BOULDERS

I KNOW a place where the Great Ice of long ago engraved on the landscape a page of his memoirs. I have had the history read to me by one who is skilled in geological hieroglyphics; and a wonderful tale it was. How tinkling waters flowed in crystal channels; how the untenanted earth teemed with busy hands, moulding, carving, chiseling, etching, while the immortal stars looked on. How the north wind lent his breath, and the mountains gave their ribs, the earth her magnetism, and water its obedience, to furnish forth the vast unwitnessed spectacle. How Winter lodged in immaculate tents sparkling with gems, and marshaled the snows of ages, and measured his reign by centuries. How at last King Sun, great ally of the exiled Spring, conquered the hoary usurper, and forced him out of his fastnesses, and imprisoned him in his native North; and his legions were the sunny days, and his arms were sheaves of sunbeams. And then how the exile Spring returned, and the crunching of ice and the grinding of rocks applauded his entry, and the mists unfurled his league-wide banners, and the tuneful dripping of melting frost accompanied his triumphal march. How rushing torrents ploughed the earth, and the winds planted forests, and the fields decked out their bosoms, and men and beasts did join the celebration.

Thus read the interpreter, and to prove the tale true he showed the very works of the ancient sculptors - here a ridge, there a groove, a basin, a knob, a stranded delta; and he pointed out the tools with which the works were wrought: boulders, pebbles of all shapes dropped at random here and there; and he showed me where on polished rocks the banished Winter has left a map of his retreat.

This autumn day as I sit by my open window, I dream that history over again. A tame enough landscape my outlook affords - brown fields still patched with green, a few picturesque ruins of trees, and beyond, a little grove, and a hazy sky-line. But this is enough

it affords me space to dream in. I see it all happen as it is written in that place I know of. Best of all I like to live over that long moment between the passing winter and the coming summer. I wish I had been there to feel the warmth of the lengthening days, when the sun shone ever brighter. I wish I had been there, to lie in some rocky shelter, and watch the slow, slow melting of the ice-masses, and hear the musical drip-drip above the roar of torrents. That hazy sky-line reminds me of the billowing mists that rose in the sunshine of those melting days. And next to this chapter of the story, I like best to recall the matchless night. What depth of skies, what lustre of stars! and hark! how the sharp artillery of the cold points the wondrous stillness!

It seems to me I lived those days and nights, in the place I know of; for I seem to remember. But I should still be grateful to Memory, even if she took me back no further than those more recent days, when I wandered among the gray boulders, set off by bright hanging barberries. All boulders remind me of those boulders. All barberries remind me of those barberries. For I left something of my soul in that place.

Nay, who shall deny it? Is it nothing that I sat on those rocks, and pricked my hands with those thorns; that I lay face down on those wooded hills, and saw how the oaks and elms and birches ran down the precipitate slope? The violet that bloomed here last May has left a grain of pollen behind. The crow that passed over this

wood has dropped a feather to mark his flight. Is the blossoming of a flower, is the passage of a bird, a greater event than my visit to these rocks, that it should be recorded, and I should leave no sign behind? I brought to this place my gladness, my sadness, my best thoughts. When the leaves rustled on the trees, and when the leaves rustled on the ground, I dreamed there. I am not the same as I was before I knew the place. I am the greater by some memories, the wiser by some experi

ences.

Can it be that the place is as if it had never known me? When the rain washed away my footprints, and the wind carried away my sigh and my song, was there nothing left of me, nothing? Thousands might visit that spot who would find the black feather, for one who would discover the pollengrain. Perhaps there is a soul in millions, a single, rare soul perhaps, that might wander among these boulders and find some trace of me.

There was a time when people held that the boulders were scattered abroad by a capricious Creator, in idle extravagance. To-day we know that inevitable causes worked with them inevitable results. Our eyes are sharp enough to-day to see the invisible pollen-grain. Perhaps some future day we shall see more. While the boulders are ground to powder, and the hills are leveled, and the fields are sunk to the bottom of the sea, men may be getting wisdom.

