This was organized by men engaged in various branches of business, and included in its membership by their invitation business women and representatives of every woman's civic club. The purpose was to study measures under debate in the Legislature with the aim of encouraging good and hindering immature and hasty enactment; insurance men, commission merchants, attorneys, Mothers' Congress delegates, and Federation Club workers co-operated with the Legislature and gave them the advantage of the more extensive view-point.

MEN MORE FAMILIAR WITH CIVIL
GOVERNMENT

Although the Western-trained woman takes her balloting naturally, the race training which for generations has endowed men with this responsibility is noticeable in the greater familiarity of the men with statutory technicalities. As yet the conversation and companionships of the average girl do not give her as accurate a civic training as her brother's, although she is intelligently informed. Mrs. Cynthia Mann, a teacher at the time of the adoption of suffrage, and later donor of the Idaho State Children's Home site, said in a memorandum the year following suffrage:

"Another effect that is worthy of notice is the great interest among the pupils of our public schools in the study of political economy. The girls often felt less interest in this science because they would have no voice in political affairs, while most boys said that they could vote without studying this science. Now the girls, like their mothers, look upon this new responsibility as a grave one. boys are not to be outdone, and it is delightful to see the zeal with which they attack this so-called dull study.”

The

The greater part of the book work in connection with elections in Idaho, including registration and polling, is done by the women, which gives them a more intimate conception of the machinery of government. The polls are quiet and maintain somewhat the dignity of a formal social function with men and women present.

The omens are already in the sky predicting that women may become more informed as citizens than the men. The women's clubs for civic study and the practical application which is given their balloting are having a broadening and educational effect. Where is to be found an organization of men with the purpose of perfecting the members for the more efficient performance of the duties of citizenship? The history of edu cation, which at first in the annals of mankind was restricted to the masculine sex, may be considered as a precedent, the number of women completing high school and collegiate courses now exceeding that of the men.

IS THE FEMININITY OF WOMEN AFFECTED? Has the ballot affected the femininity of women? If the charm of womanhood has escaped with the entrance of the ballot, both men and women are so blind to the condition as not to know their loss. Rare indeed would be the person found repining for the good old days when women couldn't vote. Do the women vote the same as their husbands? Some women vote to the dictation of the men, which condition will continue until every woman knows how to express her own self. The point is, the woman who is awake to her privilege of expression has it, and it is potentially possible to the unknowing one when she awakens. Some men still sleep. There has not been a record of the percentage of men and women voting, but in some precincts it is said that more women than men vote.

THE OLD AND NEW IDEALS OF CITIZENSHIP

Twenty years of the ballot in the hands of women with men in Idaho has developed that State along moral and advanced lines, with legislation which has outrun the old Puritanical States of their forefathers. The temptations of the early days-drink, gambling, and houses of ill repute-are swept away. But it is claimed by some who have watched the change of the past twenty-five years that Idaho with statutes, granting them enforced, is not as righteous as Idaho without statutes. The story of the pack-driver

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with one barrel of whisky more than he could haul up the hill is told to illustrate the former integrity. Finding it impossible to continue his journey so heavily loaded, the driver deposited the barrel of drink by the roadside. with two cups, one for the passing travelers to partake of the contents and the other to receive the pay. Later he returned and took

his cup of coin. No such sense of honor is universal to day, say the story-tellers. Yet even they would hardly want to go back to the old days.

SUFFRAGE SANE IN ITS OPERATION

The intense attitude of some of the promoters of equal suffrage might have led to the belief that when the reform went into operation the commonwealth would be in a state of upheaval and that radical measures would be enacted to the disturbance of the common peace. Its practice, however, has proved that it does not carry a destructive tendency. Eighteen months after its adoption Mrs. Cynthia Mann, quoted above, wrote:

"When the Supreme Court of Idaho decided that the equal suffrage amendment had carried, it was pleasing to note how quickly

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all aggressive opposition ceased. Those who had been zealous opponents refrained from predicting the evil consequences that would be the result of women voting, and at all elections held since, primary, municipal, and school, have vied with the ardent advocates of this reform in politics in securing the presence at the polls of this new element in governmental affairs."

