DEAR ATLANTIC, I was very much interested in what Mr. Walter Henderson Grimes had to say about "The Curse of Leisure' in the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The title of the article arrested my attention at once, undoubtedly due to the fact that I, as well as the people with whom I come in daily contact, have so very little leisure. Of course, I discovered almost immediately that Mr. Grimes was talking about a different kind of leisure than the title suggests -a continued leisure imposed upon a rising percentage of our people who find themselves without work, due to modern efficiency methods.

It was shown that 85 per cent of the people employed in 1923 are to-day able to do all the work involved in providing food, clothing, shelter, and luxuries for all the rest, and that this percentage tends to drop, leaving the hypothetical 15 per cent (or more) without a means of earning their living. In other words, this is giving a certain percentage of our people more leisure than they want, and I believe if you were to ask any one of the others you would be told he has not leisure enough.

Then why don't we give everyone employment five days, or four and one-half days a week, and in so doing give more leisure to those who now have so little?

Of course it will be said that among those who now find themselves out of work are the 'hopeless dubs,' the 'trouble makers,' etc. Nevertheless, I am sure a place could be found for them all. There is bound to be one other objection. If a man works only 85 per cent of the time he is now working (because the hypothetical 15 per cent Mr. Grimes speaks of are doing their share of the work), and his pay is reduced 15 per cent, he certainly is going to put up a fight. Instead of being able to have more of the world's goods that he desires, he will be able to have less than he has

now.

There must be something wrong somewhere! There are enough raw materials to supply all our needs. There are enough people to convert these raw materials into finished products and to enjoy considerable leisure besides. Yet, if everyone shares in this work, there will be a large number of individuals who will not be earning enough money to buy all the things they need or desire. Should n't there be an adjustment of values somewhere? Increased efficiency, together with 100 per cent employment, would flood the market with goods. This would bring prices within reach of the consumer, would it not? I do not profess to know much about economics, but this seems logical to me.

The good an extra day of leisure every week or, if allowed to cumulate, 52 days a year would do for an individual is incalculable. I have

known times when but one or two hours of reading would put me in high spirits for days, and a week of life out of doors would give me incentive to face an otherwise dull and dreary world with courage and enthusiasm. If you don't believe people need more courage and enthusiasm for living their lives, then just stand at some street corner some night and watch them as they go home from work.

I can only wish that I and all mankind would have more spare time. Has it not been said that nations produce their finest art in periods of leisure? If we had more, would it not give rise to higher thinking? And, with higher thinking, would we have as many prisons, plagues, and wars? I am for leisure and more of it. Sincerely yours,

I will say, and every honest man will say with me, that the American-born laborer, as well as he who has come to us from Northern Europe, is the best and most intelligent worker to be obtained for any kind of construction work.

Thousands upon thousands of this kind of men are out of work to-day not because they refuse to work for the comparatively low wages which are paid on these jobs (because this white man is fairly well balanced and knows exactly what he is worth, pink and yellow literature notwithstanding), but because these white men resent being herded into the same tents with a conglomerate of races that begins as low in the scale as the Cantonese coolie.

Now it is a well-known fact to all of those who have done construction work in the West that, when an American works side by side with a coolie or South European, for some unknown reason his boss permits himself to treat the white man with contempt. The white man feels this and consequently, within a very short time, there are two coolies working on that job and the white is looking for other employment for no other reason but that he suffers from the 'Curse of Too Much Self-Respect.'

So it seems to me, and many others like me, that, if we want jobs for the many thousands of common American laborers, then we must cater to their white man's Superiority Complex. And it is hardly necessary to say that the employer will profit by so doing, unless he is the kind of

man who tries to treat his help of American-born men as a Bulgarian voivode treats his serfs.

Ask an engineer whether he is willing to run original surveys with a crew composed of coolies or Montenegrins, on a job that will test the soul and fibre of every man in his gang. The engineer knows that, as sure as the sun rises, he would be forced to take coolies with him if his bosses thought that the coolie would and could do the work for ten cents less a day than the white man. This does not engender loyalty in the engineer toward his employers. At the same time he does his work, even if it should take the ultimate in nerve and physical strength, not out of any sense of respect or love for his bosses, but because of the white man's superiority complex that drives him to carry on long after his body has become a broken wreck.

Does history, as we know it to be true, prove that the darker races will do the same? Or is it not they who look to us for help?

There is an enormous amount of labor being done by dark hands in this country which could and would be done by native Americans if they had but the surety of a square deal.

I well remember the days when there were three crews on every construction job: one working, one coming, one going. Camp superintendents would take bribes from employment agencies for every new man they hired. This would naturally make business for the agency, but also would throw another man into the ranks of the unemployed, because the superintendent had to fire a man for each one he hired. These laborers knew what was going on and, automatically, this made them careless workmen on the next job.

