EXERCISES FOR PRACTICE

Here are some exercises for practice reading. They represent four degrees of difficulty. Before each group the reading rate which you should be able to attain is indicated. Perhaps you cannot read it at this speed at first. But you ought to after you have worked for two months on this book.

Make other exercises for yourself, classifying the reading matter as it is done here. Time yourself accurately. Keep this up for four to eight weeks.
LIGHT READING
(Reading rate about five or six words per second)

Exercise 1
(You should be able to read this poem in about 2 minutes)
Ode to the West Wind
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeting,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wing'd seeds, where they lie cold and low Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet the sense faints picturing them! thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear I
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, 0 uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! 0 Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Exercise 21

(Reading time: about 6 minutes)
Color in everything! From costly architecture down to 10-cent thimbles!
How did this great color movement start?
How far-reaching will it be?
How, when, and where will it end?
What effect is it having upon us?
How costly is it proving—to the manufacturer and to the consumer?

Should those who have not as yet applied color to their prod­ucts do so, or is the movement almost over?

Answering the first question first, it does not so much matter how the movement originated. Suffice to say it is here, and has almost completely engulfed us. Some of those interviewed say that it came on us overnight. Others, that it is a culmination of events, experiments, and education of the masses by manu­facturers and others who desired to stimulate trade, and that it has gathered momentum gradually over a considerable period of time.

A noted psychologist attributes its origin to the great World War. Color, he says, livens the senses, and keeps the individual alert to action. It does not give the mind a chance to brood. Another authority links color with light and nature—we are more carefree and happy, more active, in a setting of nature in her most beautiful dress of sunlight and bright colors.

The art director of a large concern lays the responsibility to the advent of the radio—of music and sound and animation. Color, according to him, is music to our eyes.

An official of a large western department store expresses the belief that in a measure the present broad use of color began with the Industrial Exposition in Paris in 1925. "It seems to have been about that time," says this merchandise authority, "that artists and artisans began to realize that people were tired of dull, meaningless, inarticulate backgrounds."

Be all this as it may, psychologists agree that color is as essen­tial to our welfare as food and drink. They are equally unani­mous that color is here to stay, perhaps not in the present-day extremes, but with some modification.

This last fact is of particular interest to manufacturers, who are vitally interested in its relation to their products. To them it is not an academic consideration, but a practical problem that must be met. The big question is, how shall they meet it?

Color has not yet been organized, and it is doubtful if it can be, unless or until there can be arranged a meeting of minds on the part of the majority. There is as yet no general movement on the part of manufacturers to standardize on colors, and yet, the vital need for such a movement has been recognized.

Take, for example, the Evanston, Illinois, society matron who desired to have her kitchen appointed in robin's egg blue. She went to a considerable expense in having imported Dutch ceramic tile set-in in her walls. She was able to get the proper shade of floor covering without much difficulty. But the best she could do in a kitchen cabinet and tables and chairs to match, was an off-shade blue. She reported that the plumbing fixtures were an "impossible blue which did not at all fit in with my color scheme." And the gas range was still another shade. She gave up her idea when she found it was utterly impossible to get cooking utensils to match the blue she so much wanted.

This woman, being quite wealthy as well as prominent, kept several manufacturers on the jump trying to satisfy her color whim. One manufacturer complained that she had thrown production in his plant off for nearly a week, and that he could not possibly hope to recover his loss.

It may be that the solution to these manufacturers' problems, as well as an idea of what others may expect to get into, will be found in one authority's opinion, which, in general, is shared by others: He says:

Color is here to stay as a primary factor in our living. Women are keenly interested in learning how to handle color effectively in dress, home decoration, and table decoration. But color to be an effective instrument in merchandising must be practical as well as artistic. A manufacturer must relate color in his product to the color developments in other products. The kitchen cabinet manufacturer, for instance, must offer his units in color treatments which will har­monize with current tendencies in wall coverings, draperies, floor materials, and so on.

Mass production and cheapness today are not enough. Our products must be really beautiful, and color is an important element. We must remember that the public taste is being rapidly educated to an appreci­ation of what is really good. The philosophers long ago pointed out the influence of beauty on higher ethical standards. Beauty in our surroundings, homes, our dress, reflects itself in an urge towards beauty in the art of living.

In the Old World beauty is limited to the few, but in the New World we have increasing general prosperity, coupled with the fact that mass production does make available to the masses articles that are intrinsi­cally artistic in design and color. As a result, beauty is now within the reach of the many.

Applied psychology teaches us that color has an absolute and definite bearing on our reactions. As people become more and more skilled in the effective use of color in their surroundings, better standards of living will naturally follow.

Referring to the problem of relating the colors of products in various lines, another authority declares that there is a great need for some sort of color standardization. He refers to the success achieved in the textile industry through the development of the Textile Color Card Association. In advance of each season, color trends are studied by this association and forecasts made. This permits the shoe manufacturers, the hosiery manu­facturers, the dress manufacturers, the millinery manufacturers— and all the other factors in the garment and allied trades—to plan their offerings so that ultimately a woman is able to buy an ensemble that will harmonize.

The forecasts of this association are studied by the manu­facturers in many lines—from handkerchiefs to motor cars. The result is the elimination of a great deal of the risk and expense formerly involved.

With the consumer, color may be a whim; but to the pro­ducer it can be disastrous. The experience of a large manu­facturer of quality gas and coal ranges has proved not only costly, but manufacturing complications have arisen to such an extent that the company is now seeking immediate relief.

