women to live together and part at will, and if that law can be made available to any American by the mere crossing of a State line?

It is indecent that the safeguarding of common morality for all the States can today be broken down by a State law in any single State.

We have little reason to boast of our National morality till a National divorce law, if it does provide that the decent of either sex need not be chained forever to a human brute, shall also provide that in no State shall a mere temporary mating from time to time at the call of transient passion be legally sanctioned with the holy name of marriage.

The boast of America is its public schools. Why should schools be built if the children are prevented from attending them? There is no massacre of the innocents in the Bay State, and we, with our stern restriction of child labor, have seen our industries checked and New England capital go to States where anarchy is bred in the coal breaker and the cotton mill, where brain and body are dwarfed and stunted in little children, citizens in the making, whose toiling hands are scarcely large enough to swing a ball bat or cage a butterfly.

Why should it be possible for any State to offer extra dividends to capital by permitting a kind of labor that strikes at the very root of American citizenship?

Let National law take the children from the mills and mines and put them in the schools in every State in the Union.

We owe much to the great captains of industry who have built the railroads and the lighting plants and the telephone and telegraph lines. It is not the fashion to remember the losses and risks of the same men, nor to give them credit for what they have dared for their private profit, of course, but for the public benefit also. these great enterprises are consolidating is no crime, but as absolutely logical a development as the combination of labor in labor unions.

That

Transportation, especially, has its hand on every line of industry in this country. It is rapidly coming into a very few hands. It can build up one port and wreck another. It can make or break any manufacturing industry. These are truisms. It is also a

the railroads or the railroads will control the State.

We are to some extent controlling corporations, but chiefly by all kinds of local legislation whose constantly varying form makes the profitable field of investment of to-day a desert of deficit to-morrow. Fair play to corporations as well as the protection of the public demand the establishment of a uniform system of corporation control by expert advisers under the supervision of the National Government, applying one law to all States and enforcing the same law from one end of the country to the other.

Why stop at regulation? Why would it not lend greater stability and uniformity to business if the United States used the common sense of other countries and adopted a single system of incorporation with a National Commissioner, for the sake of convenience, in each State?

We

Every nation in the world, except ours, has a single law of incorporation applicable uniformly to everyone in the nation. have half a hundred systems hampering business men as well as sequestrating square dealing from the public.

It is absurd that there should be half a hundred different ways of incorporating a company in the United States. Is it not ridiculous that it should be possible for a company doing business in one State to evade even the spirit of its laws by taking out a charter in another State? Isn't it wrong that because some one single State encourages stock watering and issues corporation charters permitting it, that the people of many States, possibly of every State, must forever be condemned to pay in freight rates and passenger fares, gas rates and electric charges, telephone and telegraph rates or the retail prices of commodities in general use, dividends on capital never invested, rewards for risks never taken?

National law compels a corporation when it fails in business and ends its affairs to liquidate on the same basis in every State in the Union. Logic and common sense alike demand that not only when it goes out of business but when it goes into business, it should be granted fair play and the same terms or organization, no more, no less, in Maine as in Washington, in Louisiana as in Michigan.

Vermont and Alabama, Michigan and Virginia, Massachusetts and New York and

nished the leaders in our last war? The armies they led were not State armies. Men from Illinois were brigaded with men from North Carolina and New Jersey. Men from Maine served in the same corps with men from Louisiana and Texas. In war we pull together under a National military law, applying to every one of us, not as citizens of any State, but as Americans. May we not quietly, sanely, but unflinchingly as common citizens of one Nation, work also in peace under a greater measure of National civil law for the more perfect Union that shall result from equality before the same law, equality of opportunity for all, everywhere throughout our entire Nation.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! Washington gave us National life. Lincoln gave us National liberty. Our gift to the Nation must be equality of opportunity to every man in the pursuit of happiness.

Not without reason is the motto of our country E Pluribus Unum. We are, we always have been, one people out of many races. The discoverer of America was an Italian, his ships and sailors were Spanish, the two great river highways, the great lakes, were opened for us by the French; Jamestown and Plymouth were English. New Amsterdam Dutch, and let us not forget either the Swedes and their gallant struggle on the Delaware.

So it is to-day. There were seven men on the Merrimac with Hobson, seven men of five races, French, Irish, German, English, and Yankee.

They were

Who is the American? Americans who, with the language of Bismarck and of Goethe on their lips, charged home as an Ohio regiment at Mill Springs in the war for the Union. They were Americans who, with the white flag of Mas

sachusetts and the Stars and Stripes above them and the touch of Irish green in their caps, rallied to the cry of "Remember Cass!" at Malvern Hill. They were Americans, black as the butts of their rifles, who died in the trenches at Fort Wagner and in whose black hands Old Glory never touched the ground."

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The men who in the Revolution won the victory for American ideals were as far asunder in their origin as the men who fight to lift those ideals ever higher and further to-day. Poland gave us Kosciusko. Prussia gave us Von Steuben. France gave us Lafayette. The blood of the Netherlands flowed in the veins of gallant Philip Schuy ler. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, was Irish. John Paul Jones was a Scottish gardener boy. Paul Revere's father was from the Channel Islands. Alexander Hamilton was a West Indian.

What is the American? The fusion of the best blood of the enterprising of all Europe, the American citizen, native naturalized, who is true to the noblest ideals of free government that ever appealed to man. Those ideals, victorious at Yorktown, brought hope not to one race but to all the world. The advancement of the same ideals brings hope to all the world today. We whose ancestors laid the foundations may well feel that we have a double responsibility laid upon us to labor as they labored, but if we, unblinded by material success, hold fast to the ideals that inspired the Revolution, the same hope that brought the liberty lovers of the world to Washington's side at Yorktown will bring the liberty lovers of the entire world in loyal service to our country's side to-day.

