business point out that the rubber from a young tree does not amount to anything for six or seven years. Whereas most promoters will have it that the tree gets to full bearing within five years or so.

As a matter of fact, the tree's heaviest production is not reached until the ninth or tenth year. Thus a five-year tree might not yield more than a pound, while at eight years there will be 2 or 3 pounds, and at ten years 5 or 6 pounds.

Now this whole business of planting rubber trees on a large scale in Ceylon, Burmah, Java, Borneo, and the Malay States is something new. In the Malay States, for instance, only about 14 per cent. of the 21,000,000 trees planted had been tapped last year. The wild trees in the forests of Brazil have heretofore supplied about two-thirds of the markets of the world. One-half the total output has come from the Amazon Valley alone.

Again: If the American business men and farmers continue prosperous enough to keep up the cry for automobile tires that has been the basis of the rubber boom there will be even more planting in the Far East. The rubber area is a wide one. Here are the tons of output from Brazil for recent years:

1903-04

1904-05 1905-06

1906-07 1907-08

1908-09

.30.590 .38,050 .33,065 36,581 .34,480 .38,095 To the remaining third of the world's supply the artificially planted trees in the Far East will this year add only some 5000 tons. But even allowing for overwhelming failures in the case of the many stupidly or criminally promoted companies, the new "plantations" of Ceylon and Burmah, and the rest, can be relied upon by 1920 for perhaps 35,000 tons,-practically doubling the output of Brazil itself.

Moreover, the rubber pickers who brave the Brazilian forests are now penetrating only short distances. With railroad and other transportation extension the supply from these native trees can be multiplied.

LETTING THE OUTSIDERS IN

TO the amazement of the brokers' world, the directors of the big " People's Gas" Company of Chicago suddenly announced last year that they intended to declare a dividend at the next meeting, three months away, at an advanced rate.

"Then why don't they keep it to themselves?" marveled the cynics. For directors owning large blocks of this $72,000,000 con

cern to treat the little stockholders as equals was, sad to say, not the practice of such large institutions.

But the news was true. The stock had been a 6 per cent. investment. Every quarter the holders had been receiving checks for $1.50 a share. The next quarter, after that announcement, checks came at the rate of $1.75.

They have been so coming for a year now. It seems a good time to give credit where it is due. If more directors acted thus as trustees, and fewer as trust-betrayers, the corporation problem would shrink.

Recently the $60,000,000 American Car & Foundry Company and the $25,000,000 Pressed Steel Car Company have announced similar policies,—the building up of large reserves for the special purpose of equalizing dividends over bad years.

Last year the president of the American Beet Sugar Company denied himself the kind of chance that many corporation presidents seize. The common stock was bobbing up and down in the market because of persistent rumors that it was at last to begin paying dividends. Just in advance of the directors' meeting at which it was to be officially announced that the rumors were false, President Duval issued a flat denial. The public benefited accordingly.

It is, after all, the vicious system, not individual degeneracy, that ails the average corporation director. He knows he owes every stockholder all information upon which he himself may act.

If to conceal business secrets from rivals or for other reasons he must suppress certain facts, it is criminal for him to use that news for his own advantage secretly.

That such a moral code need not interfere with satisfactory earnings every one knows who has followed careers like that of Henry Walters and his associates of the Atlantic Coast Line and allied enterprises.

Betterment is the order of the day. Returning to the gas company of Chicago, Mr. C. Norman Fay, formerly its president, wrote last year in the Outlook of the early speculators in this stock, who ran "the gamut of prices up and down from 29 to 61 in '89, 32 to 51 in '90, 34 to 71 in '91, 71 to 95 in '92, 94 to 39 in '93, 58 to 79 in '94, 78 to 49 in '95, 78 to 44 in '96, 73 to 108 in '97. By the latest named year the earnings had caught up with the capitalization, the combination had been legalized, and dividends came regularly."