Color is proving a nightmare with us, this manufacturer states.
We have become involved in tremendous manufacturing costs that we could not possibly have included in our original estimate, when we decided to bow to what we thought was the popular demand for our product in color.

And we can never expect to recover. The public—I am now talking about the majority of consumer prospects—admires our product in color, yes; but when it finds the cost to be somewhat higher than our ranges in plain black and white, or black and gray, it invariably buys the plain ones. And yet, color is just enough in demand to make it neces­sary for us to continue it.

White or gray opaque that is so commonly used in our white or gray enamel backs, legs, and bases, costs 50 cents a pound. Certain colored opaques which are necessary to obtain a range of colors in our enamels cost from $4 to $6 a pound. This brings the cost of our colored ranges up more than 15 per cent—oftentimes as high as 25 per cent.

We must also include in that increased cost our increased production costs. Production is slowed down considerably by color. We are dealing with an uncertain element in colored enamels. It is almost impossible to match colors successfully in different runs. We may be able to get a delicate blue today—tomorrow, in trying to mix the same color, we will get a harsher blue. Hours are spent in trying to get as nearly a perfect match as possible, for it would not do to have different shades of the same color on display on a dealer's floor.

Distribution also suffers. Certain colors may prove popular in certain localities; other colors, in other localities. We have found it necessary to incur tremendously heavy traffic costs in switching our ranges around from one dealer in one town, to another in a distant one.

Blue may now be popular in Chicago, and green in New York. Ivory-may sell more rapidly in Detroit, and olive in Pittsburgh. It cost thousands of dollars to determine this, and tomorrow it may all be changed.

There has not been any move that we know of on the part of range and furnace manufacturers—yes, eventually, I am afraid that we will have to get into the manufacture of furnaces in color—to standardize on colors. We are seriously thinking of taking the initiative to see if this cannot be done. I should say that standardization on three colors would prove to be the most practical.

Unless something is done, and done quickly, I fear for the health of our industry. Manufacturers are bringing color abuses upon them­selves. I do not believe that color is exactly a fad, but I also do not believe that we will continue to have such a wide range of choice. Business cannot stand it, that is all.

Another stove and range manufacturer has compromised with the "color fad" by introducing color into only certain parts of his ranges, so that they will have a color effect without being in full color. These parts are easily interchangeable, so that the problem of suiting localities or meeting special consumers' tastes is greatly simplified. This idea might be adapted to other products. This manufacturer admits, however, that these partially colored ranges do not sell as readily as the fully colored ones.

Range and furnace manufacturers, as well as other manufac­turers who are similarly hard hit, may find consolation in the opinion of the vice-president of a large varnish manufacturing company, who faces the color problem every minute of the day.

It is my opinion that color is still in the ascendency but that its popularity will have a tendency to kill itself to a certain extent.

The development in the use of color seems to have resulted in a regular spree, bringing unlooked for manufacturing difficulties in certain lines of industry. In any case, what looked like a pretty sales proposi­tion brought untold difficulties in production and distribution.

I believe the trend of less color in manufactured articles will be noticeable as soon as the burden of production becomes too great.
There must be a happy medium between the regular old black model T Ford and the special paint job, or a different optional color scheme for every car manufactured. What that is will be determined largely by the price the public is willing to pay for color.

I do believe this color orgy is a fine thing for the public and will result in a better understanding of color in general, and I further believe that when the storm blows over there will not be so much color as there is at present, but more than there was.

Color is "coming in strong" in men's clothes—color and a corresponding accentuation in weave. Upon being shown the weave of an advance pattern for the new season, one is apt to remark, "Is that not rather futuristic?"

Exercise 31 AVERAGE READING

(Reading rate: four words per second) (Reading time: about 2 minutes)

The keynote of Mr. Hoover's program is individual oppor­tunity as opposed to an unnecessary governmental interference. It is that purpose which runs through all the planning of his ingenious mind. He is seeking not to aggrandize the Govern­ment, but the individual; to give him a better chance and a freer life; to make Government his servant, not his master. He believes our Government to be founded upon "the conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal oppor­tunity to the individual will his initiative and enterprise spur on the march of progress. And in our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system advanced beyond all the world." These are not the mere words or the pleasing generalities of a politician. With Mr. Hoover they are the very essence of practical proposals. It is in this view that Herbert Hoover is absolutely opposed to the unwarrantable extension of bureau­cratic government. Again let him voice his convictions:

"Every step of bureaucratizing of the business of our country poisons the very roots of liberalism. That is, political equality, free speech, free assembly, free press, and equality of oppor­tunity. It is the road not to more liberty, but to less liberty.

Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom fired in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political and economic."

Herbert Hoover finds no inconsistency in conserving our natural resources, in maintaining the control essential to protect the public interest, with the opposition to any unnecessary exten­sion of bureaucratic administration. Let him again speak: "It does not mean that our Government is to part with one iota of its national resources without complete protection of the public interests." He believes in a system of regulation which will conserve both the public interest and the opportunity for fair individual enterprises. He points out that the Republican Administration has " insisted upon the principle that when great public utilities were clothed with the security of partial monopoly, whether it be railways, power plants, telephones or what not, then there must be the fullest and most complete control of rates, services and finances by Government or local agencies.

It is in the light of the necessity of conserving the freedom of honest enterprise that Mr. Hoover deals with the fundamental needs of labor. You cannot protect labor by facilitating strife or by merely laying down rules for the efficient conduct of labor wars. The real protection of labor is in continuous employment and in the conditions of production, distribution and exchange at good wages. The key to labor's door of hope is employment, the maintenance of a vast purchasing power which makes pro­duction possible.

