John D. Long, ‘ son of Zadoc Long, of Buckfield, in the County of Oxford, and State of Maine ’ was one of those typical Americans of the last generation — intelligent, honorable, likable, with a fixed code of principles — who led their communities, and built up the nation. With habits definite as his beliefs, he kept a journal from the age of nine, when he first learned to use an axe on the Maine woods, to the days when he became Governor of Massachusetts and Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt was an assistant of his in the Navy Department, and not the least interesting pages of the journal tell of his relations with his fiery and impetuous junior. The passages we print here — a kind of epitome of bygone America of the 40’s — were selected — from twenty-four volumes of journal — by Lawrence Shaw Mayo, formerly of the History Department of Harvard University, and the author of a life of Jeffrey Amherst, Longmans Green, 1915, and of John Wentworth, Harvard Press, 1921. Ethel Puffer Howes renews her discussion — whether a woman can go on with her profession, though she be married—which began with ‘ Accepting the Universe ’ in the April Atlantic. She is a trained psychologist, and was Chairman of the Committee on Training of the Woman’s Land Army during the war. Ruth Rose is an assistant in a Jungle Laboratory, being one of William Beebe’s helpers in the Tropical Research Station, at Kartabo, British Guiana.

To look at unfamiliar China with Seal Thompson is to find spiritual refreshment and a new world. She is a Quaker, and a member of the department of Bible study at Wellesley, who lately returned from a year’s teaching in Yen Cheng College, the women’s college of Peking University. The Reverend Sidney Lovett is pastor of Mount Vernon Church, Boston. ‘ Bereavement,’ a sonnet, comes to us from a new poet, Jeannette Tomkins, of Philadelphia. With ‘ Moonshine,’ Lucy Furman of the Hindman Settlement completes her series of tales about the Kentucky mountaineers. These Atlantic stories are really chapters from a much longer narrative which the Atlantic Monthly Press will issue in the spring. To treat of the curious borderland that lies between botany and psychology is the task undertaken by Clifford H. Farr, professor of botany in the University of Iowa, and a pioneer in this investigation. Elizabeth Stanley Trotter is a new contributor. Jean Kenyon Mackenzie is a favorite both in verse and prose with Atlantic readers. Edith Kennedy, who is Mrs. A. J. Kennedy of Boston, found the background for her story through many days spent in laundries as Stamps-Saving Visitor for the South End House Settlement.

Joseph F. Fishman has written the most complete and searching indictment of jail and prison conditions in the United States that we have yet read. For fourteen years, as Inspector of Prisons for the United States Government, Mr. Fishman visited the principal prisons in every state in the union, as well as those in Alaska, Porto Rico, and Hawaii. He is at present conducting a public investigation into the management of the Baltimore Penitentiary. Card Wight is better fitted than any one we know to trace in imagination the human story which attaches to every old manuscript transmitted through many centuries from classical times to ours. He has been in business, gone to sea, worked as a farmer, and as a practical carpenter with his union card; besides this, he teaches Latin and holds a doctorate in the classics from Johns Hopkins University. For that vast army of amateur bird-students who have hung over the lee rail of an ocean liner and watched the sea gulls swoop and soar, William L. and Irene Finley have written their story. Mr. Finley is Lecturer and Field Agent for the National Association of Audubon Societies for the protection of wild birds and animals, and the author of several books and scientific papers on birds, in some of which his wife has been collaborator.

Sisley Huddleston is the Paris correspondent of the London Times, a position commonly regarded as the premier place in the newspaper world. At the Williamstown Conference on International Relations, this summer, Oscar T. Crosby led the discussion on Interallied debts. His experience with public finance has been wide. He was Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, in charge of fiscal bureaus, in 1917-19, and was in Europe from November 1917 to March 1919 as President of the Interallied Council on War Purchases and Finance. Louis Levine, who told in the November Atlantic the difficulties experienced in applying communism to one hundred and fifty million Russian peasants, gives in this number the new agricultural plans of the Soviet government, the present condition of the peasantry, and a glimpse of their future. He was formerly professor of economics at Wellesley and later at the University of Montana. His study is based on eight months’ travel and observation in Russia. J. O. P. Bland, a realistic political philosopher, is a veteran student of Oriental affairs. For years he was Secretary to the Municipality for the Foreign Settlements in Shanghai, and representative in China of the British and Chinese Confederation.

‘Casting anchor,’ according to Joseph Conrad, whom we quoted in October, marks one a landlubber. But here is a contributor who appeals from Conrad to Paul of Tarsus.

