ner, is made of blue and white striped calico, and is the symbol of "dey proudness befo' de fall." The white dove is again seen, in the right upper corner, next to Cain. In the lower left corner is an elk with many branches to his horns. The animals, from an anatomical view-point, might be anything, but, as a matter of fact, each one represented only itself to the old creature.

In No. 3, perhaps the most purely symbolic of them all, is shown "Satan in de Seven Stars." There may be certain primitive and unconscious occultism in this strange symbol. It is sinister in its effect, positively diabolical in its feeling. The evil figure of Satan is black, with a pink eye (he is shown in profile. "De yuther eye is behin'," she said, "an' wusser 'n dis one !"). The stars are black with white centers. When asked why Satan held one of the stars in his arms, she said, elusively, "Dar ain't no tellin' dat, chile; no tellin' dat.”

In No. 4 is shown the murder of Abel by Cain. Abel is represented as a shepherd, and is in white. The sheep, wonderfully quilted in, are also white. Cain is drab, the knife is red, and the stream of blood "flowin' over de whole worl'," she said, is also scarlet.

No. 5 is, perhaps, the least interesting. It shows Cain when he went into the Land of Nod to get him a wife. She designated the spotted animal as a lion, "fer to prove de strength of Cain," showing that she was working in symbols.

In No. 6 is shown Jacob's dream. The angel is descending the ladder. Jacob's prone attitude represents, as she said, "de sleepin' uv him." The angel's wings are rose-colored, like the border of the quilt. When she was asked why she made the ladder spotted, she replied, whimsically, "I couldn't turn myself loose in color, honey! De animals' calico 'blige ter run over in de ladder. Dar wa'n't no yuther way." It is interesting to note, in the light of the recent controversy regarding the sex of angels, that this old creature made her angel, unreservedly, a woman thing.

No. 7 is really beautiful and certainly touching in its simplicity. It represents the baptism of the Lord Christ, with the holy dove descending. Christ is in white, and "de dove is kissin' him,” she said.

"An' John a-leadin' him by de han' like a chile." John is the right-hand figure and is in a faded gray-blue. The dove is very pale blue, almost white.

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In No. 8 are pictured in epic simplicity the tragedy and the inspiration of the Crucifixion. The Lord, in the center, is in white, the two thieves in drab. The crown of thorns is rose-colored and black. The soldiers' spears (used clearly as pure symbols) are black. The three disks represent the sun in varying dramatic stages of being. First it is black, the rays white, when "darkness come over de worl' in dat minute." Then it is white, "when de good Lawd accepted," and then turned to blood. "Wipe it out in de worl"," she said, with strange mysticism, "wipe it out in de worl'." The stripe across the body of Christ is again scarlet, representing the bleeding wounds.

In No. 9 are shown Judas and his thirty pieces of silver, the price of his betrayal. "Missy Coomby counted 'em for me," the old woman said, "'cos I kin count 'em backwards same as I kin count 'em forwards, an' dat ain' no way to count !" Judas is in drab. The disk at the bottom of the picture represents the whole worl' wid sin on top of it."

In No. 10 is shown the Lord's Last Supper. The disk in the center represents the table. The Lord is in white in the lower left-hand corner. The disciples are in blackand-white speckled calico. Judas is again in drab. "I giv' de Lawd a plate," the old woman said; "I couldn't spare no plate for de 'ciples." Primitive design saw no incongruity in making the table exactly like the sun, with certain reversals of color, because they both represented symbols, containing all the elements of forms, and therefore ignoring any specific form. I am reminded of the child who drew a picture-symbol on a paper. When her mother asked what it was, she replied, tersely, "God." "But no one knows what God looks like," said her mother. And, "Well, they will when they see my picture," the child replied, conclusively. It is the same thing. The Negro's mind is the child's mind; is the savage, original, spontaneous outputting of the divine.

No. 11 shows the Holy Family. The sun is white and rose-colored. The little Jesus is in white, Mary in pale blue, and Joseph in speckled calico.

There is a certain wistfulness about the old quilt that touches something fine in us. It is the unbidden pathos of any simple expression that comes from the deep heart, where sincerity bides her time in infinite patience

T

HE most interesting man in America

is President of the National Association of Corporation Schools. He is a Socialist who earns one hundred thousand dollars a year as a consulting engineer. He has a bent little-boy body with enormous bristling brown head lodged between up-shot shoulders. His body makes one suspect he has been sprawled over a planning board ever since he was born, whereby one accounts for the forward curvature in his spine.

One finds him in the arcade adjoining a convention hall-a brown, bushy, dynamic little man, standing hardly more than table high against the white wall. He is puffing a cigar and chatting wisely, eying his listeners. through gold-rimmed glasses cocked on his thick nose.

"No," he said; "there is no sentiment in business."

His forehead wrinkled. He reconsidered: "I might just as well say yes. Business has no sentiment, but often men in business are sentimental. There is Williams, the first President of the Association; and there is Edwards, of the General Electric; and Insul, in Chicago-these men are sentimental. They are very enthusiastic. I am sentimental-"

"Because of public opinion?"

He wagged his head. "Public opinion— it is overestimated; it forgets."

