, due to the lack of box cars at that time. A meeting of shippers and railroad men. was called in December at St. Paul, and Mr. Conn went out to confer with them. Little progress was made at that meeting. The shippers sat on one side of the room, the railroad men on the other, and the main result was the blowing off of a considerable accumulation of bitterness. Two days later Mr. Conn addressed a

this coöperation. In the crop-moving season beginning in July, 1922, the South Dakota Railroad Commission received more than eight thousand complaints as to car service in that state. In the season of 1923 they had one complaint, which was taken care of in four hours' time. That did not mean a promise of cars was made in four hours' time, but cars were put where they were needed in four hours from the time the complaint was filed. The North Dakota Railroad Commission received five or six thousand complaints regarding car service in 1922 and only three in 1923, and these were taken care of in less than twenty-four hours.

One of the greatest causes of difficulty and dissatisfaction in the Northwest wheat country was over the dis

tribution of cars in time of equipment shortage. Each shipper wanted to get a "reasonable advantage" over his competitor. The various state commissions tried to lay down rules for the guidance of the roads at such times, but some of these conflicted and it was impossible for the roads to follow them. They were between the devil and the deep sea. The whole matter was a bone of sore contention when this Northwest Advisory Board was organized. The car service division of the railways asked the board to draft its own rules, and the story of how these rules were arrived at throws light on the value of these boards in bringing about coöperation among shippers as well as coöperation between the railroads and the shippers. Mr. J. W. Raish of the South Dakota Railroad Commission, a member of the grain committee of the advisory board, told the story as follows:

We had a meeting of the board in Sioux Falls in July, 1923. The grain movement

any such report. Reasonable men can face any problem and reach a reasonable conclusion. Now, before that meeting at ten o'clock in the morning I want a report and 1 want in your report workable rules that all have agreed on." Well, that was done and morning and every member of the grain comthat report was ready at four o'clock in the mittee had agreed to it as reasonable. They got together, and a little give and take here and there, overcoming this reasonable advantage over the other fellow, a little give and take by reasonable men, was all that was necessary. Those rules were reported to the board and were unanimously adopted.

Chairman Gormley, of the car service division of the railways, immediately announced to the shippers that the rules they had adopted would be put into effect

was just about to commence, and I think at two or three meetings of the board prior to that time we had spent a lot of time in wrangling over rules for the distribution among shippers of grain equipment. The grain committee had met, I think, at Fargo and presented a report to the meeting of the board at that time. The

report was rejected because the shippers themselves in this particular line were not in full accord. Then at the July meeting this committee was instructed by President Reed (President of the Minnesota Farm Bureau and Chairman of the Northwest Advisory Board) to get busy on some car distribution rules and to report some reliable rules. That committee met the night before the July meeting at Sioux Falls, in a hot room in a hotel, and at one o'clock in the morning we reported to Chairman Reed that it was impossible to agree upon rules which were satisfactory and would be accepted as workable by the different grain interests represented. I remember that Chairman Reed said: "Gentlemen, I will not accept

and followed by the railways. As a matter of fact they did not have to be used because in 1923, although the railroads handled by far the largest traffic in their history, there was no car shortage, and there has been none since. The spirit of coöperation among ship

pers engendered by these boards, and the accurate advance information they give the railroads as to their future needs, helps to account for that. As an example, consider the account given by Mr. J. L. Brown, of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad:

About the time the Trans-Missouri-Kansas Regional Advisory Board was organized [May, 1923], we were making an estimate on the movement of Kansas wheat, which is the early crop movement of wheat on our railroad along in June. We made some preliminary surveys among some of our agents and the best estimate we could get was that about 5,000 cars would move over our railroad through Kansas City. Now with a movement of that kind we would concentrate on the movement of cars into that district. I went to the first meeting of the regional advisory board, and after the committee on grain had