IV

Summing up the impression one derives from an examination of the report and the evidence, the Secretary was evidently keenly alive to the fact that a rubber shortage was impending, and to the desirability of bringing to the attention of the American people, in a striking way, the need of some action to forestall this condition. This he has undoubtedly done.

If in doing so he has advanced theories and contentions which upon the evidence of his department seem incapable of being sustained, this merely confirms what some of the most ardent admirers of his ability and achievements have reluctantly concluded: that his undeniably great gifts lie rather in the fields of organization of effort and of public opinion than in the fields of economics and the dispassionate analysis of controversial facts. His plea for a policy of freedom of raw materials from governmental control suffers from a too strongly nationalistic approach, from an overstatement of the case in specific instances, and from a failure to anticipate the obvious retort upon our own protectionist policies and to set forth the economic grounds upon which he distinguishes between the two policies and bases his appeal.

The evidence fails to demonstrate that the restriction scheme was either very beneficial to growers or highly injurious to consumers. It rather raises doubt whether the benefits to those whom it was intended to help were sufficient to justify its adoption.

The continuance of control after the rise of last summer may legitimately be

criticized, but nothing in the nature of a serious grievance against the growers seems to be established. They have, of course, conducted their operations with a view to gain, and not from altruistic motives; but, viewing the whole subject in perspective, and taking one year with another, it is evident that they have provided the raw materials upon which a major development of our industry and comfort is based, at prices which would not have been attractive to our own capital.

The problem of rubber supply is a serious one and may be said to have entered into a new phase during 1925. It is fortunate that the change should have come at a time of prosperity so that its effects were not of serious consequence to our manufacturers or to our

consumers.

Our people have a genius for economy in production, and our national vice is extravagance in consumption. Stimulation of the one and a slight curb on the other should suffice to bring about a satisfactory relation between demand and supply during the years immediately ahead, in which no great increase of production can be expected. The rise in prices will afford such a stimulation and such a check, and should at the same time encourage the plantation of new areas which will in the course of years provide for the natural expansion of demand.

If Americans find in the field an attractive opportunity for the employment of some of the country's abundant supply of capital, well and good; the record certainly establishes no case for our entering the field on an uncommercial basis.

IF you would know how much the human race perennially wants to get a letter, be its postman when you can. You need not be officially appointed by the civil service, nor yet officiously appointed by yourself. For in the normal course of events in a busy life, if you are light of foot and lucky, the chance will naturally come.

Casting back over a varied career as informal letter carrier myself, I recall most vividly two of my favorite routes. One was urban, one was rural, and it would be hard to tell which of these parishes was more eager for its mail.

My urban route led over the staircases of a beetling apartment building in one of the tallest and most crowded cities in the world - this in the days before elevators were in such common use as now. I lived that year within the summit of the highest crag, and at the postman's early morning bell down along the zigzag stairways I would spin. And as I went doors would open along those high, impersonal halls, and faces would look out, and pleasant voices would call after me the magic words of the unofficial postman's license to perform: 'If you are going down anyway, will you please bring mine?'

Eugene Field, it is said, used to get acquainted with his city neighbors by dropping into their flats without notice and requesting a bit of pie. My method, I must admit, was less convivial, but pleasant in its way. It was well worth the trouble of peeling out the letters from behind those tightfitting metal mail-box doors purely

for the pleasure of seeing, on my way back, the expressions of that highly conventionalized population come to life. Anticipating a letter, the human soul peeps out.

Once and forever I learned, that year, that it is not sheer bulk of correspondence, but the particular letter, that counts. There was, for instance, a certain beautiful dowager-duchess type of lady who counted that week lost when there was no letter from her son. Not that I ever scrutinized the envelopes in my charge, but as time went on I could not help learning to recognize the penmanship of that young man. And if the eighth day went by with handfuls of letters for this lady, yet not one addressed in the unmistakable square-cut fist, I felt at fault. On a grander scale, but similarly, I suppose the Angel Gabriel feels regretful when somewhere on his cosmic rounds he finds that he has among his messages no answer to a

prayer.

At least, I never got over the feeling of triumph when I saw that I had fetched the one and only letter to my clients, or the sensation that I should really have done something about it when I did not. If there was nothing for one of my patrons except a paltry advertising card, I felt apologetic as I doled it out, remembering James Barrie's famous postman of the glen, 'whose bitter topic was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him graciously when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he had

none, "aye implying that I hae a letter, but keep it back."