MR

SOME OF THE SEASON'S FICTION

RS. HUMPHRY WARD'S latest novel is a love story Woven around the theme of how Canada tested the soul ef an Englishman. The book, which is published in this country under the title "Lady Merton, Colonist," was originally called Canadian Born." It is the story of the awakening of Lady Elizabeth Merton, a proud product of the culture, refinement, and luxury of aristocratic English life, when she meets a resolute "outdoor man" doing pioneer work in the vast Canadian West. Her English lover, transported to the freeness and bigness of British North American life, fails to measure up to the opportunity, and, while a talented, scholarly, and generally good-fellow at home, is shown in Canada to be a singularly insignificant person, compounded of priggishness and simple futility." The final triumph of the woman's deepest instincts makes a climax of elevation and dramatic feeling. There is very little of plot, but some fine description, and the reader can see that Mrs. Ward is reflecting her own feelings when she writes of her heroine: "Her sympathies, her imagination were all trembling towards the Canadians no less than towards their country."

A new novel by Selma Lagerlöf is a noteworthy literary event. This book, entitled "The Girl from the Marsh Croft," is the first piece of fiction issued since last year, when the Swedish authoress received the Nobel prize for literature. It is the story of a girl who has transgressed the moral law and whose innate modesty and goodness are shown to be the redemptive qualities which finally win her the love of an honest man. The story is characterized by Miss Lagerlöf's fine, simple, direct, and courageous literary style. The personalities seem to live outside the printed page. There are other stories in the same volume, notably "The Legend of the Christmas Rose' and The Story of a Story." In the latter is given a record of the inspiration and growth of Miss Lagerlöf's greatest work, "The Story of Gösta Berling."

46

A moving story of a woman's desperate battle to keep her self-respect and her love for her husband, worked out with considerable literary skill, is Mrs. Helen R. Martin's "The Crossways.' Some years ago, it will be remembered, Mrs. Martin attained-a literary reputation for her story "Tillie, a Mennonite Maid," which was a tale of the Pennsylvania Dutch. "The Crossways" tells of the struggle of a cultured Southern woman, the wife of a physician, who, tender and idealistic before marriage, shows afterwards many of the unpleasant traits supposed to be characteristic of these same Pennsylvania Dutch. With the advent of the child comes the final battle and the woman's victory. There is much quaint humor in the

1 Lady Merton, Colonist. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. Doubleday, Page & Co. 351 pp., ill. $1.50.

2 The Girl from the Marsh Croft. By Selma Lagerlöf. Little, Brown & Co. 277 pp. $1.50. The Crossways. By Helen R. Martin.

311 pp. $1.50.

Century.

an English lady to secure as governess for her children a woman whose mental attributes shall be above reproach, but whose physical charms shall not be such as to win for her the affection of any of the men of the family."

There is a good deal of fine humor and delightful swift-moving description in Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd's new novel, "The Personal Conduct of Belinda." This typical young American girl piloted a party through Europe and had various interesting and quaint experiences in the doing of this unconventional task.

"The Education of Uncle Paul " was accom

4 The Undesirable Governess. By F. Marion Craw ford. Macmillan. 227 pp., ill. $1.50. 5 The Personal Conduct of Belinda. By Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd. Doubleday, Page & Co. 307 pp.. ill. $1.50.

The Education of Uncle Paul. By Algernon Blackwood. Holt. 340 pp. $1.50.

plished in a few months after he had reached his forty-fifth year of bachelorhood by association with a lot of small nephews and nieces, who led him into the world of children's fancy and sentiment and made him wise with the wisdom of babes. The author, Algernon Blackwood, who has already written a successful

or natural if the book had been an autobiography. It is delightful reading and wholly free from even a suggestion of dullness,-which is more than can be said of many of the past spring's "best sellers." Mr. Landis is one of that gifted Hoosier family which has for several years been brilliantly represented in the federal judiciary and in the national House of Representatives.

46

The Angel of Lonesome Hill" is another of Mr. Landis' brief but effective stories. It is of ordinary magazine length and can be read at a sitting, but it makes its appeal none the less forcibly. It is one of the few instances in American fiction in which a living ex-President has figured.

