1902, an off-year, and 93 per cent. in 1904. In Hennepin county, Minnesota, in 1904, over 97 per cent. of the voters took part in making congressional nominations. In the same year the returns from eighteen counties, scattered indiscriminately throughout Minnesota (all the returns that could be obtained), showed that over 72 per cent. of the voters took part in the primaries. These figures show most conclusively that the difficulty is not the apathy of the people. Their civic patriotism is as strong as it has ever been in years past. They are interested in the government and will attend the primaries, if they are but given the opportunity to directly nominate their party candidates. The difficulty lies with the caucus-system. It is indirect and inefficient.

Now let us see if there are any reasons why better men should be nominated under the Direct Primary than under the caucus and convention system.

In the first place it must be conceded that the majority of the people are honest and that they want good government and honest officials. Under the Direct Primary they can make this desire felt more effectively. They can exercise two vetoes upon any attempt to foist bad candidates upon the public, once at the primary, and again at the election. But under the caucus-system they have no choice at the caucuses, while upon election it is usually a choice between two evils, between two machine-made candidates, and this is one reason why there is such an appallingly large stay-at-home vote upon election-day.

In the second place, who is it that so bitterly antagonizes the Direct Primary? Most assuredly it is not the people! It is the same class of men that twenty years ago fought the introduction of the Australian ballot! The St. Paul Pioneer Press of March 17, 1904, said: "The machine-men have never liked the primary. They fought it from the start and they continue to sneer at it." THE ARENA of August, 1904, also said: "It is need

less to say that the grafters and the corruptionists, all indeed who have been engaged in debauching the people's servants, are bitterly hostile to the primary." Why is it that the politicians have suddenly become so solicitous about the welfare of the public, claiming, as they do, that the introduction of the Direct Primary would be detrimental to the best interests of the people? Why is it that they fight it so strenuously? It is because they realize that they cannot control the seventy or eighty per cent. of the voters who turn out to the primaries as they dictate to the twenty per cent. who attend the caucuses. They realize that under it their power to dominate the political arena would be gone, that they could not prevent the candidacy of good men. The Direct Primary introduces "the principle of free, open competition, where before all was secrecy, scheming and log-rolling. It enables any man to become a candidate without currying favor with the boss and the ring by methods which trench upon his self-respect." The natural result is that better men come out for the nomination under the Direct Primary than under the caucus-system. Speaking of the last primary held in St. Paul, the Pioneer Press of that city said: "Instead of a horde of office-seekers, bound to this or that faction, and foisted upon the public to feed at the public crib and to play into the hands of a small coterie of Republicans, the Primary law stimulated a search for good candidates all over the city, and the result was a primary ticket composed largely of men whom the office had sought, unpledged and indebted to no one. The result is the strongest ticket that the Republican party has had for years, a ticket of strong campaigners, and of men who are entitled to the confidence of the people and who have it. No convention ever did so well except when stimulated by popular impatience, and that was once in a decade." Hundreds of other localities, where the Direct Primary has been tried, could testify to the same effect. The mere fact that those cities and states

which have adopted this system have never thought of abandoning it, and that its popularity is ever on the increase, is sufficient evidence that it does result in better men being nominated for public office. The caucus system presents no remedy for the evils of to-day. No matter how highly legalized, it will still remain complex, indirect and uncertain. In actual practice it represents but a small portion of the people. It places the power of nomination in the hands of the few, the boss and the ring. It is subversive of the principles of representative government. From all over the country comes the cry of the American people for deliverance. They demand that the control of the government be placed in their hands, and that they be given the power to directly nominate all party candidates. Arrayed against them in this struggle for better government and purity in politics are the corrupting elements of our social and industrial world. What greater tribute can be paid to the efficiency of the Direct Primary to destroy machine-domination

and corruption than this bitter antagonism of the boss and the ring?

The Direct Primary has universally proven satisfactory. Even where tried under the most unfavorable circumstances placed entirely outside the pale of the law, run by party organizations as it is in many places, introduced into factional, turbulent politics, into machine-ridden Minneapolis, it has proven eminently successful. It has given the people the power to nominate their officials. It has brought out more voters to the primaries. It has made the officials responsible to the people, and has freed them from the dictation of the machine. And finally, as a rule, it has resulted in the nomination of better candidates and in the inauguration of better government.

When these results are compared with those of the caucus system, there is no necessity for explaining further the universal demand for the adoption of the Direct Primary. IRA CROSS.

Madison, Wis.

ONE

NE OF the most urgent reforms necessary in the direction of state or municipal-ownership of public utilities at the present time in the United States is that of the people's savingsbanks.

Is it possible to describe a more heartrending or deplorable sight than we have been witnessing the past winter in Chicago and elsewhere, of thousands of industrious workers, old and young, standing in the street from seven o'clock in the morning until bank-closing hours, lined up by the police like a lot of cattle, shivering in the cold, contracting rheumatism, pneumonia and pleurisy? Some

are grandfathers and grandmothers, bent with age and scarcely able to stand; others are parents and children; but all are there for the one purpose of endeavoring to obtain their savings. Their faces express the wretched anxiety and misery that they are undergoing. They are wondering whether there will be sufficient money left in the bank by the time their turn arrives to give them back their hard-earned savings-their life's blood-perhaps their all. They are aware that if it is not returned they may be turned out of their homes to spend the remainder of their days,-where? On the street, in the poorhouse or peni

tentiary (for men are driven thus to steal to obtain food for their dear ones); or perhaps they may find a last restingplace in the potters' field.