He went, for illustration, back to his turgid journalistic days in Germany when he ran a weekly Socialistic paper till the Government confiscated it, then ran another weekly, then a bi-weekly. "The public forgets; it forgot the Colorado massacre in three days. But the unions do not forget; the unions have a memory.”

He chatted, glanced about. Men passing through the tiled arcade stopped, looked, listened, inquired; were told that the wise little sage was Charles Proteus Steinmetz, chief

consulting engineer of the General Electric Company, inventor or perfecter of the induction motor, the polyphase motor, other motors, now President of the National Association of Corporation Schools.

One can feel the reach and play of his intellect. He has a tremendous mind, a tremendous heart; his heart and his mind are all of him. He is a Socialist; he is also

a social worker. As a Socialist he sees what industry can be, as a social worker he sets out to help alter it, as Socialist and social worker he is president of a big business organization that is undertaking to do a little more than make the United States the first industrial nation of the world.

In his hotel room, coatless, sipping tea, the little man explains that the Association is a young organization of private and quasi-private corporations, of railways, manufactories, mercantile and other business concerns, that represents perhaps half the industrial capital of the United States.

"We want to correlate the educational facilities of the corporations with each other and with the educational facilities of the whole country," he explained; "we want to increase the production of every worker so he can earn more, increase his consumption, and thereby raise his standard."

One hears that this Nation is first in point of resources, third in point of production. It is third in point of production because its workers are third in point of efficiency. Most are mistrained, many are illiterate. Illiteracy is costing the Nation five hundred million dollars a year, the United States Commissioner of Education says. Inefficiency is costing the Nation much more. Greater efficiency presupposes greater contentment in work through a·longer period of time, and those considerations mean that more than four per cent of our grade school graduates must have industrial training, and that to illustrate-ninety thousand New York City

boys must not be turned into blind-alley lives each year; must, instead, reach the summit of their hopes and their maximum average income of forty dollars or so a week at the late age of thirty-three, as the college man does, rather than their present maximum average of ten dollars a week at the early age of twenty-two.

In other words, the organization of which Dr. Steinmetz is President is setting about deliberately to supply, for want of any similar provision by the States, a substitute for the old apprentice system. It is seeking to prolong the life and the hopes of grade school graduates, of every untrained American worker, and to conserve and to develop them the most neglected and the most vital of American resources.

A corporation school, Dr. Steinmetz explains, is an elementary school conducted by a corporation to Americanize alien railway labor, for instance; or a commercial school with university class-rooms, and sometimes university lectures and credit; or a technical school with a course extending, as in one corporation, through four years of work of company work-time, demanding two hours each day, and a total of 10,960 hours in all, for bonus and diploma.

He went on; he summarized what he had said: "It is a question of efficiency-this new education . . ."

There is a new education, he believes, coming in America. The determination of it has in part come from the fact that but four per cent of American boys and girls are sufficiently educated, and from the perception that it takes a good man to stand an American college education. It has been stimulated by the cry for efficiency; but that cry is significant primarily because it indicates that it is coming to be realized that the cardinal function of a good citizen is meritorious production, or, what eventually will be considered synonymous with production-service.

Because their service is less than one hundred per cent efficient public opinion pounces upon the railways and upon other corporations, and now is resolutely turning to pounce upon the farmer and the planter too. And planter and farmer and corporations are beginning to retaliate. They are pouncing on the State and its educative processes, preaching and teaching efficiency.

"You are usurping a function of the State," the Industrial Relations Commission averred. "We are trying to show we want

to co-operate with the State," the first President of the Association replied.

The welfare of industry is the welfare of America, for the furtherance of industry is the furtherance of production, and production itself, theoretically at least, is provision for, and presupposes the welfare of, the undistinguished many in the working world. Everywhere there is new alliance between education and industry and between the corporation and the community. Even capital and labor are, in the big new tendency in education that has in it almost the only promise of industrial peace, reaching across from diverging paths to co-operate with one another in gaining the greatest happiness for all. Corporation executives are not undertaking a function of the State for charity, and the workers want no charity; each is doing his part, as Dr. Steinmetz pointed out, to increase his production, to better the standards of his own life.

Dr. Steinmetz likes to feel his mind running to broad theory. He reverted again and again to the industrial and social significance of the Corporation School Association, then he took a breath and leaped away once more to broad theory :

"In any business," he said, "three phases of organization have always been considered -the financial, administrative, and technical phases, I call them. But there is a fourth phase. It has been coming to attention for a long time, but we are just beginning to notice it. It is the human phase. It is just as important, just as essential, as the others-the labor unions and many other forces have made it so. ... The unions? What is fair for one side is fair for the other. You must let the unions organize. ganize. You see, when the small employer hired one laborer the two men bargained on an equal basis, but when many employers got together the employee did not have a fair chance. You must remember that a corporation is just many small employers banded together into a unit; instead of having them as individuals you have them as a corporation. Therefore as soon as you get an organization of employers logically you should get an organization of employees. That is good-the unions have helped to force the corporations to notice the fourth phase.

"The fourth phase-it has been considered last. It is going to be considered first." He grew suddenly enthusiastic. His blue eyes beamed so kindly that one was reminded of his life, so lonely that once he spent a