EXIT A GARDENER

It was really appalling, the way he vanished. Disappearance more sudden could not have marked the flight of the beautiful boy, borne by Jove's eagle to high Olympus, to become cupbearer to the gods in place of the slipshod daughter of Juno. But I allude

to one whom no god could have envied for his youth and beauty. 'My brave hero,' as Mr. Phillpotts would call him, was a Scotch gardener, middle-aged and homely. He appeared one day with a reference from the florist in the village, and in a short time had transformed our wilderness into a flowering paradise. I watched with joy the green things budding and flowering under the magic touch of his hands. I listened with delight to his Aberdeen drawl. It seemed too good to be true. When he said 'pot" I was filled with ecstasy. He pronounced it 'pawt,' but the bare letters only vaguely suggest the rich way he rolled it under his tongue.

this

And then one morning he disappeared. No one had seen him go, but on tiny place there are no copses, no bosky dells, where he could be lured to his destruction, no sheltered and luxuriant corners where an assassin could have lurked. No, if death, swift and sudden, had descended, it would have done so in the open; the drying-ground perhaps, where my shirts, suspended limply from the line, would have afforded but a tenuous screen. Reluctantly I shall have to dismiss this supposition. I say reluctantly, for it would have been so much more heroic than the hypothesis I am sadly forced to accept. If he had met a bloody death protecting with his heart's blood my egg-plant and cauliflower and sweet peas, I would have lifted my voice and chanted his praise. Forever he would stand among the goodly band of heroic Scots, with the gallant Montrose, and Douglas, and Wallace. But it was not to be. Romance wrapped his face in his cloak and wept. Forgotten are the glories of Flodden. Dead are the memories of Bannockburn.

It was a hot day, and he was thirsty. Circe holding aloft her cup seductively peeped from behind the privet-hedge. Bacchus, smiling and wreathed, shook

his rosy head from the catalpa tree radiant with fleecy white bloom. The gardener's throat was parched, and the sun beat down on him from its sapphire setting. I can only suppose that he was tempted and fell. Stealthily he discarded his garb of artisan, and forswore the livery and arms of Ceres. Once more he was a freeman as he paced the dusty road to the village, which beckoned alluringly in the distance. There refreshment and cheer were to be had. In the cool bar no hot sun penetrated. With his foot on the brass railing, he was the master of his fate, and captain of his own destinies.

The essence of the hop-fields was his slave to lull him into tranquillity and peace.

I have written the florist to send me another gardener, and quoted the excellent Mr. Walpole:

'If your Linnæus should have any disciple that would condescend to look after my little flower-garden, it would be the delight of my eyes and nose. Not one proviso do I make, but that the pupil be not a Scot. We had peace and warm weather before the inundation of the northern people, and therefore I beg to have no Attila for my gardener.'

THE Vogue of the plan of basing the tariff on differences in costs of production is a curious phenomenon, and a significant one. Much talked of as the plan now is, it is novel. Only a faint suggestion of something of the sort appeared in the Republican platform of 1904. Not until the presidential campaign of 1908 did it receive much attention. Then, and later in the debates on the new tariff act, it came to be spoken of as the 'true' principle of protection, the touchstone by which the justification of every duty was to be tested. What does it mean, and how far will it avail to 'settle' the tariff question?

The doctrine has an engaging appearance of fairness. It seems to say, no favors, no undue rates. Offset the higher expenses of the American producer, put him in a position to meet the foreign competitor without being under a disadvantage, and then let the best man win. Conditions being thus equalized, the competition will become a fair one. Protected producers will get only the profit to which they are reasonably entitled, and the domestic consumers are secured against prices which are unreasonable.

