LEADING ARTICLES OF THE GOVERNOR COX OF OHIO THE public career of James M. Cox, the The argument most frequently advanced by those who have urged the nomination of Governor Cox on the Presidential ticket at San Francisco is the geographical one. Governor Cox has carried the State of Ohio three times, and it will be conceded that there are few living Democrats who can be depended on to win in so strong a Republican State as Ohio. On the last occasion, in 1918, both Houses of the Ohio Legislature and two-thirds of the Congressional districts went Republican, as did the entire State ticket from Lieutenant-Governor down. Cox was the only Democrat elected to State office, and he ran 75,000 votes ahead of the Congressional ticket. Cox was a newspaper proprietor in Dayton and Springfield when he was elected to Congress from the third Ohio District in 1908. He served two terms and on his return to Ohio was elected Governor, making his campaign on a reform program. He worked for school reorganization, a new taxation system, a workmen's compensation law, and a State budget. He succeeded in getting these various measures enacted into law, but when he campaigned for reëlection he was defeated. Two years later, however, in the Presidential year, 1916, he was again elected Governor, and was reëlected in 1918. So far as national and international questions are concerned, Governor Cox, according to the showing made by Mr. Merz, has no distinctive policy singling him out from the other candidates. In the matter of taxation he believes that inheritance taxes should be left to the States, that the excess profits tax should be done away with, and that half of what would thus be lost can be made up by applying of a tax of from 1 to 11⁄2 per cent. on the volume of business done by any concern. Governor Cox's budget plan and his views as to a needed constitutional amendment are set forth elsewhere in this REVIEW. In the matter of civil liberty Governor Cox has taken a definite stand. As Mr. Merz states in the concluding paragraphs of his article: Governor Cox has given a first-hand demonstration of the fact that he is not among those diplomatic statesmen who always believe in free speech in general but never in particular. He has shown a genuine faith in democratic tolerance. When the steel strike came, when peaceful meetings were prohibited in the steel towns of Pennsylvania, when mounted troopers rode down groups of men and women in the streets, when a general and his troops were called in to the city of Gary to break the morale of a strike that was fought for the basic right of recognition, in those days freedom of speech and freedom of assembly ruled undisturbed in every steel town of Ohio. It is a fact that union organizers, in the towns along the Pennsylvania-Ohio line, actually marched across the border to hold their meetings on the soil of a State whose governor still had faith in American tradition. Local public officials in Ohio were instructed to maintain order against rioting, but to interfere in no way with union meetings and union organization. And the result? Violence in Pennsylvania, men and women hurt, fighting in the streets; in Ohio, not so much disorder as attends a trolley strike in New York City. In all six years of his administration Cox has never called out the State militia to police a strike. He has never had the need to. I end on this note because, of the positive qualities in Governor Cox, this seems to me the dominant one. It represents him-fairly, I think— as a man with considerable courage and a good deal of self-possession. It shows, too, what is a key to Cox's mind in more ways than one: his education in Jeffersonian principles of government. More faith in those principles he has retained than most leaders of his party. A surviving flare of Jeffersonian politics distinguishes him. In terms of politics his best performances are written-his State constitution, his defense of free speech, his quarrel with legal injustices. Economic problems, the perplexities of men and women adjusting themselves to an industrial civilization, find him less ready. He is a young man, swinging an old flail; but swinging it well. THE LEADER OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE'S THE HE gains of the People's Party, formerly known as the National Liberty Party, in the recent German elections have revived interest in the personality of Hugo Stinnes, who, as the owner of sixty-four newspapers, is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the political and industrial life of modern Germany. In former years Stinnes has been described as the Charles Schwab of Germany, and his power has also been likened to that of Lord Northcliffe in England. Neither characterization seems adequate in itself. The career of Stinnes has had in it many incidents that remind one of strikingly similar develop ments in the lives of Schwab and Northcliffe. Whatever else may be true of him, there is general agreement that Stinnes is today the greatest industrial power in Germany. He is the owner of coal mines, steel mills, river- and ocean-going fleets, electrical plants, gas plants, coal by-products, hotels, newsprint factories, and newspapers. the outlet for this superfluous tonnage, and proceeded to gain control of steel plants. His operations grew wider and wider until it seemed as though in time he would gain control of the entire coal and iron output of the country. "The one thing Stinnes continually held before his colleagues was the idea that the ore industry was the greatest possession of Germany. He held that there was no half-way measures about it; it either had to be developed to its greatest extent or else let alone entirely." In 1911 it was stated that Stinnes alone controlled over a million tons of steel. His coal tonnage ran up