DEAR ATLANTIC, ——
Anent ‘casting the anchor,’ do you remember the story of the man who was asked by his son, ‘Pa, who was Shylock?’ and who replied, ‘Shylock, Shylock? — What do I send you to Sunday School for! Go read your Bible.’
English speech, especially in New England, does not merely bear traces of Shakespeare, of Bunyan, and of the Bible; these are so firmly

bound and interlaced within this speech that their words, phrases, proverbs, maxims, and commands have become common nouns, recognized as familiar friends, whose original local habitation is forgotten or unknown.
As the people of New England spread toward the West they may have partially lost their saltwater terms, but they carried their Bibles in their packs; and they read of Saint Paul; and they read of his shipwreck. And when they reached the 29th and 30th verses of chapter xxvii of the Acts of the Apostles, they read: —
Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day.
And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under color as though they would have cast anchor out of the foreship. . . .
And that is where they got it. Myself, I am ready to believe that the phrase, in the days of the shipping glory of New England, though not used on shipboard as a nautical order, was nevertheless employed, after they had gotten on shore, to describe the act, the direction for which they had given in other terms when aboard, by those who themselves went down to the sea in ships from New England homes.
G. W. J.
SALEM, MASS.

During the past few weeks we have been calling the roster of ‘First Readers of the Atlantic.’ Ever since Professor Herman T. Frueauff related in the September Contributors’ Column his own memories of the first issue, in 1857, a goodly company have added their names to the roster. We can select only a few of their letters — the first from a Civil War veteran who carried the Atlantic in his knapsack.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I am another reader whose memory goes back to the first number, in November 1857. A gawky boy with a keen appetite for reading, I bought this myself. Probably I bought several numbers, but I think your books would show me one of your earliest subscribers. I am quite sure that I had the magazine for a dozen years or more, including the time I was a soldier in the Civil War. What has become of the earlier issues I do not know, but I have bound volumes for 1864, most of the numbers having been received in the service, read, and sent home.
In March 1863, I was, with most of my regiment, captured near Nashville, Tennessee. I had been on picket the night before and had just commenced my breakfast when the long roll sounded. After the little fight was over I ran into my tent, snatched up my haversack, and put into it a few hardtack and a copy of the Atlantic Monthly. The camp had been fired and the tents were burning. I could not stop for more crackers from the open boxes.
Two weeks of great hardship and suffering brought us to Richmond where we were searched as we entered Libby Prison. At Tullahoma Farm I had picked up a bowie knife and a roll of bandage. The knife I had put, without a sheath, in the inside pocket of my coat. The roll of bandage and the Atlantic were taken away, but the examiner ran his hands down on each side of my pocket, missing the knife, which I carried through but lost some years after my discharge.
H. E. WARNER.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
Surely I must be only one of many among your readers who remember clearly when you first stepped upon the stage, with the genial Autocrat smiling upon us and the sweet wisdom of ‘Brahma’—puzzling some older heads than ours — lending added dignity to the group of friends around you.
Like an ‘army with banners’ you took possession of the field, and have held it ever since through all the changes that have come to our dear old city.
R. W. WALKER.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
Sixty five years ago, when the Atlantic Monthly was established and Lowell woke the world from a kind of literary lethargy, one of my ancestors went out and bought a copy of your magazine, read it, and left it on the library table; and the latest copy of the Atlantic Monthly has been on that same table ever since.
Like my ancestors I have literally devoured those wonderfully cheery contributions which Holmes wrote under the pseudonym of ‘The Autocrat.’
I still read the Atlantic. Maybe I am oldfashioned but I often find myself going back to ‘The Autocrat’ for dessert.
FRANK LA BAU HILLER.

Of the many letters that have come to us upon James M. Cain’s article, ‘The Battleground of Coal’ in the October Atlantic, we print the following, which takes strong issue with Mr. Cain at several points: —