It has continued sane in its operation; the leaders among the women are of a high type. Its inherent policy of educating the general public to its reforms burns out fanaticism in the long journey of the proposed enactments through committees, local discussions, and press reports. The exaggeration of energy displayed in the fray for suffrage is one of the results of antagonism. When the antagonism is withdrawn and suffrage is permitted to fill its mission, its course has been found to be orderly and constructive

This

is the inevitable working of the metaphysical law. For equal suffrage is an expression of the principle of equality, and, as a principle in operation, can produce only harmony and satisfaction in its proper manifestation.

T

WO years and a half ago the num

ber of consumers' co-operative clubs in this country engaged in buying

. food products direct from producers and big wholesalers was so small as to deserve merely passing mention. But to-day you will find over two hundred such organizations flourishing in New York, a hundred each in Chicago and Philadelphia, and thousands of others scattered among the larger cities east of the Mississippi-for it is in the Middle West and the East that the need for simplifying our present system of distributing farm products is most keenly felt. Community groups of housewives, factory workers, and employees of banks, department stores, and business offices have banded together by the thousand to develop a practical way of buying their food supplies at lower costs. It is no longer an experiment with these people; it is a weekly practice and thrifty accomplishment, for the savings of the modern buying club average twenty per cent-to say nothing of

improved freshness of quality which the direct-marketing plan affords.

The typical buying club in the East purchases its eggs from producing sections as far West as Iowa, and brings them on in quantities of a hundred dozen. Its butter, packed in easily divisible units of one-pound cartons, comes from any of the large creameries of Indiana or Ohio. Poultry, beef, pork, and lamb in handy lots of fifty or a hundred pounds are obtained from the mail-order departments of large packing-houses of the West. And vegetables, honey, fruits, nuts, and dozens of other products of the farm and orchard are bought in quantity, transported in quantity, paid for in advance by the club, and then divided up among its members. The buying club depends for its success upon the elimination of all unnecessary middlemen; it conducts what in reality is a long-distance mail-order marketing plan, with the whole. country for its shopping field.

Two things are responsible for the buying

club idea and its growth: the industrial work of the express companies in linking up country producer and city consumer in an effort to recoup traffic losses caused by the parcel post, and the extraordinary sudden eagerness of many large producers of meat, butter, and other foodstuffs to sell direct to the city co-operative club. The transportation companies have brought consumer and producer. into actual commercial touch by the gathering and publishing of specific price quotations, details of quality and packing, and other essentials to successful direct marketing. Reputable farmers and large wholesalers anxious to break into the new market have been sought out and educated to standardize their product and maintain that standard as carefully as the corner grocer does this for the city housewife. Weekly bulletins with definite offers by reliable producers have become an institution among thousands of consumers' clubs. The express, with its country agents on the one hand and its city agents on the other, has been able to bring buyer and seller into mutual confidence. Coupled with the sales initiative of producers to go direct to the kitchen of the consumer-an initiative which has meant the invention of new carriers and containers especially adapted to shipping direct to consumers' clubs-this industrial work has resulted in the organization of thousands of city co-operative clubs, the first real co-operative movement in the country.

The buying clubs range in size from twenty to three hundred members. In a fashionable suburb of New York one large club is operated among more than three hundred families. Its Thanksgiving turkey order runs over nine hundred pounds. In a single winter month its "market-basket " amounted to 60 dozen stalks of celery, 1,000 dozen eggs, 700 pounds of poultry, and 2,000 pounds of other products bought direct from farmers and packers and creameries. A large club in Chicago among the employees of a business firm spends nearly $5,000 a month among the producers of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. It reckons its savings at twenty-five per cent, and is big enough to retain the exclusive services of a salaried clerk to conduct the affairs of the club. The town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, with 70,000 population, is served by fortyodd buying clubs which embrace a membership of several hundred families. In a single day the local express agent received orders for lake fish to the extent of 2,000 pounds-or

