sooner than otherwise would have happened, but will also afford work just at a time when people are sorely in need of it.

The sales of municipal bonds for public works in 1921 were about double those of any previous year, and nearly three times the amount of those for any year before the war. In September the total sales of municipal bonds throughout the country amounted to $86,477,162. In October the figure rose to $113,787,230; and in November it was $117,950,261; while in December it reached the unprecedented amount of $210,819,584.

There has been a general impulse also toward the doing of work on public utilities and in private companies, on the same theory as that which has governed in the case of public works, although to nothing like the extent, since the possibility of raising money by the attraction of the sale of tax-free securities has not, of course, been available to public utilities and private companies. Much construction and repair work has, however, been done.

In many instances much more work of this character, with consequent beneficial effect upon unemployment, would have been undertaken if construction costs had not been deemed too high. Transportation rates, prices for material, the cost of labor-in some localities all of these have seemed too high, in others some of them have seemed so high as to prohibit new undertakings. The President's Conference last fall recognized this fact. Its report of September 29 stated:

We are short more than a million homes; all kinds of building and construction are far behind national necessity. Considering all branches of the construction industries more than two million people could be employed if construction were resumed. Undue cost and malignant combinations have made proper expansion impossible and contribute largely to this unemployment situation. In some places these matters have been cleaned up. In other places they have not, and are an affront to public decency. Where conditions have been righted, construction should proceed. Where the costs are still above the other economic levels of the community there should be searching inquiry and action in the situation. We recommend that the Governors summon representative committees (a) to determine facts; and (b) to organize community action in securing adjustments in cost, including removal of freight discriminations, and clean-out campaigns against combinations, restrictions of effort, and unsound practices where they exist, to the end that building may be fully resumed.

Another outstanding fact in the way the unemployment difficulty has been met throughout the country has been the prevalence of "odd job", "spruce-up" campaigns. The feeling seems to have generally existed that it was the duty of everyone receiving an income to do something to help someone who was out of work. Work has been provided all over the country in ways which must have seemed insignificant to those affected, but in the aggregate it has mounted very high and has had a powerful effect in taking the edge off the prevalent distress. The way the people of the country have acted could not but remind one of the way in which they responded generally to Mr. Hoover's wartime appeal to eat meat only once a day and not to use white bread. That was at a time when there seemed to be no substantial extra stores of food in this country, at any rate not enough to meet the bare necessities of our Allies. Yet, without the passage of any law, without any restriction being imposed, at the mere request of a Food Controller in whom the people had complete confidence, consumption of food in this country was shrunk to such an extent that the supplies needed for export were at once available, and continued available.

In the same way during this period of unemployment the American people caught the idea that this was not a matter for legislation, that no magical cure could be looked for, that the emergency had to be met by the neighborly, helpful dealing of one with another, by everyone's making an effort to provide, as soon as possible, all the necessary work that he could, by everyone's holding out a helping hand.

But no matter how successful the efforts are to alleviate them, these recurring depressions are intolerable. They must be prevented, if there is any way to do it, for the heavy price is paid in the suffering and anguish of our fellow citizens; the strain comes upon those least able to bear it. It was for this reason that the Conference called by President Harding determined that, besides trying to help meet the emergency, it would make a vigorous and sustained effort to find out the causes of industrial depressions and to devise ways and means to prevent or mitigate them.

ARTHUR WOODS.

ECONOMY AND NAVAL PERSONNEL

BY ARCHIBALD DOUGLAS TURNBULL

At a time when a great advance toward the highly-desirable end of world-peace has just been made, it may be held to be a mistake to speak of weapons. Military men, diplomatists, statesmen, and-potential masters of all three-the peoples of the world, agree that the Washington Conference has accomplished more than all it sought to do. Most of us believe that a great rent has been torn in the war-cloud which hung over the Pacific and that, with the sweeping naval treaty almost certain of ratification by the Powers concerned, the race for naval supremacy is no longer to be run. Yet, for this very reason, it seems not amiss to urge that enthusiasm be not permitted to carry us to unwise extremes. Because an immediate menace has happily been removed by open and straightforward negotiation is not a reason for believing that no other menace will ever come, or that national defense should become a mere matter of splendid memory. In this respect, the Navy is still a fit subject for careful consideration.

