i8o 



The Review of Reviews, 



February HO, 190$. 



give more, but less spectacularly, than the 

 Americans : — 



In England one sees a variety of dress in men which 

 oiio rarely sees at home. They dress there not only in 

 keeping with their work and their play, but in the indul- 

 gence of any freak of personal fancy. Whether we spend 

 more or not, I believe that the English live much nearer 

 their incomes than Americans do. I think that we save 

 more out of our earnings than they out of theirs. They 

 spend vastly more on state than we do. because, for one 

 thing, they have more state to spend on. 



He is much impressed by the love of England, 

 which is evinced by the hordes of cheap trippers. 

 They are great holiday-makers, the English ; the 

 voting people are ever openly gay, and the robustness 

 of their flirtation adds sensibly to the interest of 

 the spectator. 



HOW UNCLE SAM HELPS THE FARMER. 



Mr. Frank Vrooman, in the Arena, recounts 

 •• Uncle Sam's Romance with Science and the Soil." 

 He says the United States Government began to 

 •• interfere with the farmer's business sixty-six years 

 ago. ' Now the Department of Agriculture expends 

 nearlv six million dollars — about the cost of one 

 battleship — every year. The Department issued in 

 1Q04 nearly twelve and a-half million copies of 972 

 separate publications. The writer says: — 



All the results of the investigations of two thousand 

 experts are distributed to every part of the body of 

 American agriculture. The*e books say to the farmer. 

 " put this seed or this fertiliser in this soil, plant and 

 reap at such times: do thus and so with thus so," and 

 this with never a piece of guess-work but always with 

 definite scientific precision. 



Dr. Wylie, Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, is 

 1 to have saved about seven million dollars an- 

 nually in his sugar crucible for Uncle Sam. The 

 Bureau of Plant Industry spends nearly a million 

 dollars a year in the experimental work of 500 men, 

 creating new plants, importing alien plants, healing 

 sick, "and improving old ones. 



WHAT EXPERT SKILL CAN DO. 



Here is an example of what it does: — 



Last, winter Mr. Harold Powell went to Riverside, Cali- 

 fornia, to investigate the rotting of oranges in shipment 

 East. The growers were losing about sixty per cent. He 

 discovered the fruit was injured by the clippers in picking, 

 or by finger-nail punctures. He turned the points of their 

 clippers and manicured their snippers, and this _ simple 

 application of an idea saves enough for the Riverside dis- 

 trict in eighteen months to build the new agriculture 

 building at Washington, which will cost 1.500.000 dole. 



I ■ Department is aiming at the founding of a 

 national Agricultural University, where complete 

 lines of special work may be given young men in all 

 the applied and related sciences, and may affiliate 

 the Agricultural Schools in a kind of University 

 Extension. The importations of plants by this De- 

 partment have led to an annual product of 119 

 million dollars. 



WHAT -BUGS" COST THE NATION 



The Department's war against the parasites has 

 saved an enormous sum. The writer says: — 



A rougli estimate of the annual losses of farm products, 

 chargeable to bugs preying on vegetable products alone, 

 is cereals, 200 millions of dollars' worth; hay. 53; cotton, 

 60; tobacco, 5; truck crops, 53; sugar, 5; fruits, 27; farm, 

 forests, 11; miscellaneous crops, 6; animal products. 175 

 millions of dollars, to which is to be added a loss of 

 100 millions each for natural forests and forest products, 

 and as much for products in storage. 



Dr. L. O. Howard, Chief of Bureau of Entomology, im- 

 ported from Australia, the parasite of the white scale, 

 the Asiatic ladybird, enemy of the San Jose scale, the 

 EurojKNin lady-bird enemy of the black scale, which have 

 probably saved the citrous industries of California. 



From all I can gather, the Bureau of Entomology 

 alone, with its correlated work and allied influences, saves 

 the farmer some years between 300 and 400 millions a year. 



-WINGS INDEED. 



It has carried on — 



.1 work that baa prevented a loss to wheat from the 

 Eleesian fly of from 100,000,000 dols. to 200,000,000 dols. a 

 that has taken apples out of the mouths of the 

 codlin moths and put them in the farmers' bins to the 

 value of 15.000,000 dols., to 20.000,000 dols. a year; which has 

 saved the California citrons-fruit industry from extinction; 

 which in offering the simple device of rotation of corn 

 crops with oats or other crops has saved the corn in- 

 dustry 100,000.000 dols. in the Mississippi valley; which 

 saves 30,000,000 dols. annually from ravaees of the cotton- 

 worm, and i- doing many other brilliant and effective 

 pieces of work. 



Mr. Vrooman onlv wishes that the same national 

 methods were applied for the protection of human 

 health as are applied for the protection of plants 

 and animals. 



BROTHERHOOD VERSUS NICENESS. 



There is a very amusing suggestive paper in the 

 Theosophical Review for December on " Brotherhood 

 — Mainly False." The writer. " A.R.O." maintains 

 that 



instead of being in the forefront of thought in the matter 

 of Brotherhood, the Theosophical Society is no further ad- 

 vanced than the main body, and. in many cases, seems 

 positively to straggle complacently in the rear. A candid 

 analysis of our present attitude of mind would reveal, I 

 believe, the strange fact that the majority of our members 

 have no conception of the meaning of Brotherhood what- 

 ever, and still less any notion of how Brotherhood actually 

 works in practice. What they name Brotherhood is not 

 Brotherhood at all, hut something else. And the something 

 else which they have substituted for Brotherhood, and 

 assume to he Brotherhood, is no more than Universal 

 Niceness. 



Anybody who has nothing particular to say and nothing 

 particular to do, who cares neither about his own sincerity 

 nor for the effect of his insincerity upon others, may be 

 uniformly nice; but the man who has something to do and 

 something to say. something also to receive from sincere 

 people alone, cannot always be nice — he can only always be 

 brotherly. Pity, toleration, niceness, forgiveness amongst 

 fellow-pupils of wisdom and brotherhood, are. as likely as 

 not. evidences of mutual distrust and contempt. If they 

 proceed fiom the clear perception of Brotherhood they are 

 active virtues, but if— as is generally the case — they pro- 

 ceed from slavery to some ideal of nicenegs, they are. for 

 the said pupils, cardinal sins and vices. 



This may be true, but most people, not being 

 Theosophists. would probably prefer niceness to 

 brotherliness on the part of the people with whom 

 thev have to do in life. Brotherliness. as " A.R.O." 

 conceives it. is evidently often by no means nice. 

 Men don't love nasty brethren. 