into 5,000,000 for hard coal, 1,000,000 for coke and 600,000,000 for briquettes. Stinnes has been compared to American leaders of industry in that his method is not one of amassing a fortune in money, but rather in constantly using his credit to start new operations. "Expansion, rather than intensive sole control of one organization, is his aim. His coal operations reach out over the entire country, from the French boundary to the Russian and all the way down to the Mediterranean.' As soon as Stinnes had assumed control of vast mining operations, he started to build himself a fleet of ships to carry the coal and ore from his mines to the cities and ports where he could get the best prices. Before long he had won a foothold in several of the big steamship companies of Germany, includ In a sketch of Stinnes, based on German sources, the New York Times of June 13th tells how he inherited some mines which were only moderately prosperous, and soon found it to his advantage to associate himself with August Thyssen, the German steel and mining magnate of that day. At the same time Stinnes began to buy up poorlying the Hamburg-American Line. He then paying mines and reorganize them. He was successful in this process, but it was not until after he had broken off business relations with Thyssen that he attained real industrial power. The great advantage Stinnes had and still has over all the other leaders in industry in Germany is his ability to see things as a whole. The possession of coal alone was not sufficient for him. He was anxious to build steel mills. That meant the buying up of iron ore mines. His first operations in the coordination of industries began, as far as could be learned, in 1904, when he bought up the coal and iron interests in the Deutsch-Luxembourg regions. He was at that time a man of 34. The mines were then worth 20,000,000 marks. Seven years later their value had risen to 100,000,000 marks. The following year they were quoted at 130,000,000 marks. "One industry," the Neues Wiener Journal goes on to say, "made way for another. The iron mines were bought up first. It was then discovered that there was insufficient coke to run them. This led Stinnes to buy up a coal mine in the outlying district. It then developed that he had too much coal. He decided that a steel mill was set out to control the electrical power of important mining districts. He used electricity in the operation of his coal mines and also sold power to the cities and country districts. In territory where he was operating he gradually gained control of the street cars, organizing a company with a capital of about 40,000,000 marks. In course of time he had absorbed a total mileage of about 250. He then proceeded to gain control of the street railways of Mannheim, one of the great industrial centers. During the war Stinnes became very active in the exploitation of Belgium. In an article devoted to him in Vorwärts, the leading organ of the Majority Socialists, there is the following account of his part in the Belgian transactions: Stinnes's share in the work of liquidation in occupied Belgium forms a particularly interesting chapter in the development of his huge capital. Originally designed as a means of retaliation against economic warfare, this measure soon de veloped into something exclusively calculated to throw billions into the lap of German big business. Three Essen companies were formed for the exploitation of this opportunity, the Industrial Company, 1916; the Traffic Company, 1916; and the Real Estate Company, 1916. All three were creations of the Rhenish Westphalian big capitalists; their principal stockholders being the Friedrich Krupp Company, the Phoenix Company, the Good Hope Smelting Company, and, first of all, the German-Luxemburg Mining Company, the firm of Hugo Stinnes. He was the intellectual leader of the undertaking. These three companies understood how to persuade the government to give them a practical, though not a formal, monopoly in buying up the Belgian businesses about to be liquidated. That is, they received a sort of a first bid privilege. The Essen trust, guided by Mr. Stinnes, knew how to shield itself against outsiders in a skillful way. Besides the gas, water, and electric plants, dockyards, etc., Mr. Stinnes had in view, as his main object, the coal fields of the Campine, a goal worth billions. Of course, all these acquisitions were most closely bound up with the plans for the annexation of Belgium. Once the iron and steel industry got its grip on property in Belgium worth billions, like the coal fields of the Campine, they could throw this fact into the scales in order to justify the annexation of Belgium on economic grounds. For the gas, water, and electric plants taken over by it, the Stinnes concern paid the extremely low price of 28,000,000 marks. The previous director of compulsory liquidation had estimated their value at 48,000,000 marks. An opinion given by Hempel, the director of the Electric Supply Company in Berlin, put the value at 32,000,000. Although this estimate exceeded the price actually paid by 4,000,000, Stinnes and his companions must have been very well satisfied with it, for after the delivery of the property Mr. Hempel was made Brussels director of the company, at a salary of 100,000 marks. The low price paid was justified on the ground of the alleged great risk. As a matter of fact, there was no risk whatever, for according to the agreement the purchase price was to be paid through the depositing of a sole bill of exchange with the Maritime Bank in Berlin, due six months after the conclusion of peace. Therefore, it was arranged for in advance that the compensation for the taking over of the property was not to come into the hands of the original Belgian owners before the decision of arms had