My favorite rural route was on an island far out in the Bay of Fundy, where the wee post office flew the flag of the British, and all the stamps bore the image of good King George. The mail boat arrived three times in the week, and, at the proper interval after 'she blew,' every fisherman's house on the island had its courier at North Head, waiting for the letters to be put out. My sister and I, by virtue of our pleasure in walking, were the delegates from the tiny seaside inn. The boat usually came in toward twilight, and we would hurry down and take our places in the waiting line, which, like the rush queue at the Boston Symphony, would stretch far out of the box-office door and go curving down along the road. When our turn at the window came at last, one of us would seize the letters, the other the accumulated newspapers of three days, and we would go posting back, past the boat-landing, past the 'Customs 'Us,' past the long-stemmed wharves perched spindling up fantastically far above the water at Fundy's lowest tide.

We never loitered in the half darkness to sort the mail, for we knew our friends were perishing. Up along the narrow road between fishermen's gardens filled with sweet peas and monkshood and shadowy poppies we would sprint, until we reached the little inn on the ledge near the harbor light. And there our friends would rush from all directions to greet us, by virtue of the cargo that we had. We always gave it to our leading lady, or to the leading man, to sort out under the lamp, and they would toss it rapidly into piles, like bridge fiends playing cards. We were a civilized group, no snatching, no pouncing, but with our souls popping out of our eyes we stood intent. Two or three days of famine

between mails whets the appetite. I think that with us that summer it mattered less what particular letters we got on any particular day. We still had our preferences, but we were starving. Anything made out of ink and paper with an actual flapped envelope to it was plenty good enough for us.

Probably at the opposite pole from this extreme there is such a thing as being spoiled by too much and too frequent mail. The man of affairs who has to answer a bushel of it three times a day may conceivably lose the thrill; but even he draws a distinction between his inside pocket and his files.

But

In a certain public-spirited household where each member has quantities of miscellaneous mail, it is the custom for the tribe to flock from all quarters at the postman's ring. The one who first reaches the door assorts the letters, and as he hands them around the others ask him quaintly, 'Was there anything?' to which he perhaps answers morosely, still parceling it out in bulk, 'No, not a thing.' To a guest this sounds like sarcasm, or a reflection on the value of individual friends. to the initiated it simply means that on this particular morning there happens to be no letter from the member of the family who is away from home. And when that looked-for family letter does come the rest of the mail remains unsorted, and everyone perches to listen on the stairs; if anyone is still wandering about the house at large the rest shout to him, 'There was something!' and to the entire avid con— gregation the letter is read aloud. If a far-away member of that clan wishes to write anything in confidence to his mother, he encloses it under the flap of the envelope in a little secret note. He knows that an actual letter from him coming into the house of an early morning and not to be shared with all would be too much of a tax on the

curiosity of his kin. For he has learned from experience that until his letter arrives the family will consider that there has been positively 'nothing' in the mail.

Some such emphasis upon home letters is characteristic of every united house. When my brother Geoffrey, at the age of nine, was spending a few weeks at a summer camp for boys, he wrote a letter to our mother which she has held up to us ever since as a model of correspondence for absent sons and daughters who are too busy to write long letters home. Geoffrey, in those days, was at the height of the caveman stage, and he felt that his parents would be relieved if in any way he rose above the average in things genteel. His letter ran:

DEAR MOTHER,

It is a pleasant day. I am all rite. I hope you are all rite.

Tell papa I do not eat with my knife. I would like you to send me some more cash, if you are not busted yourself.

With love,

G. Within this modest compass, our mother pointed out, three virtues of a filial letter are achieved. In the first place, the anxious parent could read between the lines that up to the date of mailing, at least, no imagined calamities had come true; the writer had not been poisoned by camp cooking or pinned under a capsized canoe. If he could write that letter, he must, in general, be feeling pretty much all rite.' In the second place, it was gratifying to learn that in resisting complete collapse into the savage state he was making every effort to keep up the family pride. In the third place, there was remarkable insight in that proviso which Geoffrey thoughtfully appended to his appeal for funds.