Exercise 41
(Reading time: about 2 minutes)
It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet.

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and actually, or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.

The search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find his works,—if possible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are put off with fortune instead. You say, the English are practical; the Germans are hospitable; in Valencia, the climate is delicious; and in the hills of the Sacramento, there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there were any magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all, and buy it and put myself on the road today.

The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge, that in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens. But enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, or of fleas—the more, the worse.

Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. The gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. We run all our vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies of Juda­ism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of the human mind. The student of history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article. If he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes.

Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought. And our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed.

Exercise 51
(Reading time: about 6 minutes)
Since the sixteenth century courts of law have told man, Cujus est solus, ejus est usque ad coelum. This, being freely translated, declares that he who owns the soil owns all the way to Heaven. Apparently, man has decided to improve all of this, his property, instead of only part of it as heretofore.

If we are to believe the principal architects and builders of the country, the upward ascent has only begun. Just so long as taller structures can be made to show a profit and not add too much of congestion to streets increasingly used, tall and yet taller structures will be built.

Yesterday's sky-line has receded as far as mutton-leg sleeves, the hitching-post, cherry phosphate, and peg-top trousers. To­day's sky-line is dipped in magic; tomorrow's will exceed the liveliest imaginations, of that we are sure.

The builder is now exercising in part the dominion he has given over all the earth, and he is building everywhere in the cities offices and homes pointed directly skyward.

Tall buildings are born of the herding of men into preferred areas, and of the increase in land values and consequent high taxes. As the demand for space in which to live and work has increased, the ground area remaining constant, the cities have taken to the air. The "great open spaces" are now from 30 to 40 floors up.

Probably the Grand Central development in New York has attracted more attention than any group of building projects, and with good reason. Here building construction started from the rock up; here first use was made of "air rights," a subject that vastly intrigues American business men. today. Those developed in connection with the Grand Central center in New York have added a staggering sum to the income of the New York Central Railroad.

The Grand Central development is an interesting one. A station that occupied part of the site where now stands the Municipal Building, in 1839, provided New York City with its first railroad passenger terminal. Subsequently the station moved northward, keeping step with the march of population.

It was Commodore Vanderbilt who selected the Grand Central site on Forty-second Street. He moved to name the station " Grand Central" because of the accessibility of its location.

On Commodore Vanderbilt's site, the New York Central, in 1903, started the preliminary work on the present Grand Central Station project. Plans were perfected for two-level yard under­ground, for electrification and reclamation of all the space over the tracks.

Two miles of city streets were opened and forty acres of air-rights were made available for building purposes.

The new enlarged depot opened in 1913. By that time sev­eral great structures had been reared on air-rights, and the area is now filled with large buildings.

Officials planned the Grand Central Station capacity to be equal to all demands that might be placed upon it for many years to come. But they could not visualize the great army of commuters that would be flowing through in another decade. The station is not yet swamped. The efficiency and speed with which its functions are performed, obviate that. Yet it is only a question of time before new facilities will be required.

Meanwhile, the further development of the Grand Central zone "from the ground up," goes on. A great office building is under construction directly behind the Grand Central Terminal Building. This new building, to be known as the New York Central Building, is one of the most interesting building projects in the country—interesting because of the fact that it is not only built on air-rights, but also because it will span Park Avenue and vehicular traffic will flow through it on ramp roadways, rising from the street level at Forty-sixth Street, passing above Forty-fifth Street, and thence on around the terminal building,

The building will tower 35 stories above the street—a startling fact in itself when it is recalled that when the Grand Central Terminal was built its developers agreed that six stories would probably be the limit of construction on air-rights!

It is interesting to know that the air-rights in the Grand Central zone are held by the terminal company and leases are made for 21 years, with two options to renew, in short providing for a term lease of 63 years.

But the attention accorded Manhattan recently has been diverted to Chicago. Two undertakings predicated upon air-rights bring Chicago prominently forward in any report of current progress on building from the ground up.

These are the Chicago Merchandise Mart to be erected by Marshall Field and Company at the riverside not far from the present site of the Chicago and North Western Railway passenger station. And the Chicago Daily News building, which is at present in process of construction at the riverside within a few blocks, and immediately east of the railway station.

Announced to cost $30,000,000, the Merchandise Mart will be twice the size of the world's largest business building, now the Furniture Mart, another Chicago structure with a commanding position near the Municipal Pier.

The Merchandise Mart will have a total floor space of 4,000,000 square feet. It will rise 18 to 23 stories in height and will house a concentration of manufacturer's exhibits from which retail merchants may make their selections of the world's mer­chandise, all under one roof.

A multiplicity of items might be recorded as to what this mart will include. But none of them would prove more engaging than a statement of what has been purchased for the building in land and air-rights.

Straight down the center of the property lies a strip bought outright. On either side of it the map makers have checked off 375 parcels of ground, each nine feet in diameter. Each separate parcel is owned by Marshall Field and Company in fee. Each was purchased that the company might own the ground in which will be placed the caissons upon which the supporting columns of the building will rest.

The supporting columns will be prismatic in shape. The space they occupy has been purchased—an additional 375 parcels.

The building proper will occupy an air-lot which will rise from a plane 23 feet above river datum.

Frederick Hack, attorney for the company, and Herbert Becker, vice-president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company, devised the lot system involved, which sets a precedent in the acquisition of air-rights. They explain that it was necessary for Marshall Field and Company to take title because the rail­way property is subject to a general refunding mortgage.