been made. A writer in the Staats-Zeitung, of New York, expresses the opinion that Stinnes is just the kind of leader that Germany needs at this time. It is suggested that he is a man who has the rare faculty of being able to see his country in the proper industrial perspective. Furthermore, he controls great wealth, and that is regarded as the prime requisite for the reconstruction of Germany. THE MEANING OF GERMAN POLITICS In a lettershed in the May number of the Na letter from Berlin, written in April Fortnightly Review (London), Mr. Robert Crozier Long analyzes revolutionary Germany into its elements. He finds three emphatic types-the Junker, the "Schieber," and the Red: This does not mean that any of the three types, or even all three together, dominate numerically. It means merely that from the gray mass of the politically inert and feeble these aggressive political and social types stand out best. Anyone who wants a key to the Right counter-revolution of Kapp, and to the more significant Left revolution that succeeded it, can, short of any deeper philosophy of revolutionary history, find the key in the actions and interactions of the emphatic three. The revolution, which began in political ferment, is, in fact, developing along much less idealistic pocket lines; and that is a reversion to political type, for before the war four of the five parties (omitting the Center, though it too had its economic policies) represented, from Right to Left, the Agrarian, the heavy industry, the middle-class, and the industrial-Labor money interests, and represented nothing politically worth mentioning. Mr. Long is convinced that the factions in Germany struggling to-day are influenced by "pocket motives": Monarchy versus Republic, war versus peaceful submission to the Versailles humiliation, the two issues which absorb foreign observers, play no rôle. When Herr Kapp, who at heart was Monarchist and Militarist enough, established himself for five days in the Wilhelmstrasse, he did not dream of doing the traditionally correct thing for a Monarchist-Militarist-proclaiming a new Kaiserdom with a program of national liberation. He had too close a knowledge of the public mood for that. He promised unheroically to cleanse his country in business matters and to abolish the Zwangswirthschaft, that is, the government control of trade from which all except the "Schiebers" suffer; and so the emblem on his helmets and armoured cars was not the eagle or the sceptre, but the innocent Svastika cross which, as adapted by himself, adumbrated a pogrom for the "Schiebers," which meant for the Jews. The extremists at the other end, the Red Revolutionaries of Westphalia, also have only an economic program; and the correct converse of Kapp's universal honesty is their universal plunder. This is Mr. Long's explanation of the "Schieber": In the narrow, original sense, the "Schiebers" are mere dishonest traders who sell goods above rationed quantities at above legal prices, In wider sense, they are an enormous class who, sometimes innocently, have been enriched automatically by the unexampled displacement of all values which has resulted from the currency collapse. Socially, the "Schieber" is a marked type in every German city; and politically, though he is usually passive and has naturally no ungrateful prejudice against the queer Democracy which presents him with diamond shirt-studs and deep sealskin collars, he exerts an unintended influence no way smaller than the influence of the other two. OUR RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA N the Survey (New York) for June 5th, juvenile court in Russia, not a criminal hear IN the Survey (New York) for June 5th, informal way the recently published volume of documents and papers, covering RussianAmerican relations for the three years beginning with the overthrow of the Czar's government in March, 1917.1 a Mr. White, who, it will be remembered, was appointed by President Wilson as delegate to Prinkipo, finds that these papers. are above all "a relation of the social psychology of a people differing from our own which we should endeavor to understand; a record of social institutions and classes going through a tremendous experience which we should grasp; an exhibit of the part borne toward them, the high ideals, the half starts, the contradictions which have marked our course during three troubled years, a challenge for such a coherent policy in the months to come as shall hold for us what we have had, and what we may still have, if our course be true, the abiding faith of a nascent republic toward the common people of America, whose drama of revolution and experiment in self-government antedated theirs. by almost a century and a half." Alone of all the Allied statesmen, says Mr. White, President Wilson saw the Russian Revolution for what it was-"the reaction from autocracy, the mad, stark, brutal expression of implacable distrust from the oppressed towards the oppressor." His letters and documents, and indeed the attitude of the American Ambassador to Russia and of Colonel Robins, of the American Red Cross, during the period of the fall of Kerensky and the rise of Lenine and Trotsky seem to Mr. White to be "highly intelligent, splendidly dispassionate and sympathetic to a commendable degree. America always will point to that episode in our diplomatic history with great pride. We were treating a child as a child, holding a sort of diplomatic 1 Russian-American Relations. March, 1917-March, 1920. Documents and Papers. Compiled and Edited by C. K. Cumming and Walter W. Pettit. Harcourt, Brace and Howe. 375 PP. ing, however terrible the deeds before us must have seemed." Mr. White rapidly sketches the rise of the Bolshevik power, the rout of Kolchak, the collapse of Denikin, and the withdrawal from Russia