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
Frankly, the writer has little sympathy with Mr. Cain’s point of view, although perfectly willing to concede his right to his opinion of what he saw. My background in the matter is the fact that I lived in McDowell County, West Virginia, from 1902 to 1920, in the coal business, and have been financially interested in various properties in Mingo County since 1912, and am thoroughly familiar with the entire section.
It Is, of course, true that none of the operators in the counties mentioned employ union labor, and they will not tolerate union organizers on property they own or control. Within the last three years indeed, they have signed an agreement with each man employed, that he is not to join the union while in their employment, while they themselves agree to maintain open-shop mines. This is the common form of open-shop agreement, used in many industries throughout the country, and one which is perfectly legal. Certainly those signing it are not compelled to work there; and if they were, is the situation any different from that of the union mines, which agree to employ only members of the union?
The situation about evictions is hard for an outsider to understand. That whole section was originally a heavily forested wilderness, the population was very small and there was not an average of one house per square mile.
Following railroads came the development of coal; it was, and is, necessary for the operator to build houses not only for his employees, but also for preachers, school-teachers, station-agents, doctors, and everyone else associated with a town of from three hundred to several thousand people. Nearly all of that country was owned in large tracts by landowning companies, and at least eighty per cent of the entire territory is leased by them to the operating companies, under definite restrictions as to sale of property, and so forth. If it had not been for these large companies, development would have been long delayed.
In the event of a strike, unless the houses are vacated by the former employees, it is useless for the company to attempt to operate its mine, as it cannot employ any new men, since there are no places for them to live. The writer happens to know that in Mingo County no one was moved out of a house without at least three weeks’ notice, and usually much more. The ‘battle’ at Matewan, mentioned by Mr. Cain, is of the class usually called a massacre, as with the exception of the mayor, all of those killed were the Baldwin-Felts men, who were shot down within a minute or two while all of their guns were wrapped up in their satchels.
The writer has never before seen the number in the tent colonies, at the maximum, stated as more than four thousand, while at the present time it is only a few hundred, although so far as the mines are concerned, there have been enough men in that field, at all times since January 1921, to produce all of the coal for which orders or cars could be had, and its production last spring was the greatest in its history.
It should be noted that Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers, mentioned as union sympathizers, were ringleaders in the Matewan affair, and had frequently openly boasted that they would ‘get’ the men who afterward shot them, and who were tried for manslaughter for this shooting and acquitted.
The comparative figures for operation are probably correct, but why include Georgia for comparison, as it has only one or two coal mines and a yearly output in 1920 of 50,156 tons? Undoubtedly, in 1921, the nonunion mines ran much more than the union ones, because the nonunion men were willing to work more time at a lower rate than the union miners were, and this fact, coupled with the higher quality of coal, enabled them to get the business.
Whatever have been the faults in the management of their labor troubles by the operators in southern West Virginia, and there have been many, it must be remembered that nearly all of them have had experiences with the miners’ union and its methods, and know that they will stop at nothing to ultimately unionize, and later, nationalize, all of the mines in the country. Anyone who realizes the power displayed by the head of the union this past summer and who can remember the occurrences at Matewan, Willis Branch, Blair Mountain, and Cliftonville, in West Virginia, and St. Clairsville, Ohio, and Herrin, Illinois, will know that the nonunion operators are not fighting theorists or altruists, but hard-headed men who neglect no means to gain their ends. Those familiar with the territory mentioned know that it contains many of the finest coal plants in this country; that at most of them the housing and working conditions are excellent and, in many of them, not surpassed by any plants in the country; that the roads and schools are being rapidly improved and are much better than the average in such mountainous regions; and that the relations between the operators and their men are on at least as good a basis as in any union mines.
HOWARD N. EAVENSON.

Here is something for Mr. Bok and other Netherlanders: —

DEAR ATLANTIC, — Mr. Bok might have added several further items to the list of Holland’s or rather ‘ Netherland’s’ contribution to things American. Bradford states that, on May 12th, 1621, ‘was the first marriage in this place (Edward Winslow to Susanna White), which, according to the laudable custom of the Low Countries in which they had lived was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate as being a civil thing upon which many questions of inheritance depend with other things most proper to their cognizans and most consonante to the scriptures, RUTH IV, and nowhere found in the gospel to be layed on the ministers as part of their office. This decree or law about marriage was published by the State of the Low-Countries An. 1500.’
It was not until 1692 that Massachusetts law provided that marriages might be performed by ministers. Perhaps Mr. Bok would not count that as a lasting contribution, but still the custom was of seventy years’ duration!
Then the seal of the United States. A cursory examination of Netherlands seals struck, from the year 1578 on, to commemorate the union of the provinces at various epochs or occasions, shows so many resemblances between the Dutch bundle of arrows and that on our seal that it is impossible to ignore a probable intimate knowledge of the former on the part of the designers of the latter. An article called ‘The Eagle’s Arrows’ in the February number of the D. A. R. Magazine contains illustrations of the medals which show features of the Uuited States seal.
A protest of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam to the Burghers of Amsterdam, declaring that their new charier was of no avail as Pieter Stuyvesant continued to exercise ‘boss’ rule, might also be considered as the original germ of civic troubles on Manhattan — a germ that has never been eradicated.
RUTH PUTNAM.
WASHINGTON, D. C.

At least Mr. Bok’s people did n’t invent the 18th Amendment!

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Mr. Edward W. Bok’s ‘Well, I Did n’t Know That’ in the October Atlantic is delightful. Of course, he has the right to be proud of his little country and its great people, but his admirable enthusiasm has carried him away, made him claim almost everything as of Dutch origin. He even says (page 485) the Americans practically copied the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution from similar state papers which had, long before our Revolution, existed in the archives of the Republic of the United Netherlands. At the same time, it is fair to say, and we note this with pleasure, he lays no claim to any of the Amendments to the Constitution — particularly the Eighteenth!
S. S. P. PATTESON.