change. The fact that South Dakota, which last week was reported as probably voting in favor of woman suffrage, is now definitely settled into the other column by about 5,000 votes does not affect the suffrage issue one way or the other.

To turn from the suffrage to the question of hyphenism, the results in Hoboken, New Jersey, and in St. Louis, Missouri, are interesting. In Hoboken, a city largely popúlated by Americans of German ancestry or birth, there is every evidence that the voters cast their ballots, not as they were directed by their self-appointed leaders, but as they individually pleased. Hoboken previous to election was flooded with circulars from the German Independence League of New Jersey, calling upon the voters to vote for Hughes, Wittpen, and Martine. There were nearly ten thousand votes cast in the city, of which Wilson received over 5,000, Hughes over 4,000, Martine about 4,700, and Wittpen some fifty less. The Second Ward of Hoboken, always strongly Republican, went for Hughes by even less than its normal Republican majority.

A similar story comes from St. Louis. Republican leaders had predicted that "Wilson would be slaughtered" in the seven Republican wards in South St. Louis, which are populated largely by Americans of German extraction. Even the Democratic leaders feared that Wilson would run five thousand behind the State ticket in these districts. Returns, however, show that President Wilson made material gains over the vote cast for the Democratic candidate at the last municipal election. Indeed, he ran only some three hundred votes in a total of eighteen thousand behind the Democratic candidate for Governor.

WHAT PARTY WILL CONTROL CONGRESS?

As The Outlook has already reported, the Democratic majority in the United States Senate remains at twelve, but it may be increased should the contest against Representative Howard E. Sutherland, Republican, who, on the face of the returns, has been elected Senator from West Virginia, result in favor of the present incumbent, Senator Chilton.

As to the House, as The Outlook has also reported, the outcome, as indicated, is a tie between the Republicans and the Democrats. Evidently the balance of power is held by

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five minor party members. They are an Independent from Massachusetts, a Prohibitionist from California, a Socialist from New York, a Progressive from Minnesota, and a Progressive Protectionist from Louisiana. Perhaps no minor groups ever had more power. It will be interesting to know what bids the Republicans and the Democrats will make to win their votes and thus elect a Speaker. To find a similar case we have to go back to 1855. Since then there has never been a Congress in which one party did not have enough votes to organize the House.

The Democrats have some hope of increasing their number, however, from the canvass of the vote of the Third District of New Jersey (Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties). The two Democratic members of the County Board of Elections, which acted as a Board of Canvassers, went on record as refusing to count the votes cast in two sections because the election boards had made the return of the votes in figures instead of spelling the numbers out, as the law requires. But the two Republican members insist that the votes should not be thrown out. The disfranchisement of the voters represented would defeat Robert Carson, the Republican candidate, who, on the face of the returns, had received a plurality over Thomas J. Scully, Democrat, the present Representative in Congress.

THE FIRST WOMAN

ELECTED TO CONGRESS

On another page appears the portrait of Miss Jeannette Rankin, Republican, the first woman to be elected to Congress. Her victory is the more striking as Montana went Democratic on the Presidential issue.

Miss Rankin is reported to be about thirtyfour years of age, slender, and with lightbrown hair; of personal attractiveness and with unusual intellect. She is the daughter of one of the Montana pioneers." She is this sort of girl," reports one of her friends:

Her father was trying to rent one of his houses in Missoula, Montana, and there wasn't any sidewalk in front of it. A prospective tenant was found, but the tenant said he wouldn't take the house unless it had a sidewalk. Jeannette called up some carpenters and found them too busy to lay the sidewalk. And so she bought the lumber, borrowed a hammer and saw, and laid the sidewalk herself.

Miss Rankin is a graduate of the University of Montana and of the School of Phi

lanthropy. She has been an ardent worker for woman suffrage, going to the farms and into the mines to argue the question. She is credited with having been more than any other woman the means of obtaining the suffrage in Montana. She wanted to carry the fight into the National Legislature, and made a hard fight against several men aspirants for the nomination as Republican candidateat-large for Congress. It is reported that she did much of her campaigning on horseback. After her election she said, as reported:

I knew the women would stand by me. The women worked splendidly, and I am sure they feel that the results have been worth the work. I am deeply conscious of the responsibility, and it is wonderful to have the opportunity to be the first woman to sit in Congress. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me.

Of course I know I'll be the first woman Member of Congress, but I believe I'll be received with courtesy and as an equal by those Eastern Congressmen, even though they are enemies of suffrage. While working for suffrage in the East I found that, no matter how strenuously our opponents fought us, they were always ready to hear our side.

THE HIGH COST OF FOODSTUFFS

President Wilson, in an address at Washington before the Convention of the National. Grange, offered one easy but not very convincing solution of the problem of the high cost of living. He said:

We ought to raise such big crops that circumstances like the present can never recur, when men can make it appear as if the supply was so short that the middleman could charge for it what he pleased. It will not do to be niggardly with the rest of the world in respect to its food supply.

Farmers who have experienced the sorrows which come from glutted markets, consumers who have seen foodstuffs left to rot on the farms because it did not pay to ship them to the city, while they themselves found no appreciable decrease in the cost of these same food products, will both be slow to accept the President's suggestion as even a partial solution of their pressing problems.