Hamlin Garland's "Cavanagh: Forest Ranger," is a clear presentation in story form of some of the problems confronting the Forest Service. As an interpretation of the life and ambitions of that fine body of men who care for

HON. FREDERICK LANDIS (Author of "The Glory of His Country ")

novel in England ("John Silence"), has a keen sense of beauty, a wealth of poetic invention, and a command of delicious humor. He dedicates his book to all those "children between the ages of eight and eighty" who have never "sojourned in the land between yesterday and to-morrow."

Only those who have lived in Russia or traveled extensively in that vast country can fully appreciate the accuracy of the portrayals of life at court and on the great estates which are given in "Snow-Fire," the new novel by the anonymous author of that now famous book, The Martyrdom of an Empress." Snow-Fire" is a story of court intrigue and the difference between social classes. The love plot is dramatically worked out, and the work has the same literary finish that has marked the other novels by the same author.

2

"The Glory of His Country " is a tale that makes vivid the finest type of patriotic selfsacrifice. The scene, characters, and plot are American, Middle Western, and modern. The author, ex-Congressman Frederick Landis, may have put into the story some of his own youthful experiences. Of that we are not sure, but the style could not have been more vivacious 1 Snow-Fire. Harpers. 369 pp., ill. $1.50. The Glory of His Country. By Frederick Landis. Scribners. 226 pp. $1.

inary kingdom in the Orient and treats of the development of the love-spell cast over a worldconquering king by the daughter of the monarch whose kingdom is invaded by the hero. The loveliness and arts of the heroine, who finally becomes the victim of her own wiles, are delightfully set forth by the author, who claims that he has merely translated the story from the original manuscript. It would be seductive as a translation; as an original creation it is even more delightful.

A strong, if somewhat hastily written romance is Meredith Nicholson's "The Lords of High Decision." This story of the Pittsburg of 1909 combines intensity, strenuousness, ideals, and love-making. There are four colored illustrations by Arthur I. Keller.

TRAVEL AND OUT-OF-DOOR BOOKS

2

The spring publishing season brings to the reviewer's notice an increasing number of books devoted to some phase of "the great outdoors." It would probably be most appropriate to begin with mention of Lieut. J. P. Müller's "Fresh Air Book." This little study of physical culture by an ex-lieutenant in the Danish army attempts to set forth a new system which does not idolize muscle. The author desires, he says, to show how by an understanding and proper use of the benefits of fresh air the human body may be given health, strength, and beauty, inside and out.

A vivid, appealing monograph on "swimming," by Edwin Tenney Brewster, aims (so the author tells us) to set forth the whole art of swimming, both new and old, chiefly for the benefit not of athletes but of "women, the middle aged, and the timid."

The story of the inception and development of children's gardens' is now told in book form by Henry G. Parsons, director of the department of school gardens of New York University. The book is illustrated from photographs. A more exhaustive work on the subject of school gardens is the monograph by Dr. M. Louise Greene," which has just been brought out by the Charities Publication Committee (one of the Russell Sage Foundation enterprises). This. book covers all sorts and conditions of garden work done for the educational value to the child, not only the school garden as it is ordinarily understood but school farms, vacant-lot gardens, back-yard and front-yard patches. It considers efforts made all over the country in this direction. The illustrations, of which there are many, are from photographs.

Two years ago Mr. and Mrs. C. William Beebe, both ornithologists of international reputation, made a noteworthy trip through Venezuela in search of new and rare birds. A second expedition included British Guiana in its scope. The results of these two trips have been The Lords of High Decision. By Meredith Nicholson. Doubleday, Page & Co. 503 pp., ill. $1.50.

The Fresh Air Book. By J. P. Müller. Frederick A. Stokes Company. 152 pp., ill. 85 cents.

3 Swimming. By Edwin Tenney Brewster. Houghton Mifflin. 95 pp.. ill. $1.

Children's Gardens for Pleasure, Health, and Education. By Henry G. Parsons. Sturgis & Walton Company. 226 pp., ill. $1.

Among School Gardens. By M. Louise Greene. New York: Charities Publication Committee. 388 pp., ill. $1.25.