As Mr. Becker explained, Marshall Field and Company sub­divided land and air horizontally and vertically to perfect its title to the property required.

A short distance to the south, at the Madison Street bridge and directly across the Chicago River from the site where the Chicago Civic Opera Company's 40-story skyscraper is to be erected, The Chicago Daily News is exercising air-rights in the building of a new plant and office building. This structure, 26 stories in height, will rest upon piers set on caissons placed on bed-rock 100 feet below the surface of the ground. Bed-rock in Chicago's loop area is that deep beneath the surface, or even deeper.

A lease for 99 years is held on the air-rights involved and one strip on either side is owned in fee. The railway tracks at one point are so close together that only a few columns can be dropped among them. The solution is to employ cantilevers, girders, and trusses. The piers are regularly spaced, however, on the strips owned in fee.

According to Laird Bell, counsel for The Chicago Daily News, this lease has much in common with leases that have been executed in eastern states. Unlike Marshall Field and Company, however, the newspaper did not specify and then purchase the parcels in which the caissons are placed, but retained the right, subject to the consent of the Union Station Company, to drop as many piers as would be necessary for proper construction and these parcels, once agreed upon and then placed in use, then come under the terms of the contract.

Railway locomotive equipment passing beneath this building is not electrified, wherefore an effective arrangement had to be devised for smoke abatement. It will be done on this wise: Smoke from the locomotives will pass through orifices into a horizontal chamber connecting with a stack 400 feet square and extending upward through the center of the building. Thus the railroad will smoke through a chimney extending up through the air-rights it has leased.

One feature of this newspaper building is significant of the time. A private roadway broad enough to permit trucks to pass each other and widening considerably in the center of the building to allow for loading and unloading facilities, will be built from the street floor through the midsection of the building.

Approval by the Illinois Commerce Commission of The Chicago Daily News air-rights lease paved the way for development of enormous holdings in the Chicago district.

Before dismissing the subject of air-rights in Chicago, atten­tion must be drawn to the Illinois Central Railroad, with tracks extending along Chicago's lake front from the Chicago River on the north to the far South Side. Potentially this railroad has one of the richest holdings known. These are air-rights that Charles Markham, chairman of the board, estimated as worth $100,000000. Many consider that figure a mere fraction of the potential value of these rights.

SOLID READING (Reading rate: three words per second)
Exercise 61 (Reading time: about 8 minutes)
As you drive along Route No. 10, two miles west of Champaign, Illinois, you see in the corner of a corn-field this sign:
THE VAN WEGEN FARM
Operated by a
Business System

This is one of 32 farms, totaling 7,500 acres, operated by the Farm Management Department—which is Joseph E. Johnson— of the Citizens' State Bank of Champaign, a $3,500,000 institu­tion. Mr. Johnson, himself a farm owner and a scientifically trained farmer, was for 10 years a country banker and elevator operator in a small town in Champaign County, then for four years business manager of the Champaign County Farm Bureau, the position he left on March 2, 1925, to take up his present work.
The bank pays Mr. Johnson a salary and bonus, and charges the land-owners $1 a year per acre for his services. There is no new relationship between farm owner and tenant. The bank's farm manager simply acts as the agent of the owner, just as the officer of a corporation acts as the agent of the stockholders. Capital, labor, and management are definitely separated in the same way as is almost universally the practice in other lines of industry.

This Farm Management Department is not makeshift arrange­ment for handling land forced into the bank's possession. On the contrary, none of the farms belong to the bank. They are the property of owners, who have had difficulty getting satisfactory tenants or who have experienced other troubles connected with land ownership, and have come of their own free will to ask the bank to take charge of their farms for them. No attempt is made to seek new bank accounts through the department; tenants and landlords are told that they are at liberty to deposit their money anywhere they please. The largest farm on the list belongs to the head of a competing bank.

Two waiting lists are on file in the Champaign State Bank. One is of farms whose owners want the bank to take them over, the other is a list of tenants seeking places on a Johnson-managed farm.
Unless owners are willing to put back into their farms enough of their income to build up steadily the fertility of the soil and keep the improvements in good shape, their land will not be taken. Mr. Johnson uses paint freely.

In selecting tenants, care is taken to see that each man is placed on a farm of the size and type of agriculture for which he and his family are best suited. Mr. Johnson believes that farm­ing is 25 per cent farm and 75 per cent farmer, and that the first and most important qualification of the farm operator is willingness to work hard and keep on doing it. Some of the best results have been achieved with industrious tenants whose previous experience in farming had been limited. They have nothing to unlearn, they do as they are told.

A. M. Burke, himself the owner of four farms, president of the bank, sat at his desk on a Saturday morning in September, telling why he started this Farm Management Department over three years ago, and what results could be expected when a farm is "operated by a business system." For half an hour he talked about farms and farming without once mentioning "farm relief" —a record yet to be made by any politician.

What Congress may or may not do for agriculture in the com­ing session did not seem to concern Mr. Burke.

One farmer after another came into the bank, he greeted them all by their first names. As one of them walked out, he remarked,

"See that man going out the door over there? Well, we handle $30,000 or $40,000 of his investments back in our collection department. The other day he bought a small farm and paid cash for it. He doesn't seem to have any trouble making money out of farming. And I don't suppose there is a month goes by that he doesn't come in here and talk over some problem of his with Johnson. The farmers who bank here are always after Johnson; there are four or five of them back there talking to him right now; the only way he can get away from them is to leave the bank and not tell anyone where he is going."