Increased food production does not necessarily mean cheaper food for the consumer unless the methods of distribution are so organized as to bring the surplus of food products cheaply to the consumers. On the other hand, under present conditions, increased

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production not infrequently reacts unfavorably upon both farmer and consumer, and most favorably upon the middleman. surplus of food products is often a weapon in the middleman's hands, not a protection against his extortions. It enables him, since he largely controls the channels of distribution, to buy at the price he pleases from the farmer and to sell at the price he pleases to the consumer.

If the pipe which leads from a reservoir is too small and too tortuous, it does not help matters much to increase the size of the reservoir itself.

WHAT THE CONSUMER IS PAYING

terest.

To the average consumer who is paying the present prices for food philosophical discussions as to why his daily bread is costing him so much have very little real inThe prosperity of the country to the consumer is expressed not in terms of gross tonnage of shipments from our shores, or in the totals of freight cars in movement across our transcontinental lines, or in bank clearances, or the growth of munition cities. The only prosperity which means anything to the average consumer is the margin between the price of living and the amount in his pay envelope. For those who are living on a fixed wage basis the following figures spell not prosperity but hardship:

Within the last month the best grades of flour have been selling at from $11 to $11.50 a barrel. Flour is higher to-day than at any time since the Civil War, when, at the close of that conflict, it brought $15 a barrel.

A month ago potatoes were selling in the New York market at $1 a bushel. To-day the price for the best grades is $2 and up.

A year ago granulated sugar sold for 5.85 cents a pound; to-day it is 71⁄2 cents a pound. Not long ago sugar sold at retail for three cents a pound. According to a market report in the New York "Times," from which most of these figures are taken, cabbages, which used to cost from four to five cents a head, now cost from ten to thirty cents. The "Times" says that turnips and carrots, which a year ago were selling in Washington Market, New York City, for fifteen cents a half-peck, are now bringing twenty-five cents. We know of one case where eight cents was charged for a single turnip.

Cheese is one hundred per cent higher than it was a year ago. Even common

cheese is now fourteen cents a pound. Not long ago it could be bought at six or eight cents. Although it was a good apple year in the East, apples also show the upward trend. The advance is from $1.25 to $1.50 per barrel over similar grades a year ago. Even the Ben Davis apples have gone up!

This list of prices might be continued almost without end. Every reader of The Outlook can doubtless supply additional articles the price of which has mounted skyward in the last few months. As the winter advances the problem of providing the necessities of life in the great majority of our homes will become increasingly serious.

These facts give special pertinence to the fourth National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, which is to be held on December 4 in Chicago. We hope to discuss the purpose and results of this Conference in later issues.

KEEP COOL AND GET COAL

"Keep cool and you will get coal" is the terse statement of a coal distributer to The Outlook, as his comment on the situation in the coal market, which is marked by famine prices.

It is difficult to get at the true explanation for the present abnormally high price of coal. A canvass by The Outlook of coal owners, coal transporters-that is, the railways-and coal distributers and dealers results in the production of a great deal of conflicting evidence. Some distributers blame the operators of the mines, some mine operators blame the railways, and some railway men blame the local dealers. Some experts say that there is no real coal shortage, and that the tense situation has been brought about by the panic psychology of the public. Other authorities admit that there is a real coal shortage, but they add that unnecessary excitement on the part of the public has aggravated the situation.

The truth is that, although the production of coal has been greater in 1916 than in 1915, there is a real shortage. One reason for this shortage is an unusually large consumption of coal this year. The shortage of bituminous coal, which was felt before the shortage of anthracite coal, was caused very largely by the excessive demand for soft coal owing to the high tide of manufacturing prosperity which the war abroad has brought to the United States. Another cause has been insufficiency of labor to meet the abnormal

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demand. The supply of labor for producing coal has been cut down by ten to twenty per cent, owing to the egress of workingmen from the coal mines into munition factories, where wages are higher and working conditions are more attractive. Still a third cause has been a shortage of cars for moving coal. Although few railway men will admit it, it seems to be a fact that more coal cars have been used for other than their natural purposes this year than ever before. Moreover, the unusual activity of factories has led to the sequestration of many coal cars, which have been sent to industrial communities faster than they can be unloaded and returned to the mines. A contributory cause may have been the celebration of holidays by the coal-miners, who have observed some fiesta occasions not observed by the general public, such as Mitchell Day-a day to commemorate the services of the labor leader John Mitchell in the interests of American coal-miners.

The situation in the soft-coal market has been and is much more serious than with the hard coal. Soft coal is now selling at $5 or $6 a ton, whereas a year ago it was less than $1.50 a ton. On the other hand, anthracite has not yet sold for more than twice its normal price, $7.75 a ton; in fact, there are few cases where anthracite has brought more than $12 a ton.

THE OVER-ANXIOUS PUBLIC

The shortage of anthracite, however, is what interests the average householder. It is here particularly that the tendency of the public to yield to its fears has had its most noticeable effect. About eighty per cent of the hard coal used in the United States is supplied by the big companies allied with the railways, and most of this coal has been sold at the regular rate. But, on account of an unusual demand here and there, some dealers have had to place orders with individual coal producers and speculators, who get premium rates for their product. Even such prices as $11 and $12 a ton wholesale have been recorded. As the public has heard of this state of affairs it has been inclined to get alarmed and to rush to buy coal lest the price should ascend further. Thus high prices have been begotten by the public's fear of high prices.

As usual, the poor, who buy coal in small quantities, have been the greatest sufferers. In one part of New York City a hundredpound bag of coal costs sixty cents-which