of Allied influence. Russia was completely isolated and, as Mr. White points out, when the Bolshevist was left alone to do his will and way in Russia he resorted frequently to cruelty and oppression. Terrors and pogroms were not uncommon. What was and is and what is to be America's part in the Russian overturn? Bolshevism was attacked from the outside, was threatened with invasion, and that very attack gave bolshevism the only binder it had to maintain national unity in Russia. It is a poor people that will not unite under any flag to prevent foreign aggression, and the blindness of the Allies in furnishing bolshevism with its one cohesive force will be the marvel of the historian who reads these documents in some dispassionate future day. Yet the documents should not be read without considering the passions of the hour which inspired them. These documents should not argue against the Allies, but against war which makes men so blind and so stupendously foolish. was the war spirit of the world and not the viciousness or the blindness of the Allies which dictated these notes that form the policy of the Allies in Russia. That policy was the real It tragedy of the war. In that policy for better or for worse, the plain people of America have borne little part. We have nothing to lay beside the record of British Labor, for example, in practically forcing the government to withdraw its troops from the adventure in Archangel; nothing to match the recent action of British Labor in sharply challenging the British support to the Polish offensive with all that it means in the persistence of plague and disorder in central Europe and of questionable effect upon the efforts within Russia to achieve a new equilibrium. Ours has been the sin of omission and the deadlier sin of ignorance. If open diplomacy is to mean anything, it means that just such documents as these which the League of Free Nations Association has gathered shall be spread broadcast. If it means anything, it means that diplomacy should also be responsive to public opinion. If it means anything, it means that public opinion should be aroused as well as informed. THE MOVEMENT TO PRESERVE THE REDWOODS THE HE "big trees" peculiar to the Sierra of California, belonging to the species. Sequoia gigantea, are more celebrated throughout the world than the redwoods, another magnificent and gigantic species of the same genus, also domiciled in California. A few years ago the National Geographic Society came to the rescue of the finest group of the "big trees," when these monsters were threatened with destruction at the hands of the lumbermen. Now, it appears, the redwoods are in danger, and the result is a recently launched campaign for their preservation, details of which are published by Mr. Madison Grant in the National Geographic Magazine (Washington, D. C.). Whereas the "big trees" are an inland and mountain species, the redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) grow along the northwestern coast of California. Mr. Grant says: The original range of the redwoods extended from Monterey north along the California coast to a point a few miles over the Oregon line, embracing an area with a length of about 450 miles and a width not exceeding forty miles. The narrowness of this range seems to be determined by the fog which sweeps in from the Pacific, and the writer has seen the edge of the fog-bank clinging closely to the inland limit of the redwood belt. In the southern and larger half of their range, the redwoods are somewhat broken up in more or less isolated groves, and the axe of the lumberman has now separated these groves still more widely. In the north there is an almost continuous series of solid stands of redwoods, constituting the most magnificent forests in the world, not even excepting the great Douglas firs and pines that adjoin them in Oregon. South of San Francisco the redwoods are now found chiefly in the Big Basin, which has been wisely made into a State park, and in the famous Santa Cruz grove. Intermediate spots along the Coast Range, notably at La Honda, are interesting chiefly as showing the pathetic solicitude with which the owners of surviving trees care for the battered remnants amid the charred stumps of former giants. Here at least the owners have learned that the value of a living tree at a public resort or along a highway far exceeds the value of its lumber. All these southern groves are mere reminders of the forests that are gone, but the surviving trees will be carefully protected. North of San Francisco the Muir Woods, on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, are easily accessible and show something of the forest grandeur formerly found in the region of the Golden Gate. The preservation of this grove is entirely due to the wise munificence of Mr. William Kent, who presented it to the nation. Redwood Park series, and, like Merced, at the entrance to the Yosemite Valley, will derive a large revenue from motor tourists. After leaving Mendocino County one enters the great groves of Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Here are solid stands of redwoods, and the observer finds it difficult to distinguish between one grove and the next. There are many reasons why steps should be taken to preserve these trees. They are natural wonders on account of their size. Though in diameter of trunk-sixteen feet or more in the larger specimens they are surpassed by the "big trees" of the Sierra, they grow to a much greater height. Known specimens attain 340 feet, and there are probably some even higher. The age of the redwood is about half that of the "big trees," but most other forest species are infants in comparison with them. Some specimens are supposed to be more than 1300 years old. Lastly, the Sequoias are interesting as sur |