And then Mr. Burke added, "Any man who knows something about farming, and is really willing to work steadily, can make money on a farm if he is not too much in debt." Obviously Mr. Burke was not running for a political office. He is just a banker-farmer talking about the business that is his life work.

Political campaigns during the past year have brought forth such extended and heated discussions of farm ailments and plans for curing them that it is difficult for business men not to get the impression that agriculture is marking time waiting for Congress and the new President to decide what is to be done to save the day.

Quite the contrary is the case. Agriculture is on the move, it is changing, and changing rapidly. Since 1919, our farm population has decreased 3,000,000; there are now several million less acres under cultivation. And yet our crops in recent years have been somewhat larger than they were before the war. Production per man and production per acre have both been climbing. In spite of the farmers' shortage of money tractors in use increased from 246,000 on January 1, 1920, to 506,000 on January 1, 1925. Agriculture is steadily becoming more efficient.

When the present acute situation is a thing of the past, and we can look back and see how relief actually was brought about, the chances are we will discover that the one most effective force was the farmer himself, who year after year increased his own and his soil's efficiency through the application to farming of scientific knowledge and business management. As Mr. Johnson expressed it:

If we ever get any permanent, workable improvement in agriculture, it is going to be brought about by the use of business methods in farm­ing, and by the cooperation of the business interests of the country with the farmer. There is no conflict between business and agriculture; their problems are the same; so must their methods be, also.

But how much does "operated by a business system" mean to a farm in actual dollars?

Some significant figures are available. Out in western Illinois, between Galesburg and Moline, lies Henry County, a rich general farming community in which the livestock industry is highly developed. In 1927 sixty farmers, scattered over the county, kept books of account of their operations, following a standard system worked out by the Department of Farm Organ­ization and Management of the University of Illinois College of Agriculture. At the end of the year their books were sent to the college to be audited. To begin with it was found, as might be expected, that the 60 farmers businesslike enough to keep exact accounts, made somewhat more money than those who did not. They ran about $1,000 above the average farm income of the county.

But far more significant was the variation between the 60 farms. These were ranked according to money made, and then the average earnings of the first third compared with the average earnings of the last third. It was not the best against the poorest, but the average of the 20 best against the average of the 20 poorest.

It was found, after charging off all expenses of operation and allowing 5 per cent interest on the total investment in land, buildings, equipment, and live stock ($55,432 each for the 20 best farms, averaging 229.3 acres; $45,866 each for the 20 poorest, averaging 200.1 acres), that the 20 most profitable farms had earned an average of $1,997 each to pay the farmer for his personal labor, unpaid family labor, management, and risk; while the 20 least profitable not only had earned nothing, but lacked $1,074 each of making the 5 per cent interest charges. There was there­fore a difference in earnings of $3,071 per farm between the best third and the poorest third.

Since about the same variation has been found in other communities where similar audits have been made, it is safe to conclude that, in the heart of the corn belt, good farmers on 200-acre farms of diversified agriculture are about $3,000 a year better off than mediocre ones, and about $4,000 a year better off than the really poor ones who keep no accounts. To quote Mr. Johnson again, "Farming is 25 per cent farm, and 75 per cent farmer."

But the College of Agriculture went into the figures still further and accounted for some $2,000 of the $3,000 differ­ence by the following five factors—all, it will be noted, are management factors:
Crop yields................................. $735
Kinds of crops.............................. 146
Efficiency of live stock................... 625
Efficiency of power and machinery                269
Efficiency of man labor.................. 215

That the better managers would be likely to use better judg­ment in marketing and take more care to avoid expense leaks would account for a good portion of the remaining $1,000 difference. Summing it up in one word, the cause of the $3,000 difference is—management.

We see, therefore, how large may be the earnings of the 32 owners who are paying the Champaign State Bank $7,500 a year to provide this essential scientific business management. If Mr. Johnson is as good a manager as an ordinary good farmer, the expectation is that the income from the 32 farms under his management will be $96,000 a year more than if the same farms were run by mediocre tenants. However, since he has already demonstrated that he can get crop yields and cash returns somewhat greater than the average of the 20 best farmers in that Henry County group, the expectation of increased income from farms under his management is still larger.

It is interesting to observe just how a scientific farm manager gets his results. Take, for example, the invisible load of hay to which are hitched the horses seen in the background of the picture of Mr. Johnson and one of his farm operators. It is soybean hay from a certain 40-acre field on the Van Wegen farm.

Exercise 71

(Reading time: about 8 minutes)
There are five things which constitute mental training, and the man who can do these five things, no matter where he has learned them or how he has learned them, is a trained thinker.

1. Can he recognize a fact?
2. Can he make a distinction?
3. Can he draw an inference?
4. Can he judge evidence?
5. Can he concentrate his attention?

No special subject-matter is required as a means of devel­oping ability along any one of these lines. You do not have to study Latin or mathematics in order to train your mind in any one of these essentials. If you are a mathematician, then you must learn to recognize mathematical facts, to draw mathematical inferences, to make mathematical distinctions, to judge mathematical evidence, and to do each of these with concentrated effort. And if you are a business man, what you must do in a sustained way is to see business facts, deal with business distinc­tions and inferences, and estimate business evidence. All of the subject-matter you need for training you have at your disposal.

Thinking is a natural thing, just as natural as breathing or nutrition. This means that one does not learn to think any more than he learns to breathe or to assimilate food. No one can learn to live, he can only learn to live well. The same is true of thinking. You do not learn to think; what you learn to do is to improve your thinking.