The above address was delivered before the Western Reserve Society of the Sons of the American Revolution at Cleveland, October,

IQIO.

To perpetuate the memory of the spirit of the men and women who achieved American independence, by the acquisition and protection of historical spots and the erection of monuments, by the encouragement of historical research in relation to the Revolution and the publication of its results, by the preservation of documents. and relics, and of the records of the individual services of Revolutionary soldiers and patriots, and by the promotion of celebrations of all patriotic anniversaries.

To carry out the injunction of Wash

ington in his Farewell Address to the American People: "To promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge," thus developing an enlightened public opinion and affording to young and old such advantages as shall develop in them the largest capacity for performing the duties of American citizens.

To cherish, maintain and extend the institutions of American freedom, to foster true patriotism and love of country, and to aid in securing for mankind all the blessings of liberty.

Mrs. H. S. Bowron is chairman of this committee, which has for its work the spreading of information with regard to patriotic education. Much work has been accomplished by this committee by loaning lectures and slides to those Chapters who desired to have lectures given but did not have sufficient funds to purchase the necessary expensive slides.

The lectures on forest conservation have been of great value, and the chairman has had the assistance of the United States Department of Agriculture, which has given liberally of time and material. Mrs. Bowron says:

"In bringing the subject of Conservation before the public in the form of lectures, the Daughters of the American Revolution have considered it a form of patriotic education, peculiarly fitted to the plan of work rapidly developing along the line of the objects for which the Society was formed. Its chief object to perpetuate the memory of the spirit of the men and women who achieved American independence is being practically perfected and com

pleted. Now, it is time to take up the second object, the general diffusion of knowledge, developing an enlightened public opinion, and offering to young and old such advantages as shall develop in them the largest capacity for performing the duties of American citizens, literal quotations from the Constitution. The preservation of the natural resources has been called a new Patriotism, for just as the Land for which the Fathers fought, was at once the tangible basis and the inspiration for patriotism in an earlier day, so in this day, the birthright land, the soil-making forests, the native minerals, and the life-giving waters, inspire Patriotism anew. Each is well worthy of story and song and shrine; and each inspiration is warmer, and the whole are knit in closer union by reason of each other."

Some of the lectures are as follows:

"About America," by the Rev. Nehemiah Boynton, English and Italian translation, with 45 slides.

"America of To-day," in English and Italian, with 45 slides.

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Children's lecture, "Why Children Should Love the Forest," showing wild flowers, and teaching lessons of conservation.

When an application is made for a lecture, the date is reserved at once (if the lecture desired is available), when sent, the lecture, which means, manuscript and slides, are packed in a box and shipped to the address given. The slides are numbered, and numbers and title are indicated on the lecture sheets.

Lectures this season have been given in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Mrs. Howard L. Hodgkins is the chairman of this important Committee, to which falls all the care of the special features of Memorial Continental Hall.

Through this committee the States and Chapters learn what special features are still unreserved, and the price of each. Twelve busts are to occupy places of honor in the Hall. These have been given by the different States. They include Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Clinton, Stark, Hale, Oglethorpe, Hancock, Adams, Shelby and Ethan Allen.

A list has been made of all the pictures belonging to the society and a history of each added. The platform is provided with chairs, the gifts of different Chapters.

The President-General, Mrs. Scott, has announced the gift of a piece of tapestry valued at $3,000.

All of the details involved in the securing and placing of these gifts, the making of the lists and the compilation of the history of each, falls to the duty of this committee.

Mrs. J. Ellen Foster was the chairman of this committee until her death deprived. the Society of a woman of great power and influence and the committee of a wise and efficient chairman.

The present chairman, Miss Elisabeth Pierce, has taken up the work, and much good is expected as the result.

Mrs. Foster well says:

"The Child Labor Crusade to which the mother-heart and the strong brain of our President General have called us, goes out with banner and song, not to rescue the empty tomb of a risen Christ from infidel hands, but to save the little ones all around us from the maw of an industrialism alien

to the genius of American institutions. We remember the words of the great Lover of the children who said, 'Whoso offendeth one of these little ones it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he be cast into the sea.'

She lays down the following strong propositions:

"In nearly all the States the National Child Labor Committee, the National Consumers League, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs are engaged in the work to which the Daughters of the American Revolution have been called. We urge the Daughters to co-operate with these societies, not to compete for honors, but to associate for service. Do not fear duplication of effort; avoid conflict, but covet earnestly the best gifts.

"As in all work for human betterment, so in this crusade for the children a few main propositions should be thoughtfully and tenaciously accepted. These propositions are:

"(1) The child under fourteen or sixteen or eighteen years of age must be taken out of the mill, the factory, the shop, the street trades, out of the mines, and away from continued farm labor, and

"(2) Into the school where he shall learn about his body and his brain and be trained to use them; he must also know a few great

MISS ELISABETH FRANCES PIERCE Present Chairman Committee on Child Labor

principles and facts about the world in which he lives. During these years of preparation for citizenship he must have time for acquaintance with other growing children, in wholesome play and voluntary association out in the open, under the sky and near the bosom of mother Nature. education and training of body, brain, heart, and human companionship is necessary in the making of good citizenship in a republic."

This

The Daughters of the American Revolution are urged to use their influence to secure the passage of a bill creating a Children's Bureau in the Department of the Interior of the United States.

"The Children's Bureau would investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life, and would especially investigate questions of infant mortality, the birth rate, physical degeneracy, orphanage, juvenile delinquency and juvenile courts, desertions and illegitimacy, employment, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children of the industrial classes, legislation affecting children in the several States and Territories, and such other facts as have a bearing upon the health, efficiency, character, and training of children.

"Also in addition to existing data, original investigation should be made by officers