It is criminal on the part of governments in any civilized country to permit such unnecessary scenes or so unwarrantable a state of affairs.

Are the people's savings secure and safe under existing conditions? Absolutely not. Recent events and disclosures have clearly shown that the people's savings are even used by the directors and officials of their own banks in furthering their individual speculative undertakings; or else they are deposited in other trust companies and banks which are controlled by fraudulent directors and officials of life insurance companies and other corporations and used in purchasing bonds, debentures and mortgages which are secured upon the speculative, heavily-watered stock of steamship, railway, real-estate, traction and other trusts promoted by these already convicted but unjailed criminals. Such an instance we have witnessed in the traction trust of Chicago, whose chief value was based upon a fraudulent franchise enabling the companies concerned to rob the people and trespass upon their thoroughfares. The recent collapse in their stocks and securities, in which the people's savings were directly or indirectly invested, is but a forerunner and a warning of what may be expected in other such fraudulent monopolistic concerns.

Is there any remedy to prevent the looting of the people's savings and protect them from loss? The remedy lies in federal, state or municipal-owned savings-banks. If the people's savings are to be protected, the federal, state or municipal governments should immediately establish their own savings-banks or take over the control of existing savings-banks by appointing their own trustees in a similar manner to that adopted by the various state governments in the commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand.

The savings-banks in the commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand may be divided into two classes: those worked in conjunction with the postoffice, consequently directly administered by the federal government, and those under trustees who are nominated by the state governments are thereby under state control. They are therefore so safeguarded as to enjoy the full confidence of the public.

The declared objects of these banks are to encourage thrift among the working-classes and to provide a safe investment for the funds of trades-unions, friendly societies, charitable institutions, etc.

The state-owned banks have become so popular that all classes of the community are represented among their depositors. The Australian banking crisis of 1893 among the private-owned commercial banks had the effect of largely increasing the business of the state-owned banks.

Deposits of twenty-five cents and upwards are received in all the state savingsbanks, but the amount of each depositor's savings bearing interest varies somewhat in the different state institutions. Thus, in New South Wales deposits exceeding $1,000 do not bear interest on such excess, with the exception of the funds of charitable institutions, trades-unions and friendly societies. The average interest payable on deposits is 3 per cent.

In Victoria interest is allowed at the rate of 24 per cent. on sums not exceeding $500, and 2 per cent. on sums from $500 to $1,250, the latter being the maximum amount carrying interest.

In Queensland interest of 3 per cent. is allowed on all deposits below $1,000. In December, 1895, authority was obtained for the issue of savings-bank stock at 3 per cent. to enable depositors of upwards of $1,000 to obtain interest on such excess, as it was found that under the old constitution of the bank large sums were entrusted to the government that could not earn interest.

ΤΗ

HE HIGHEST aim of the medical profession is to prevent physical and moral disease by teaching people the laws of health. It is unfortunate that the majority of people-and some physicians do not see the great factor underlying the basis of physical and moral health; i. e., the early guidance of mental and physical activities into their proper channels. This can only be done by those who are cognizant of sex differentiation, of the pitfalls and whirlpools into which the slightest psychic variant may be drawn, and of the polymorphic changes during mental development in the adolescent of both sexes.

Any form of education is a failure that has not given the youth or young woman perfect health in all that the word implies. But more also should a correct education give, the knowledge of how to keep in good health. This means a clean mind, and its corollary, moral living.

It is true that a certain proportion of mankind is by the universal law of organic failure doomed to physical and mental imperfections, even the lowest grade, but this proportion can certainly be reduced by educating girls and boys so they will possess the potentialities of fit parents. In some respects it would be beneficial if we adopted a few of the ancient Greeks' methods of training youths.

The true physician knows the wide range of psychological curves and modifiable conditions in the adolescent and how to influence them toward the building of healthy minds and strong bodies. The difficulty is to get the general public, the parents of pupils, to give an intelligent hearing and assent to what we know must be laid down as rules if the future health of our children is to be assured.

"An intelligent assent is an assent

based upon knowledge," said Huxley. The knowledge which is necessary to understand the injustice done to adolescents by placing the sexes together in high schools, having them indifferently taught by many women and a few men, means an acquaintance with the basic facts of physiology and of physiologic psychology. These basic facts are unknown to the majority of teachers. The superstructure that is given to them as knowledge on these subjects lacks the vital and intimate acquaintance with the underlying causes of sex moods and desires.

This is the starting-point of the errors: The women teachers have physiologic facts which have jumped the elementary knowledge of life. Consequently they are blind to psychologic upheavals, find interpretations of moods, desires and morbidities difficult, and derive a wrong understanding of many of Nature's signals.

There is a class of teachers who have been over the daily routine and drudgery of high-school teaching so long that they have about as much knowledge of their scholars' varying moods and abilities as the hybrid manikin they use to demonstrate the location of the lungs. When we hear one of these individuals state that the constant mingling of the sexes during the active period of adolescence has absolutely no effect on the emotional side of the girl; that this girl can and does do her daily work every day in the month without psychic symptoms of sex differentiation demonstrating themselves, we have a pitiable feeling of disgust at such a condition of sex degeneracy.

We should start by at once abolishing the custom of teaching boys and girls together after they have reached the puberal age. This state of affairs un