Training in the ability to do clear thinking is primarily a matter of improving your methods of handling the difficulties that confront you. Intelligence is not a thing; the word rather stands for effective and successful mental activity. The training of the mind consists in the formation of accurate and careful habits to replace the more or less crude and careless blunderings of unsystematic thinking. It consists in improving the ways and methods of doing the things that make up the routine of daily life. Few of you can change your occupation; what you can do is to bring increased efficiency into what you are already doing. Mental training means the gradual and steady building up of a scientific method of procedure to be used in place of the unre­gulated method of chance guessing, luck and accident.

Let us dispel at once a prevailing mystery that attaches to the word "scientific." There is the widespread feeling that the scientist uses thought processes that are unfamiliar and inac­cessible to common, ordinary people. There is the feeling that he uses a method that the rest of us can not use and that he exercises functions that we can not understand. That is not so. The scientist can do nothing different in kind from what we do. All that he can do is to observe facts, make distinctions, draw infer­ences, and pass judgments. He is superior to us in that in a sustained effort he observes more clearly, infers more safely and judges more soundly. There is no difference in kind between the thought processes involved in looking for your hat when you have lost it and the thought processes involved in the scientific discovery of an element or in the working out along scientific lines of a policy for the internationalization of banking. Science differs from common sense in method, and in method alone.

The untrained mind proceeds in a hop-skip-and-jump sort of way. There is much of hit or miss in its actions, with the probability of more misses than hits. This is termed the "trial and error" method. We simply do something, and when that fails we do something else, and keep on trying until we hit on something which works. It is surprising how much in our lives we leave to accident. Men dislike to assume responsibility. They would rather take a chance and drift. Wundt was prob­ably right when he said that animals think never and men but seldom. And when they do think, about the last thing they think about is thinking. Emerson said of Napoleon: "He never blundered into a victory. He gained his battles in his head before he won them in the field."

Scientific method means that the thought process is regu­lated and controlled. It means the formation of alert, accurate, and careful mental habits. The scientist is a trained observer. His method differs from the ordinary method of unsystematic thinking in that it is more precise, thorough, definite, exact, and accurate. He is more thoughtful. Practically, that means that he pays more attention to his problem; that he takes pains in trying to solve it; he gives his mind to it. That is, he weighs his difficulty, deliberates about it, examines it, turns it over in order to look at it from different angles, and to see it in different lights. Like the mathematician, he calculates in order to be definite, and like the physicist, he weighs in order to be accurate. When we say that he is methodical we mean that he is orderly.

It should be borne in mind that what we shall herein describe under the caption of reflective thinking is to be identified with what is generally termed the scientific method in thinking. In short, mind is method. To know is, on its practical side at least, to know how. A description of the "how" of business procedure is a description of business intelligence. Business is largely concerned with ways of doing things, and progress in business is concerned with better ways of doing them. A glance at such a magazine as SYSTEM, a magazine devoted to the upbuilding of business morale and to the development of practical business intelligence, will serve to illustrate the point. An examination of the table of contents shows the recurrence of such titles as "Better Ways to Manage," "Seven Plans that Save," "Timely Buying Ideas," "How Our Customers Merchandize for Us," "How to Train a General Manager," "How We Keep Finding a New Way to Save," etc. What is described under these titles is a way of doing things, a method of procedure. Little is said of intelligence as such, but much is said about form and technique, about practical adaptation of new plans, about ways to revise, to recognize, to reshape. One man finds that a plan of procedure, or a policy of administration, or some guiding idea or principle has proved effective in practice and he describes its mode of operation in the hope that it may be of use to some one else. A description of the technique of business reconstruction is a description of business intelligence.
It is necessary to enter a certain caution in regard to the subject of method. You do not first acquire a method and then proceed to use it. You can not reach the final point of a highly trained mind by trying to impose the finished technique on a beginner. The gap between the trained and the untrained mind cannot be bridged by super-imposing a highly specialized technique at the start. You begin by doing a thing in a crude way, and by repetition and effort you gradually improve your method. You must first do something before you can do it well.

What is of importance is that you actually handle problems that involve thinking as a means to their solution. The danger in training of method is that "we hang our clothes on a hickory limb, and don't go near the water." One learns to swim by swimming. You learn to think by thinking. In cultivating the power of thinking, it is essential that you actually deal with difficulties. Your major aim is not to learn to think, but to learn to solve problems; thinking is a means to this end.

Perfection of method comes gradually through practice. We acquire skill in thinking in the same way that we acquire skill in any other activity, namely, by performing that activity. You may know all that there is to know about baseball from the standpoint of a spectator who sits in the grandstand. But that information would never enable you to go on to the field and play a winning game. To know about the game is one thing; to be able to play the game is another thing. In accordance with what we have stated to be the aim of this book, the training of mind does not consist in acquiring knowledge about think­ing, it consists in the making of one into a thoughtful person. Skill comes with practice. You do not learn in moments of resolve, you learn only as you put into operation the resolutions you form. Thinking about courage will never make a man courageous. He becomes courageous by doing courageous things. Assume, then, an active attitude of mind. Accept every oppor­tunity that lends itself to reflection, for only by actual contact with problems will you ever acquire a method of solving them.

It may be added that there is no one best way. Each must work out for himself the method that is best suited to his own special type of difficulty.

Success in life depends on ability to solve the problems that arise in the course of daily experience. Thinking is a means to this end. Training in mental power resolves itself into the concrete task of acquiring an effective method of overcoming difficulties. It is the aim of this book to present the essential features of scientific method in their relation to the actual and concrete problems of business experience.