a typical metropolitan buying club in cutting the living costs of its members will make the significance of the movement apparent. In one lower New York Broadway business firm over two hundred employees are organized to buy foodstuffs direct. The secretary of the club gathers orders from the individual members early in the week, lumps them, selects the names of producers with whom he would prefer to deal from the weekly quotation Ists supplied to the buying clubs by the food products departments of the express companies, and sends in an order. He can ask the transportation company to handle this order for him if he desires, leaving it at a branch office, or can himself mail the order with check. Frequently, after getting in touch with good producers, the buying clubs deal directly with them. The secretary knows that any producers quoted on the weekly bulletin are reliable that they are better prepared than the average farmer for shipping highquality goods direct to consumers. The bulk of his "grocery list "is weekly made up of. butter, eggs, and meats, although, in season, vegetables and fruits are popular.

Upon stated days the various products arrive for distribution-butter and eggs one day, meats the next, etc. Right here the buying club stands or falls. How much labor is involved in the distribution to members? Is it too much bother? For if it is, no co-operative scheme will succeed in America. The manufacturers-the country producers-have calculated upon this; they have seen that the way to make a consumers' co-operative scheme successful is to make the work at the consumers' end as easy as possible-something which has never been carefully worked out before. So the lower Broadway club secretary finds the butter, for instance, packed in sanitary, waxed-cardboard cartons of one pound each; the eggs already

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divided into single-dozen boxes; the chickens wrapped fit for carrying home; fruit and vegetables in convenient-sized hampers; and hams and bacon strips wrapped neatly enough to lay on your office desk. By snapping up the trifles of packing and shipping the country producer and big wholesaler are finding a solution to the direct-marketing problem. It is an office boy's job of an hour or two to apportion the various orders to the members, wrap them in paper and twine bought by a three per cent tax levied on members of the club for that purpose, and have them ready for each man to take home with him at night.

That the idea does really work out and pay in substantial savings is proved by the rapid growth of the movement and the immense popularity of the plan among city workers. It is particularly interesting to note that several large Eastern clubs are fostered by the employers of the members to the extent of the firm carrying the club's bills on its own books, paying the producers itself, and debiting each member on pay-day for the amount of foodstuffs charged against his account. One large Eastern club in a suburban town maintains a delivery service to the homes of its members for approximately five cents per package, and, in spite of the added cost, has rapidly increased the amounts of its purchases. The margin of saving, even with delivery cost, is enough of an inducement; for the suburb, like many another town outside of the conventional system of foodstuffs distribution, pays unusually high prices to its retailers. Co-operation has saved the members between twenty and twenty-five per cent in their weekly provision bills.

It is, of course, out of the question to suppose the the large cities of the country will ever dispense with the present chain of middlemen to take up direct marketing via the buying club route. The examples given above are interesting and sensational in their accomplishment of lowering the cost of foodstuffs for a comparatively minute portion of our population. But practically nowhere near twenty per cent of the city folk will ever try it and continue it. Yet the buying club movement is none the less a movement of real economic importance. It has a regulative effect. Even within the last few months it has proved its capacity for hammering down the exorbitant level of prices which have been imposed upon the public in many centers of the densely populated district east of the Mississippi. Every ton of butter, eggs, meat,

41

and vegetables brought into a town through the newly dredged channel of the buying club forces upon the retailer the necessity for a simplification of the distribution system where it is possible to simplify. In some

cases it has resulted in the retailers themselves turning to the very supply fields drawn upon by the buying club, and thus getting their stocks direct from producers where before they had been buying from jobbers and other · wholesalers. Buying club competition in the town of Nyack, New York, forced the prices of staples down nearly twenty-five per cent for an entire winter, and resulted in the carrying of fresher and more varied stocks in several retail stores.