To sum up: Give to American men the jobs held by dark-faced labor to-day. Permit the laborer to hang on to his self-respect, something he has never been permitted to do in the history of our country. Facts prove that he has the right to be suspicious of his bosses. It is a terrible indictment against cultured America that none but the I. W. W. cleaned up the vermin-filled lumber camps of the West.

An American miner will take pride in and brag about the amount of rock he has moved. The dark-faced foreigner is interested in his pay check only.

Give the American farmer helpful legislation, so that he may not be forced to leave the plough to the dark hands of Asiatics. God help the United States when it must depend upon the Asiatic to feed its people and to furnish its men of vision. Our great men have always come from close to the soil. Should we be willing to let Asiatics and kindred bloods fall heir to the lands that nourish the lifeblood of America?

In closing I would like to say that, some time gone, I read a speech of Judge Gary's in my asso

ciation paper. In this talk he tried to impress upon the leaders of Federated Labor the necessity for the use of the Golden Rule in their dealings with STEEL. How the Devil must have chortled when he heard these pearls of wisdom as they fell from the lips of the estimable Judge Gary, the FRIEND OF LABOR.

Close the immigration gates and give American Labor a chance to hang on to its self-respect, and our children will bless us.

Very respectfully yours,

MAXWELL E. HILL, C.E.

P.S. May it not be well to keep American money at home? The first protest that was made against the immigration regulations now in effect was filed by the Rumanian ambassador. His statement was to the effect that 'it was a vital necessity that more of his countrymen be permitted to come to the United States. That Rumania MUST have the money that was being sent, year after year, from the United States of America.' Is the above good business?

M. E. H.

These fears may find adequate basis in a letter we recently received from a Chinese in London, Ontario, suggesting that he alleviate the white man's burden by writing for the Atlantic. California papers please copy:

My English is simple, here and there are some little mistakes I know I have, for my insufficient English does not permit me to collect. I am seventeen years of age. I cam over from China five years ago and could not speak a word of English. Ever since I learn to read English I have been an Atlantic Monthly reader and now I came to love it. My present article was inspire by the articles on China in your great paper. Please let me know if you have any use for it. And I will send you for examination. It is the longest I have ever written.

PARK RIDGE, N. J.

DEAR ATLANTIC, When the name Paul Shorey appears in the table of contents in the Atlantic we turn to his contribution with pleasant anticipation. Not always to give unqualified assent, but always to find ourselves entertained. Is his defense of Bryanistic special creation to be taken as scientific criticism or is it only a literary tour de force? It is the last, but is it the first? Of this handicraft creation or mechanistic evolution we choose neither. The adventure of the Amœba who rose to the rank of Homo Sapiens is full of interest, and many of its steps may be traced, but at the same time countless grains of sand rolled on the ageless shores and neither lived nor died. Why did this amoeba person get ahead and a head? Evidently for the reason that he was alive. Life is ever pushing out and up. Why? The answer is that life seems to aspire. If the word 'evolution' only means permutation and gyration, let us so name it. The fact seems to be that the poetry of to-day began to be written when the amoeba began to get restless. The rest is only detail. Seek the meaning of the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' in the amoebano, seek the meaning of the amoeba in the ode. The significance of the whole process is best seen in or at the most advanced point.

This tendency of life to get on may be capitalized and looked up to. It may not be a proper theophany, but we owe a good deal to it. Man may join the amoeba in aspiration and so become as pious as he. Why not? It is easy to be hopeful when we see how far the amoeba has already traveled. Biological evolution, going on all around us, moves to Wagnerian music and is as full of poetic suggestion as the old Hellenic mythology. It was the writer's good fortune to hear Matthew Arnold's 'Literature and Science,' in which he was at his best as a controversialist, but while he poked delicious fun at the hairy ancestor of Science furnished with a tail and pointed ears and his probable arboreal habits, we may be sure that he did not imagine that he had chased Science from the field never to return. Were he alive to-day he might see in our scientific conceptions of the Creation-particularly in biological evolution, so little understood - the same values which he saw in poetry at its best. The facts behind both are the same. The intelligence of our day may concern itself with the poetic task of discovering and clearly stating the living values of science for personal ends which are truly cultural.

Too many scientists are so much occupied with telling their beads that they cannot see these values, and others seem to hold a brief for making

I do not believe that the Kellogg Pact can prevent wars, but it is none the less very useful in that it puts any nation with bellicose intentions in a very difficult position.

As for the monetary stabilization in Europe, I do not believe that it is due to the lack of gold, but merely to the disequilibrium between production and consumption. Europe is almost as extensive as the United States of America, but it is divided into thirty-five countries, and any exchange between them is very difficult. Thus the vast resources of the Old Continent are in part not utilized. The greatest source of harm at the moment lies in the existence of the brutal and sanguinary dictatorships, such as exist in Italy and Russia. Bolshevism and Fascism are the shame of our European civilization.

My eldest son is now in America, making a speaking and lecture tour chiefly confined to universities, where he is explaining the Fascist situation in Italy.

With best wishes, I remain

NITTI Former Prime Minister of Italy