Exercise 81
(Reading time: about 8 minutes)

The truly prodigious economic advance that has been achieved in the United States since the war has puzzled and astounded the rest of the world, and we ourselves have been rather bewildered by it. To many embittered, and more or less chronic cynics on both sides of the Atlantic, to whom anything concerned with the "march of materialism" in America is but a doleful soul-destroy­ing clatter, the past decade has enthroned the Moloch of machinery even higher and ground the "wage slaves" even lower.

In such circumstances any talk of better living is, to their thinking, rather ghastly humor.

Just what is the result of this newer machine age in terms of the outlook for the worker? Is it really but the ruthless domina­tion of steel over the minds and souls of men?

Almost daily we read the announcements of the latest triumph of some inventive genius whereby the power of electricity or steam has again been harnessed to lift yet another age-old burden from the sweating backs of the toilers. For this relief, much thanks, says the humanitarian. But the wage-earner, who must live by that sweat, may not be quite so satisfied. What about his job? He is grateful, of course, to have had it made easier; but to wipe it out entirely with one stroke of a machine piston, so to speak, is "something else again."

In other words, the question is: Does our much vaunted efficiency, which has been the wonder of the world and the pet theme of our patrioteering orators, make for a good standard of living? Does it not, in fact, actually endanger any kind of living for the worker in many cases?

There can be no doubt of the onward march of the machine and of its displacement of artisans in almost every craft. Scarcely an industry has escaped the "mass mania," the consuming thirst for volume and yet more volume of production, which, incidentally, is not always synonymous with profit. The out­put per worker in our manufacturing industries has nearly doubled in the last generation. If one man now does the work of two, what happens to that other man? Is it any consolation to him that his place has been taken by a clattering, soulless "robot," whose daily fodder is merely a few ounces of oil or throbs of electricity?

A great automobile company increases its production 1,400 per cent with an addition of only 10 per cent to its personnel. In automotive manufacturing as a whole the actual output per worker has risen from 7.2 units (cars, trucks, and so on) in 1913 to 11.5 at present. In other words, the need for labor in the industry has decreased more than 50 per cent in ratio to the production.

In the presence of these figures and of those on the other side of the ledger, namely, the totals of unemployed, which, though slightly above those of a year ago, are happily decreasing, why question this ominous aspect of the spread of "efficiency" of our labor-saving devices? Why doubt this sinister menace to the job holder?

Such reasoning, though superficially logical, overlooks one vital factor in the whole of this postwar economic development. With the onward sweep of machinery there has come a steadily upward trend of wages for the machine operator, and conse­quently of buying power. Ordinarily, such a stimulus of demand would promptly boost prices, but mass production made possible by the new mechanical equipment has kept them down.

Incidentally, this mounting wage scale of ours has by no means crippled our competitive powers as against our European rivals in neutral markets. Taking the 1913 figures as a 100 index, wages paid in the United States in 1927 stood at 260, while those in the United Kingdom were 180, but the price-levels in the two countries were 145 and 142, respectively. Our wage scale had gone up more than 40 per cent beyond the British but prices and living costs in the two countries had kept side by side.

Those figures tell the tale. It is the extra buying power in the 260 American wage which gives our worker the added margin of purchasing ability that has been translated into our new standard of comfortable living. The ratio of buying command of the American 260 over our 145 price-level as compared with the British 180 over its 142 price-index sums up the whole philosophy of present-day American prosperity.

That, objects the doleful cynic, may be satisfactory for the worker who held his job and is operating the machine, but what becomes of his displaced shop-mate? Where does he figure in the advancing wage scale?

The answer is that while he has lost one job in a factory he has open to him another in a non-manufacturing service industry, which has grown up as a result of this rising comfort level demanded by his former associate because of the latter's new wages.

This is by no means intended to imply that the widespread readjustments incident to the spread of machinery have been entirely devoid of hardships. Far from it. Every such turning point in economic history since the earliest days of the first applications of primitive devices to aid the work of hands and arms has involved some temporary hardships as the change was being affected. The industrial development of England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was punctuated with violent outbursts by the workers who feared displacement by the progress of machinery, particularly in the textile and iron industries.

But out of it all—and indeed rather promptly—there emerged a new standard of living which England had never known before. The records of the early factories are smeared with ghastly tales of the sufferings of women and child workers, of ruthless employer autocracy, and of the pitiless exploitation. The grim horrors of these phases cannot be ignored. But by their very striking dramatic picturesqueness, all too frequently they have obscured our appreciation of the fact that meanwhile there coursed through the people a new vigor, new aspirations, and with them the means for their gratification.

It was this stirring turmoil of social and economic discontent which gave birth to the elements of British democracy whence came the leadership that delivered Europe from the perils of Napoleonic despotism and finally reached its full stature in the reforms of 1832.

Had this industrial epic occurred just a generation earlier, one wonders whether there would have been that wide gulf between the standards of civil and economic liberty of the mother­land and of the colonies in America which brought about the breach of 1776.

The beginning of the machine age, despite its temporary sordid aspects, lifted the people to newer heights of well-being previously unattained. The observations of many keen-eyed contemporaries reflected unmistakably this profoundly sig­nificant social upheaval, this suddenly achieved consciousness of better living and the possibilities of its attainment. As Sidney Webb so forcefully described this new era "the whole nation shared in the ever-growing stream of commodities and steadily widened the range and increased the quantity of its consumption."