The consumers' end of the buying club movement is profitable, both directly when club members save money and indirectly when a family profits by a regulated price level. But to the farmer and country manufacturer of food products it has been even more profitable-to many a man it has meant a brand-new sort of market with twenty to one hundred per cent better prices for his goods than he ever got before. The creation of thousands of buying club markets anxious to buy direct from country sources has developed a small class of business farmer whose function is really that of a mail-order house. And, as has been suggested, in addition to the clubs themselves, often city retailers have come direct to the country to do their buying. An egg gatherer in a small New York town, by catering specially to the buying club trade of New York and Buffalo, developed a business of $5,000 a month within six months. Through quotations on the express weekly bulletins he secured the patronage of club after club, until, as is frequently the case in industrial work, he was forced to request the transportation company to withdraw his name from the bulletin, because of too many orders received.

There are innumerable instances of the creation of wider and more profitable markets for farmers through the buying club movement. By standardizing their produce at the source that is, by carefully grading and neatly packing their foodstuffs for shipmentlettuce-growers, apple-growers, and honeyproducers have found new channels for the disposition of their goods at much better prices than they received when marketing in the old way. Sixty thousand pounds of honey were marketed via express in small consignments during a single season for one

Michigan producer. Buying clubs and small. retailers in Eastern cities took the greater part of his output. He had no transportation charges to pay, no sales overhead expense, and, besides, he got fifteen per cent higher prices than ever before. Similar cases of profit to the farmer by this "cutting across lots" to market his produce could be cited in regard to the sale of eggs, maple syrup, vegetables, and cheese. For some time the large creameries of Ohio and Indiana have been receiving orders direct from consumers' clubs and small retailers at the rate of forty thousand pounds per month-not an enormous figure, considering the immense quantities of butter eaten, but none of this business existed heretofore. It is a direct trade and has sprung up and increased quickly, due to the buying club movement. The city of

Paterson, New Jersey, with forty-odd buying clubs, "imports" butter at the rate of nine thousand pounds per month direct from the creamery. A little over two years ago no such direct market was available for the butter manufacturers.

It is of significance that the producer has found a way to market his stuff direct to consumers in the city, even if it be only a small portion of his crop. For it tends to break him away from the unfortunate notion that he is wholly dependent on the chain of middlemen which looms up between him and what he considers a fair profit. If he chooses to be a business farmer, a manufacturer of country produce with sales relations direct with consumers' clubs or retailers, he has a fair chance to "do it now " under the buying club patronage.

H

AVE you ever seen a man who had been shot dead? Or, rather, have you ever entered a house in which

a man had been murdered and the body of the victim was still warm? It is an unpleasant picture to call up, but it is the only way to give some idea of how it feels when you stealthily enter the town of X.

It used to be a flourishing little Austrian city before the war, alive and gay with a civic life and a civic pride of its own. Then came the audacious dash of the Italians for the lower Isonzo, and the Austrian soldiers were driven across the river. There they turned around under cover of their mountain fortresses and shot the little city dead. They might have stopped then, because it is just like a corpse and cannot fight back even if it would; but they have riddled its body time and again, uselessly, cruelly, wickedly.

I say this because I saw it done when I went to "view the body" as a sort of neutral coroner, and these are my findings upon an actual inspection.

We had driven from Army Headquarters

past the rear lines and encampments through that zone I have heretofore described as being within reach of the long-range guns of the enemy, and where civilians still prefer to take the chance of an occasional bombardment to the severance of the old home ties.

Now we were leaving all that behind us for more exposed highways. Where there was no shelter of wall or cover of trees on the highroad the military chauffeur would put on full power and the machine covered the open stretch on racing time. It is really wonderful how fast an automobile can be made to go when it is a question of dodging shells; it is a speed test which our automobile selling agents might consider.

As we drove into the square of the murdered city a strange sensation seized one; it was very, very still, with houses which were more impressive because of their look of having been absolutely and hastily untenanted than on account of their dismantled appearance.

In all this solitude a lone sentinel presented arms to our colonel as we got out of the car. He was the only fighting man visible, and