In order to apply the principle, the country is in train for an elaborate and VOL. 106-NO. 6

expensive set of investigations. The Tariff Board is prepared to spend hundreds of thousands in ascertaining the cost of production at home and abroad of protected articles. The information secured is expected to be the basis of future tariff legislation. No one who stops to think will suppose that inquiries of this sort will be easy, or will lead to other than rough and approximate results. 'Cost of production' is a slippery phrase. Costs differ in different establishments, and cannot be figured out with accuracy in any one establishment without an elaborate system of special accounts, such as few establishments keep. None the less, approximate figures are to be had. If the principle is sound, it will be of great service to have careful preparation for its application, and to reach the nearest approach to accuracy that the complexities of industry permit. To repeat our question - how far is it all worth while?

Frankly, the answer is that as a 'solution' of the tariff question, this much paraded 'true principle' is worthless. Applied with consistency, it would lead to the complete annihilation of foreign trade. It is usually thought of as likely to result in a moderation of protection. Yet, if carried

out to the full, it would lead to the utmost extreme of protection.

Consider for a moment what equalization of cost of production means. The higher the expenses of an American producer, and the greater the excess of the expenses incurred by him over those incurred by a foreign competitor, the higher the duty. Applied unflinchingly, this means that the production of any and every thing is to be encouraged, -not only encouraged, but enabled to hold its own. If the difference in expenses, or cost, is great, the duty is to be high; if the difference is small, the duty is to be low. Automatically, the duty goes up in proportion as the American cost is large. If the article is tea in South Carolina, for example, ascertain how much more expensive it is to grow the trees and prepare the leaves than it is in Ceylon, and put on a duty high enough to offset. If it is hemp in Kentucky, ascertain how much more expensive it is to grow it than in Russia or in Yucatan (for the competing sisal), and equalize conditions with a high duty.

It was on this ground — though, to be sure, with gross exaggeration as to the facts that the duties on lemons and prunes were raised in the Payne-Aldrich tariff: equalize conditions for the California lemon-growers! If lemons in California, why not grapes in Maine? They can be grown, if only the duties be made high enough. Of course, the more unfavorable the conditions, the higher the duties must be. The climate of Maine is not favorable for grapes; they would have to be grown in hot-houses. But make the duty high enough, handicap the foreign producer up to the point of equalization, and the grapes can be grown. So as to Kentucky hemp, or Massachusetts pig-iron. Make your duty high enough- and on this principle you must make your duty high enough and anything in the world

can be produced. The obvious consequence is, however, that the more unsuited the conditions are for efficient and economical production, the greater will be your effort to bring about protection. Under this equalizing principle, the worse the natural conditions, the more extreme will be the height of protection.

No doubt the advocates of the principle will say that it is not to be pushed to such absurd consequences. But where draw the line? We have duties in our present tariff of fifty per cent, of seventy, of one hundred and more, all of which are defended on this ground. Senator Aldrich remarked, in the course of the debates on the new tariff act, that he would cheerfully vote for a duty of three hundred per cent if it were necessary to equalize conditions for an American producer.1 If for three hundred per cent, why not for five hundred or one thousand per cent? Shall we say that the domestic producer whose costs are so high as to require a duty of thirty per cent is to be protected, but not he who has a disadvantage of fifty or a hundred per cent? The only consistent answer is the Aldrich one- give him all he needs for equalization. And the necessary consequence is universal and unlimited protection.

It is for this simple and obvious reason that the principle seems to me worthless for settling the tariff problem. In reality, it begs the whole

1' If it costs ten cents to produce a razor in Germany and twenty cents in the United States, it will require one hundred per cent duty to equalize the conditions in the two countries. . . . As far as I am concerned, I shall have no hesitancy in voting for a duty which will equalize conditions. ... If it was necessary, to equalize the conditions and to give the American producer a fair chance for competition, other things being equal of course, I would vote for three hundred per cent as cheerfully as I would for fifty.' —SENATOR ALDRICH, in the Congressional Record, May 17, 1909, p. 2182.