And so today in America we are witnessing the development of these newer service industries as the inevitable accompaniment of our industrial advance. They are the expression of these same aspirations for greater comforts and for social betterment in its larger sense among our wage-earners as were manifested under such profoundly significant circumstances during the dramatic days of the industrial revolution.

Our factories have decreased their employees by 917,000 since 1920, partly as a normal deflation of military activities, but particularly because of the vastly improved production efficiency of the plants—better machinery, more experienced workers, and better shop management and executive direction.

The industrialization of agriculture is largely responsible for the fact that the employees of our farms have decreased by 800,000 since the war. Of course, there are other factors that* enter into that situation, such as the falling off in the number of horses in the country from 21,500,000 to 15,300,000 since 1919.

Efficiency methods in locomotive construction, roundhouse operation, and freight servicing account for a good part of the 240,000 men released from the payrolls of our Railways at that time.

If allowed to stand by themselves, these figures would present a dark aspect indeed. But they depict only a part of the situation. As indicated above, the increased wages earned by those workmen who have been retained in the factories and railways and on the farms have stirred a nation-wide demand for low-priced automobiles, for radios, for telephones, for motion-pictures, for cabarets, for restaurants, and for countless other contributions to comfort. These must not only be built; they must constantly be serviced.

The result is that over 760,000 men have found employ­ment since 1920 in driving and ministering to the automobile. Nearly 100,000 of these are chauffeurs of sightseeing cars and other types of busses. Perhaps the bus has slightly cut down the job prospects for locomotive engineers and trainmen, but new positions have promptly risen to fill the gap. This is an impressive index of the amazing increase in our automotive vehicles which has grown so rapidly that we have a car for every five persons in the country, so that in the event of some great national emergency the entire population could be bundled into automo­biles and driven across the borders!

HEAVY READING
(Reading rate: 6,000 words per hour)
Exercise 91
(Reading time: about 6 minutes)
. . . The Hertzian experiments . . . remind one of Franklin's Leyden-jar experiments; but Hertz, fully equipped with Max­well's theory, employed a special form of a Leyden jar, which radiates more abundantly waves of Faraday's fluxes. It looks like a dumb-bell and consists of two spheres, A and B, with projecting rods C and D. A and C represent one conducting plate of the jar, B and D represent the other; the insulator between the two conducting plates was air. Let an electrical machine generate a positive charge on conductor AC, and a negative charge on conductor BD. The charges on these two conductors are interconnected by the electrical flux; the directions of the flux reactions at various points of space are indicated by the dotted curves . . . they form tubular surfaces, the cross-sections of which represent roughly the density of the electrical flux at various points. The symmetry of the apparatus makes it obvious that the distribution of the electrical flux must be symmetrical with respect to the axis of symmetry of the appa­ratus, that is the axis of the cylinders C and D. The energy of the electrical flux is located in the space covered by the dotted curves (diagram given) and distributed in a perfectly symmetri­cal manner. The release of this energy initiates the flux actions which are to be transmitted. This release occurs as follows: When the charge is sufficiently large, and, as a result, the electri­cal force between C and D is sufficiently high, the reaction of the flux in the air gap E breaks down and the air-gap becomes conductive. This releases the stored-up energy of the electrical flux, because the electrical charges on A and B move toward each other along the rods CD and the flux which is associated with them moves also. The energy of the electrical flux departs when the flux departs from the volume elements in which it was located; according to Maxwell's theory, it is transformed in every volume element of space into magnetic-flux energy. The disappearance of the electrical flux generates the magnetic flux, and it is a simple matter to form a picture of its location. In the immediate vicinity of the rods CD the curves of the magnetic flux must be interlinked with the rods and have a perfectly symmetrical distribution with respect to the axis of symmetry; that is, they are circular, the planes of the circles being perpendicular to this axis. At all other points of space they are also symmetrically distributed, and at each point in space the curves of the magnetic flux must be perpendicular to the curves of the electrical flux. At every point in space there is, according to Maxwell, a trans­mission of flux energy in the direction which is perpendicular to the direction of the electrical and of the magnetic flux. This transmission of energy is "electrical radiation." Hertz demon­strated experimentally the existence of this radiation; radio broadcasting is the offspring of this demonstration.

How did Hertz demonstrate the existence of electrical radia­tion which Maxwell's theory predicted? The answer is simple. If this radiation exists and follows the laws of the propagation of light, then in its passages from air to a dense material body it will be reflected. Hertz found that it was partially reflected by the walls of his laboratory, and in order to make the reflection more complete he placed a conducting screen in the path of the electrical radiation. Conductors, according to Maxwell's theory are opaque to electrical radiation, which is produced by rapidly varying electrical and magnetic fluxes, such as Hertz employed. His Ley den jar, the Hertzian oscillator, was so designed that, according to Thomson's calculation, mentioned above, its discharge was a vibratory one, having a frequency, a pitch, of many million vibrations per second. The waves of electrical and cf magnetic flux actions radiated by the Hertzian oscillator were, therefore, oscillatory, and when reflected by the metal screen the incoming waves and the reflected waves should form by interference standing waves; that is to say, according to Maxwell there should be in the path of the electrical radiation maxima and minima of the electrical and of the magnetic flux action . . ♦

A READING BUDGET

For at least three or four months try to read on a schedule.
Beware of making this schedule too severe. Better an easy schedule at which you can succeed than an over-ambitious one at which you are bound to fail.

Begin with seven hours a week, distributing the time in any manner that fits in well with your other affairs. There isn't one business man in ten thousand who cannot, by careful planning, find this brief time for serious reading.

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