At this writing, it appears that there exists in Congress a sentiment which favors largely reducing the naval personnel. In view of the proposed scrapping of certain vessels and leaving others unfinished, such low figures as thirty-five or fifty thousand have been suggested as adequate for the future enlisted strength. It is argued that such a cut will carry out the "spirit" of the treaty of limitation, as well as bring about a commendable saving of public moneys. But the treaty makes no such implication; while, as for the saving, there would, in the end, be none. We must have learned with fair thoroughness what it costs to have a theoretical instead of a practical Fleet, just as we learned what it means to have a political, rather than a national, administration of it. Will it be necessary to go through the pages of that lesson again?

When the Navy's morale was first attacked, in 1913, there were few who believed that any real and lasting harm could be done. Most of us have changed our minds since then. Similarly, it was not generally realized how hard it would be to recover from over-rapid, political demobilization following immediately after the signing of the Armistice. Even when the personnel was reduced to 106,000 enlisted men, the situation, while admittedly very difficult, was not considered dangerous. But no one, intimately concerned, hesitates to say that it is now time to call a halt.

The eighteen battleships which we propose to retain will be comparatively up-to-date; it will not do to provide them with insufficient crews, even in peace time. Long experience with half-manned ships has proved that they soon lose the fight for mechanical upkeep and rapidly become so much dead weight. Further, with each step in the deterioration of material there comes a corresponding drop in morale. Men will attempt double or treble work for only a limited time; after that, half-hearted, useless drudgery accomplishes nothing. In turn, the loss of spirit results in more rapid material decay. While the present percentage of green and untried men stands so high, a fortymillion-dollar battleship is not a thing to be entrusted to less than the authorized complement. This we know from the unfortunate result of keeping practically every one of the battleships now to be scrapped out of commission for months, as well as from the effect of maintaining a few with skeleton crews. Whence, then, may we deduce a reason to suppose that still fewer men can bring us any nearer to holding battle manœuvres― something now, of course, possible only upon paper?

With our destroyers, the case is even worse. It will be recalled that it was in the construction of this important unit that we made our principal naval effort during the last war. As a consequence, we had finally a flotilla of about three hundred, containing many entirely modern vessels and, upon the whole, second to none afloat. Also, it will be recalled that the shortage of men, brought about by Mr. Josephus Daniels against the Navy's own protest, necessitated laying-up new destroyers, as fast as they were completed on unexpired war contracts, until

the back-waters of our navy yards were filled with them. Today, about twenty-five per cent are in active service.

To the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Asiatic Fleets there are at present assigned, in each case, nineteen destroyers in so-called "operative commission". None of these is fully manned. In addition, about a dozen have been converted into light minelayers, for experimental purposes, while eight are upon detached duties in European waters. To the rest, a handful of men is assigned, shifting from one group to another as fast as a distracted Navy Department can contrive a new plan for a little desperate scraping and painting, a spasmodic jacking-over of engines. The result is plainly to be seen by any casual observer, on any day, at any of our larger navy yards. As each destroyer represents an investment of more than a million-and-a-half, what saving to the public will follow our permitting most of them to go to pieces? If the flotilla is relatively our most valuable naval possession, shall we, in the long run, gain anything by losing it? In the summer of 1920, a number of submarines were based upon Newport, theoretically for exercise and development of the type. As a matter of fact there were, among all the boats there collected, about enough trained men to man one. Nor is this a character of service to be learned overnight, as was clearly shown within the last few years. A certain submarine tonnage, however, is allowed us by the naval treaty. Irrespective of international agreements, designed to remove the horrible possibilities of the submarine in war, agreements to which we may all heartily subscribe,-where is the national saving in retaining the type without personnel to preserve, much less to use it?

As to the cruisers, they too have long been subjected to the Peter-and-Paul policy. The Frederick, carrying the American athletes to the last Olympic games at Antwerp, was manned by picking up a fireman here, a seaman there, a reservist somewhere else. While she steamed across the Atlantic, other cruisers, tied up to docks, waited for her to bring back their quotas. Similar contingencies since have resulted in leaving those cruisers still waiting. But, under the new treaty, we are to build more cruisers, to balance our Fleet in this respect. Since we are without enough men to maintain our present cruisers, how