In the years that have passed since the arrival of that letter, our mother

has often had occasion to assure us that we need not wait until we have time to write a long letter, or what we consider a 'good' letter, before sending some message home. This business of putting off the act of writing until one has time to do the matter justice is the cause of prolonged lapses and temporary blockade. A good letter waiting to be written puts an effectual embargo on casual notes that might otherwise go forward without delay; and the longer the long letter waits, the more the material for it multiplies, until the human reason staggers in contemplation of the task. Over and over our mother has explained to us that the veriest scrap torn from a memorandum pad arriving on time is worlds better than the painstaking work of art that arrives ten days late.

She impressed this upon Geoffrey so strongly in his student days that, when hard pressed for time, he would drop into the post office, buy several postcards, and write his home letter upon them, going smoothly from one card to the next without a break. The only flaw in this arrangement was the little circumstance that very often the cards, though mailed all at once, would be delivered at different times. Sometimes the middle of his letter would arrive first, a card without beginning and without end, which, like all good serials, would break off in the midst of its most interesting part, the conclusion of which would arrive by some later post. Our parents were so glad of any word of any kind that they did not mind waiting over a mail or two to patch the letter up. But our sister Barbara disapproved the method, and planned revenge. She bought two postcards of her own, and started a letter to Geoffrey, in which she reported some remarks that several girls had made to her about him in his absence. She very carefully timed her

material so as to reach the end of the first card just as she mentioned the name of the only girl whose opinion of him would disturb him much: "Then this noon,' the first card concluded, 'I saw Priscilla on the street, and she' Here ended the card. Obviously the rest of the sentence would be continued on the next. Barbara posted the first installment at once, retaining card number two for mailing on the following day. She estimated that this would give our brother at least twenty-four good hours to watch for the postman and to worry about what Priscilla might have said. Finally Barbara posted the second card, the top line of which went on, 'did not happen to see me, as I was going into the bank and she was just taking a car.'

If our mother had known about this plan in time, Barbara's postcards would never have been sent, for she could not have allowed us to disarrange Geoffrey's writing habits in any way. She had been at too great pains to teach him that any word from him was welcome no method too patchy or informal, no detail too trivial, no generality too flat, to afford unfailing interest to relatives left at home.

Knowing my mother's ideas on this subject, and knowing too how well I liked to hear minor details myself, I used to fill my letters home with all those odds and ends of fact that go to make up what psychologists not altogether admiringly name 'total recall.' Geoffrey, to whom my letters were always forwarded, used to be immensely tickled at the style of document that the family considered 'one of Margaret's best.' On one occasion he resolved to emulate the manner, and wrote a masterpiece that he sent home on condition that it should not be forwarded to me. His effort was dated at the campus library, and it began, 'When we came down to breakfast this

morning, we found a rasher of bacon neatly served on a crockery plate, a knife, fork, and spoon at each cover, coffee served in a white cup accurately balanced on a saucer to match, with or without sugar and top-milk. After breakfast I walked with Spider Babcock up to the Hill, along Cosine Avenue, and arrived at my class in descriptive geometry, wearing my darkblue serge with the hair-line stripe, my navy-blue tie with the black sprig, and my gray socks with the neat darn in the centre of the foot.' The letter went on to tell just what Spider Babcock said in class to Piggy Robbins, and what Piggy then replied, and how they all prospered in the subsequent appointments of the day - all as nearly as possible in my own conscientious vein. He expected a storm of derision from the family, and he got it from Barbara, who replied at once in kind. But our mother assured him that of all his letters this was the one that gave her the most animated notion of his academic day.

As a family scatters and grows older, it becomes more and more difficult to decide which letters shall be forwarded to the other members away from home. Sometimes in the most confidential clan one may wish to write a letter that will not bear circulation among all the brothers and sisters and all of their in-laws. Geoffrey and Priscilla, after their marriage, hit upon a simple device. If a letter of theirs was to be shown to the whole family connection, they marked it 'P. R. S. V. P.' This, Geoffrey explained to us, meant 'Pass round, s'il vous plaît.' Documents of a more incriminating or special nature were marked 'Don't P. R. S. V. P!' with now and then a dado of skulls and crossbones to make the meaning clear. Some such device as this should be adopted by great men, to indicate which of their letters should and which